What do you think?
Tweak3nd: A Disaffected Look at How it is to be Young and Cool or Whatever
Tweak3nd chronicles the literal and metaphysical highs and lows during a drug and alcohol-fueled long weekend of a group of privileged, disaffected, social-media and technology-obsessed college cool kids. While wittily dissecting the intricacies of the rare partying craft, the invisible protagonist, student identification number @02596194, narrates the exploits of her party animal friends who have mastered the art of getting high and staying there.
248 pages, Paperback
First published September 17, 2012
About the author
O.R.N.
1 book4 followers O.R.N., aka Obscure Revolutionary Novelist, is a watercorn (water unicorn) who loves smoking seaweed. He/she (as unicorns are androgynous) surfaced from his/her underwater sea-cave in 2012 because of rising ocean acidification levels brought about by climate change. After falling in love with Atlanta drug dealer and gang banger music, O.R.N. decided to write novels inspired by the creativity of the ATLien impresarios and internet phenoms like Migos and Lil B The Based God. The purpose of these novels are to spark a culture war that will revitalize the world's youths commitment to a global sustainable revolution...I think. Declaring that, "Cool is the Weapon" O.R.N. continues to freelance as an intellectual internet troll at The Daily Thir5t O.R.N. hopes to return to the ocean one day, but continued human destruction of the environment has proven it is unlikely. Until then, O.R.N. is committed to terrorizing the world with O.R.N.'s sardonic intellect, creativity, and dark sense of humor, or whatever.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 9, 2013
I received an electronic copy of this book from the author in exchange for a review.
There are at least two ways to approach and appreciate this book. First, as a lost weekend story of young and privileged youth running amok, killing brain cells and breaking hearts, often their own. The second and more rewarding way is to read what is going on both socially and psychologically with these characters. The multiple personas they must create and maintain to establish their place in both the virtual and real-life college pecking orders is exhausting to read about. It’s horrific to contemplate the pressure that these various personas and personal brands exert on these strung-out college kids. I was constantly torn between wanting to either hug them and tell them everything was going to be alright, and wanting to kick their whiny asses.
When I started reading this book, I was immediately pulled into the fictional world of these young college “cool kids”. Fascinated by their decadent behavior and their razor-sharp self-examination, I found myself repulsed and drawn-in simultaneously. Being more than three decades removed from my own college partying days, I did need to consult the Urban Dictionary a few times, and of course, I didn’t know any of the music* they were listening to, so I did feel a bit removed from their experiences and concerns. However, even though the details of music, drugs, and sexual habits/attitudes are specific to their era, there is much in their story that is universal to people making the transition from the extended adolescence of college to the hard realities of adult life. In brief, they are on the threshold of a great adventure that is clearly not so great at all.
As a writer, O.R.N. (a pseudonym, of course) is a great-granddaughter of William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Jean Genet, and André Gide, as well as Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, and Susan Sontag. Her main protagonist – Kennedy – is likewise a mash-up of Daria Morgendorffer and her sister Quinn. Smarter than a whip, tall and beautiful; a blend of high IQ and the undergrad equivalent of high fashion in both clothes and culture, Kennedy is constantly careful not to behave too intelligently for fear of scaring off potential male sex partners. Throw into this mixture a love of excessive drug and alcohol use, plus a deep sexual thirst, and you have the kind of college superstar who every girl wants to be and every guy wants to fuck. And yet, Kennedy is FAR from happy or satisfied at any level.
The dissatisfaction Kennedy and her crowd suffer from is intimately linked to their excessive consumption of drugs and alcohol and the unsatisfying sex they submit to while completely inebriated. College cultural expectations of “Party! Party! Party!” followed by “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” lead to mornings-after of self-doubt, self-loathing, and epic hangovers. To help pull their way out of these M’kay-holes, the texting commences as soon as their hand-eye coordination allows them to spin the previous night into something “cool” enough to maintain both their persona and something resembling a sense of self – but ultimately, everyone knows this is nowhere.
And it’s this nowhere that is at the center of the book. These “cool kids” are the product of Reaganomics, retail therapy, prescription drugs as a child-rearing technique, and the “no-secrets” nature of the internet age that disallows anything like a coherent belief system, since everything is debated and debunked into oblivion leaving nothing left to do but consume products, consume substances and consume what used to be precious time. There is a bleakness in the world of this book that is just barely kept under the surface, though the few times sobriety breaks out, the bleakness is right there in plain view.
O.R.N. has gone way beyond simply chronicling her youth and has created a social critique that will have you asking the big questions of who we are and where we seem to be going. Read this book!
*The author sent me a PDF version of the book which had embedded links to samples of many of the songs mentioned in the text. The print version shows a screen shot of these links for reference.
There are at least two ways to approach and appreciate this book. First, as a lost weekend story of young and privileged youth running amok, killing brain cells and breaking hearts, often their own. The second and more rewarding way is to read what is going on both socially and psychologically with these characters. The multiple personas they must create and maintain to establish their place in both the virtual and real-life college pecking orders is exhausting to read about. It’s horrific to contemplate the pressure that these various personas and personal brands exert on these strung-out college kids. I was constantly torn between wanting to either hug them and tell them everything was going to be alright, and wanting to kick their whiny asses.
When I started reading this book, I was immediately pulled into the fictional world of these young college “cool kids”. Fascinated by their decadent behavior and their razor-sharp self-examination, I found myself repulsed and drawn-in simultaneously. Being more than three decades removed from my own college partying days, I did need to consult the Urban Dictionary a few times, and of course, I didn’t know any of the music* they were listening to, so I did feel a bit removed from their experiences and concerns. However, even though the details of music, drugs, and sexual habits/attitudes are specific to their era, there is much in their story that is universal to people making the transition from the extended adolescence of college to the hard realities of adult life. In brief, they are on the threshold of a great adventure that is clearly not so great at all.
As a writer, O.R.N. (a pseudonym, of course) is a great-granddaughter of William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Jean Genet, and André Gide, as well as Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, and Susan Sontag. Her main protagonist – Kennedy – is likewise a mash-up of Daria Morgendorffer and her sister Quinn. Smarter than a whip, tall and beautiful; a blend of high IQ and the undergrad equivalent of high fashion in both clothes and culture, Kennedy is constantly careful not to behave too intelligently for fear of scaring off potential male sex partners. Throw into this mixture a love of excessive drug and alcohol use, plus a deep sexual thirst, and you have the kind of college superstar who every girl wants to be and every guy wants to fuck. And yet, Kennedy is FAR from happy or satisfied at any level.
The dissatisfaction Kennedy and her crowd suffer from is intimately linked to their excessive consumption of drugs and alcohol and the unsatisfying sex they submit to while completely inebriated. College cultural expectations of “Party! Party! Party!” followed by “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” lead to mornings-after of self-doubt, self-loathing, and epic hangovers. To help pull their way out of these M’kay-holes, the texting commences as soon as their hand-eye coordination allows them to spin the previous night into something “cool” enough to maintain both their persona and something resembling a sense of self – but ultimately, everyone knows this is nowhere.
And it’s this nowhere that is at the center of the book. These “cool kids” are the product of Reaganomics, retail therapy, prescription drugs as a child-rearing technique, and the “no-secrets” nature of the internet age that disallows anything like a coherent belief system, since everything is debated and debunked into oblivion leaving nothing left to do but consume products, consume substances and consume what used to be precious time. There is a bleakness in the world of this book that is just barely kept under the surface, though the few times sobriety breaks out, the bleakness is right there in plain view.
O.R.N. has gone way beyond simply chronicling her youth and has created a social critique that will have you asking the big questions of who we are and where we seem to be going. Read this book!
*The author sent me a PDF version of the book which had embedded links to samples of many of the songs mentioned in the text. The print version shows a screen shot of these links for reference.
August 29, 2013
Consider this neat little scene in the sort-of prologue: the narrator is in the bathroom, checking herself from every conceivable angle only to find that she cannot perceive her reflection. This event serves dual roles. First, it illustrates the loss of identity that these characters, this disillusioned slice of a generation, inevitably experience. Their constant and gratuitous exploitation of drugs and alcohol, not only numbs and alters a pervading reality of bland meaningless existence that they desperately try to escape from, but also numbs them from any grip on the meaning of Self. They lose themselves, and further their substance abuse to flee from that too, entrenching themselves in an uncertain ouroboros, spiraling towards despair. Second, the metaphor of the missing reflection illustrates the status of the narrator. She is a placeholder for us. We see through her eyes, into her world, with or without her prejudices. She plays no significant role here, despite an amusing, yet misleading opening chapter.
These characters are quite infuriating to think about, with their copious intake of alcohol, toxic nihilism, and extreme ways of avoiding their purposeless lives. It’s just as disappointing to realize that these people exist, that their lives, while exaggerated, are inevitably real. O.R.N. provides a mirror for us to examine a few days of their amoral lives and see aspects of our own reflected back. This is unromanticized reality, complete with Facebook statuses, BBMs, and tweets.
O.R.N. maintains a steady dubstep-infused tempo of witty irony through a flow of music, situations, and steam-of-consciousness monologues. The author piles on the entertainment and waxes philosophy with almost tireless energy, creating this short novel featuring more liquor consumption than some pubs. Yet, in spite of the captivating style, there’s hardly a plot. The conflicts are mostly internal struggles, but by the end, there is no resolution, no conclusion to these kids’ meandering existences. Well, how can you end a book like this? I don’t know, so I don’t fault the author for it.
In many ways, Tweak3nd mirrors Ellis’s Rules of Attraction, which in a scene it even alludes to. The hedonistic party college culture seems an extension of this earlier novel, to the point that it seems, at times, like Tweak3nd is this generation’s version of Ellis’ work. Some chapters, particularly the opening segment, remind me vaguely of Chuck Palahniuk’s satiric writing. They are humorous, sarcastic, and transgressional. It was surprisingly clever and well-written for a self-published work. Tweak3nd is worth a shot or two, like good scotch, and though it might not be to everybody’s tastes, it will either open your eyes to the kind of debaucheries our youth are up to, or at least give us a viewpoint into understanding the psychological reasons behind this behavior or the mentalities of kids that partake in this. Either way, as twentysomethings, we all learn to hate the cool kids a little more (or feel sorry for ourselves, if we are like them).
These characters are quite infuriating to think about, with their copious intake of alcohol, toxic nihilism, and extreme ways of avoiding their purposeless lives. It’s just as disappointing to realize that these people exist, that their lives, while exaggerated, are inevitably real. O.R.N. provides a mirror for us to examine a few days of their amoral lives and see aspects of our own reflected back. This is unromanticized reality, complete with Facebook statuses, BBMs, and tweets.
O.R.N. maintains a steady dubstep-infused tempo of witty irony through a flow of music, situations, and steam-of-consciousness monologues. The author piles on the entertainment and waxes philosophy with almost tireless energy, creating this short novel featuring more liquor consumption than some pubs. Yet, in spite of the captivating style, there’s hardly a plot. The conflicts are mostly internal struggles, but by the end, there is no resolution, no conclusion to these kids’ meandering existences. Well, how can you end a book like this? I don’t know, so I don’t fault the author for it.
In many ways, Tweak3nd mirrors Ellis’s Rules of Attraction, which in a scene it even alludes to. The hedonistic party college culture seems an extension of this earlier novel, to the point that it seems, at times, like Tweak3nd is this generation’s version of Ellis’ work. Some chapters, particularly the opening segment, remind me vaguely of Chuck Palahniuk’s satiric writing. They are humorous, sarcastic, and transgressional. It was surprisingly clever and well-written for a self-published work. Tweak3nd is worth a shot or two, like good scotch, and though it might not be to everybody’s tastes, it will either open your eyes to the kind of debaucheries our youth are up to, or at least give us a viewpoint into understanding the psychological reasons behind this behavior or the mentalities of kids that partake in this. Either way, as twentysomethings, we all learn to hate the cool kids a little more (or feel sorry for ourselves, if we are like them).
September 9, 2013
right... well... as evidenced by the stars, i enjoyed it. and enjoy might also mean reading it wide mouthed and wide eyed. so here we go for the reasons:
1) showed me something i didn't know;
2) tickled my ego coz -yeah- I so got some of the allusions (probably) and understood all of the complicated words used (and added some new words for drugs to my vocabulary);
3) some excellent quotes to use for exams to discuss for a multitude of course topics;
4+) well written / easy to read, edited well, loved the interspersed playlist and message things. mixed media - great! loved the plot and how it meandered along.
so, all that praise, why not 5*? well... not sure why the move from i to she, but another reviewer might have an answer to that. also at times - possibly the author could have gotten rid of a lot more venom with some essays on the topics, but then, some are included. it seemed very bitter... the longer I think about it (and it has stayed with me for a week or so now since i've finished) i'm a little saddened by it, so much waste. ah well, the curse of the people who missed out on weekends like that.
:)
1) showed me something i didn't know;
2) tickled my ego coz -yeah- I so got some of the allusions (probably) and understood all of the complicated words used (and added some new words for drugs to my vocabulary);
3) some excellent quotes to use for exams to discuss for a multitude of course topics;
4+) well written / easy to read, edited well, loved the interspersed playlist and message things. mixed media - great! loved the plot and how it meandered along.
so, all that praise, why not 5*? well... not sure why the move from i to she, but another reviewer might have an answer to that. also at times - possibly the author could have gotten rid of a lot more venom with some essays on the topics, but then, some are included. it seemed very bitter... the longer I think about it (and it has stayed with me for a week or so now since i've finished) i'm a little saddened by it, so much waste. ah well, the curse of the people who missed out on weekends like that.
:)
November 9, 2013
Ok, I’m not sure where to go with this review, but then, I’m not sure where to go with the book! It makes for an interesting read, and I’ll admit I didn’t always understand the references but got the gist of them. There are so many levels to this book, and you could read it as just a weekend of partying, or at a much deeper level where people are only your friends when your part of the group. Do people really get to know the real you if you’re always high or drunk, or do they only see what they want to see. Although the book will seem over the top to some, only the naïve would believe it doesn’t happen and this is possibly the most shocking part of it all, it’s real, disturbing, and just a little twisted.
I received an e-copy from the author in exchange for an honest review.
I received an e-copy from the author in exchange for an honest review.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews