DNF

It lost focus..

A frustrating book. It's a Vonnegut pastiche, with endless asides, repetition of phrases, a plot that's completely forgotten about most of the time, and even a Kilgore Trout-type character.

Kobek has a core idea in this, which is that corporate America is a long history of unpaid labour. There was slavery, America's original sin (apart from the ethnic cleansing prior to the formation of the state, of course). Then there's the comic industry, with creators like Jack Kirby being paid a few hundred dollars for intellectual property that is now worth billions and which dominates all of world culture. The internet has now turned us all into Jack Kirbys, creating content for free on social media platforms, which allows those social media platforms to sell advertising. Collectively, our Facebook posts generate more revenue than all of Marvel's characters, but Mark Zuckerberg pays us even less than the comics industry paid Jack.

If this sounds like a slightly tedious guy sounding off at a dinner party... well, that's what this book is like. Sometimes. And other times it's quite lucid and funny and entertaining. I read it in a few hours and I would say that I hated it for about 30% of the time.

What's really funny though is how this now reads as a period drama. It's a vivid and very accurate snapshot of internet life in 2013, meaning that it's not only pre-Trump but pre-#Gamergate, and therefore feels as distant as the Georgian era. Still, at least this opens the door to a sequel: "I Fucking Hate The Internet".

It's Vonnegut but with more hate and I, despite the fact that the actually story part was very meh, loved it. Luckily the "plot" was only there so the author could spit hate and bile at pretty much everything that deserves to be torn to shreds.

It also contains some of the greatest book reviews I've ever read.

This was not what I was looking for, I wanted a comedy and ended up with a freaking lesson on politics and the triumph and decadence of the powerful. The ideas are there, but again, not what I was looking for.

This book is interesting in that it tells a fictional story (mostly about a woman who works in comics and has an interview become viral) but very frequently detours into non-fiction territory with digressions about the internet, the history of San Francisco, comic book industry, and several other related subjects. So it feels structurally like Moby Dick with the Internet replacing whales. In Moby Dick, it's as if Melville is trying to bore you to death every few chapters with trivia about whales, but there's compelling drama carrying the book forward. Here, it is quite the opposite, as the main story is completely uninteresting, but the digressions are informative, funny and insightful.
Overall this feels fresh at the beginning with its interplay between fiction and factual information but it gets tiresome after a while, as its tiny sliver of a story is unable to keep its momentum.

Português:
O livro conta uma história ficcional (majoritariamente sobre uma quadrinista que adquire alguma fama na internet após uma entrevista sua viralizar) mas se desvia frequentemente pro campo da não-ficção com digressões sobre a internet, a história de São Francisco, a indústria dos quadrinhos, e outros assuntos relacionados. Estruturalmente, portanto, o livro é como Moby Dick com a internet substituindo as baleias.
Em Moby Dick, Melville parece querer nos matar de tédio com trivia sobre baleias a cada punhado de capítulos, mas o drama humano da história central carrega o livro para frente. Aqui é precisamente o contrário: a história central é completamente desinteressante, mas os comentários sobre internet e cultura são informativos, perspicazes e engraçados.
De maneira geral, a leitura tem uma aura de novidade no começo, mas se torna cansativa a partir de certo ponto, e o fiapo de trama não consegue manter o momento do livro.

As a screed against technology and every other aspect of modern life this book is a definite five. As a novel it's a zero. That averages out to 2.5 which Goodreads will not allow. I have to give or dock a half point, and I decided to penalize for padding. The book is a little over 70,000 words long, but honestly, if Kobek could just say "black" or "white" instead of telling us about every person mentioned in the book (and there's a ton of people mentioned) how much "eumelanin they have in the basal cell layer of their epidermis" it would have been maybe 30,000 words.

It was hilarious and dramatic at the same time. If you like critic approaches to contemporary problems, you'll end up considering this a masterpiece. It's a nice mix of styles and formats, which is really enjoyable and a reflex of the content itself.