The Right Kind of Stupid

by John Oakes

Cody Latour is a naïve, directionless man-child. He seems nothing like his distant, CEO father or his eccentric grandfather, a former oil tycoon and full time legend. Cody’s small world consists largely of drinking by the pool with his dysfunctional friends: a red-neck diesel mechanic, a preachy mall kiosk owner, and a scrubby, mysterious drug dealer. He seems set to live out his days inside an isolated bubble of empty comforts. Then his charismatic grandfather dies, upending the delicate balance of Cody’s non-starting life and propelling him out into the world on an impossible mission.

Cody hesitantly takes up the challenge, but is dogged along the way by those determined to see him fail, including Monica, his late grandfather’s young and scheming third wife, and Tagg, the hostile bully that has been fixated on him since childhood.

To complicate things, Cody immediately falls for Kelly, the executor of his grandfather’s will. She tries to help him at times, but is legally bound from anything romantic. His bumbling attempts to woo her appear to have about as much hope of succeeding as he does at his grandfather’s challenge: Slim to none.

That is…until Cody meets Winton, a dwarf and struggling, small-time illusionist with a chip on his shoulder and nothing to lose. With his help, Cody presses forward in the shadow of the huge life his grandfather led, in his own immature and socially awkward way. But faced with enemy after enemy, obstacle after obstacle, his struggle begs the question: does he have what it takes? Is he the right kind of stupid?

This comedic, coming-of-age tale is a light-hearted and booze-soaked romp through Texas, perfect for summer reading. Much like the state of Texas, it contains some coarse language and plenty of social taboos.

390 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2014

Reviews

[T.W. Barton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was out of my normal reading preference. If you look at the reviews on my site they tend to be heavy action/thriller, Vampires, or Fantasy. If I had to categorize this book it would be in the comedy section.

I'm not sure if there are enough additives to describe this book. Fantastic, Humorous, and inspiring would top the list.

Fantastic because this book was so good. It caught me completely by surprise because the title left me with a different impression than I ended the book with. While some books seem to compel you to keep reading I never had that feeling with this one. That may sound like a negative but trust me, it was not. This book was like a warm spring evening, where the weathers perfect and you’re sitting outside, just enjoying the world. Every time I picked up this book it was relaxing and wholly enjoyable.

There were so many times in this book that had me laughing and shaking my head. With a title like this it stands to reason that you'll probably crack a smile or too, so it was very successful there. T.R.'s reenactment was so funny that I couldn't read through the water filling my eyes. I found that so hilarious that I would recommend the book for that part alone.

Sprinkled through the book were various life lessons and examples of inspiration that you'd usually find in non-fiction books. It may sound odd to have that kind of impact in a book with a title like this but the writing was so good that all these elements seamlessly flowed together to create one of the top 5 books of the year for me.

It doesn’t matter what genre you enjoy, this book will be a welcomed addition to your bookshelf.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was pretty hesitant to read this since it's only got like 10 ratings but it only cost a dollar when I bought it so I figured what the heck. I burned through this book in about 2 days of non stop reading. It's amazing! Parts of it had me laughing so hard that I gave myself stomach aches. It's sweet, it's witty, and definitely hilarious. I'd recommend this to anybody looking for a great, funny book.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Right Kind of Stupid, as the debut work of the author, turns out to be the right kind of book for readers who enjoy the ridiculous in life. Oakes's book is very humorous and a poignant satire of contemporary America centered on the main character, a wealthy man-child in Texas. As the story gathers steam, characters are fleshed out in compelling ways and the ubiquitous creative descriptions keep the reader engrossed in the disturbingly familiar reality that is The Right Kind of Stupid. This portrait of the hero, Cody, makes the reader feel a mixture of pity, anger, support, and joy towards him and his unlikely, yet plausible journey.

In many ways, I think The Right Kind of Stupid can be compared to Gary Shteyngart's offensively funny satire Absurdistan. Both novels center around inept protagonists who can barely function as grown adults, and are enjoying the fruits of a globalized world (albeit one is set in Texas and the other mainly in the former Soviet Union). The heroes espouse worldviews that make the reader constantly laugh while shaking their head. Each work also satirizes American society in their own way and follows the protagonists on a zany adventure to achieve a form of happiness (and maybe a little material wealth) told through crude humor underscored by subtle sophistication. Both novels also deal with issues of political correctness as a way of critically examining a society's views of others who are different (i.e., supposedly minor ethnic differences as the source of conflict in Absurdistan and little people in The Right Kind). Readers who enjoy works like Absurdistan will find much to admire and laugh about in The Right Kind of Stupid.

[Nick Yost · Rating 5 out of 5]

What do you get when you mix an exceedingly likable main character, an unattainable love interest, a buttload of money, a successful and dastardly villain and supporting characters that come in all shapes, sizes and nationalities?

The Right Kind of Stupid is without doubt a fantastic read. It may not be the fastest book that has ever sucked me in, but by the end I couldn't put it down. I had to stay up until the middle of the night to find out how everything would end up. After I was done I was immediately wishing the sequel had already been published so I could buy it and keep reading.

Buy this book. I guarantee you will laugh out loud. By the end, you will feel like you have always known and been a part of the lives of this amazing cast of characters. Who knows, you may even question your own thoughts on political correctness. I can assure you, unless you are a boring loser, you won't regret the purchase.

[Billy Purdue · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a recommendation for this on r/books and decided to give it a shot even though it's outside my literary safe zone of science fiction, and I don't regret it for an instance. This is a well written book about very likeable characters. I look forward to more from this author.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Right Kind of Stupid is the first self-published book I've read. While it reflects some of the downsides of self-publishing, it stands as a solid example of why self-publishing is a good thing. I could easily see this appealing character-driven comedy turned into a movie, but can also see that in some aspects it might be a hard sell to a publisher. It’s weird enough to fall outside of mainstream conventions, but probably not the right kind of weird for avant-garde or experimental publishers. So if it hadn’t been self-published, I probably wouldn’t have ever had the chance to meet great characters like Cody, Winton, and Kelly, and I’m so glad I did.

It speaks to Joan Oakes' talents as a storyteller and character creator that I could not put his book down. Cody Latour and his friends are not the kind of people I would have ever imagined wanting to read about, much less root for. Cody is the privileged son of an oil dynasty who spends his days playing video games and relaxing in the pool at his family's sprawling estate. His friends TR and Jason are the Texas equivalent of "bros," spending their time together getting drunk, chasing women, and getting into fights. But they're more than that--especially Cody, who is led by his good heart.

The plot of The Right Kind of Stupid hinges on its protagonist's attempts to win a multi-million dollar challenge by managing a performing group of little people. John Oakes is clearly aware of many of the potential critiques of using characters with dwarfism as a source of entertainment, and has his characters speak to these concerns. Over the course of the book, Winton and his fellow little people discuss political correctness, the word "midget," and whether using others' fascination with them to make money as performers is demeaning or empowering. These discussions are usually compelling, though they occasionally fall flat.

Winton is the best character in a book full of great ones. He definitely steals the show from Cody, but he's only one of many well-crafted dwarf characters. Winton and his friends and colleagues are not punchlines, but bold, intelligent individuals who hide talents the world rarely gives them a chance to show. Getting pulled into their world and being surprised by what they reveal about themselves is one of this novel's greatest delights.

Getting to follow along on Cody's emotional journey is another highlight. Is Cody the right kind of stupid? Much of the book's humor comes from his ostensibly "stupid" moments, whether he's putting his foot in his mouth or trying to solve problems with solutions that are so absurd they shouldn't work--but somehow do. (In one scene, he figures out how to "iron" a shirt with the use of a staple gun, a space heater, and a dumbbell.)

Cody's not really stupid, though. He's just remarkably un-self-aware. This is partly because he's been sheltered, and partly because the loss of his mother blew apart his sense of self and any sense of possibility he had for his life. His emotional growth as he engages the world gives the novel its most poignant moments. More than once, Cody realizes he has a chance to quit sleepwalking through his life, and he finds the courage and determination to resist the comforts of passivity and push past his fears. These moments inspired me in surprisingly personal ways. I related to Cody's doubts about his abilities and his incredulity at the absurdity of the situations his life presents him with, and I learned from how he overcomes them. I couldn't wait to see him get his happy ending.

(Major ending spoilers follow) But then he doesn't get that happy ending. Even though Cody wins his grandfather's challenge, the victory feels hollow and sad. I was especially frustrated by how the ending contradicted one of the central messages of the book: money is not the greatest reward for creating something of value.

The second half of The Right Kind of Stupid focuses on whether Cody will choose to protect his friends and his business over taking an easy path to profit, and gains emotional power whenever Cody chooses to fight for the "little people" (figuratively and literally) and the place in the world he's helped create for them. These moments are doubly powerful when Cody realizes how much he, too, feels like a misfit, and that he's also fighting to protect the place in the world he's created for himself--and the sense of purpose that comes with it.

As a reader, you want Cody to succeed. You want him to not just get the money and the girl, but to also realize he has a place in the world and a reason to get up in the morning other than to play video games. Yet you're denied the resolution you were rooting for. When Cody’s employees vote him out of his own business and buy out his shares, they help him win his grandfather’s challenge--but at the expense of exiling him from the place in the world he was so happy to have found. He ends the novel without a job or a role, no longer able to return to the office he loved. It's icing on the cake of sadness that he doesn't get the girl, either. As a reader, you can only hope he’ll build something new and win the girl in the next book.

Then the very last chapter pulls the rug out from under the whole plot. Bruce is still alive, and it was all just an elaborate game. This seemed completely gratuitous to me. I already wanted to read the sequel; there was no need for a last-minute plot twist that took an axe to the emotional core of the book. Making Cody's grandfather's death a hoax turns Cody back into a hapless fool and takes the air out of the balloon of his emotional arc. Sure, it doesn't change the fact that Cody rose to the occasion, but it does take away the sense of agency he grew into over the course of the book. In the end, he’s a pawn in another person's game. The ending made me feel fooled as a reader, and not in a good way.

This brings me to my broader critique of the book and how I believe it reflects some of the potential downsides of self-publishing. In short, I don't think that a lot of the book's flaws would have remained if it had gone through a more intensive editorial process like what a traditional publisher would require. I imagine an editor would have addressed my biggest frustration with the book by asking for an ending with a bit more closure, while still allowing John Oakes to use it to create anticipation for a sequel. I also believe there were other ways it could have been improved with one more revision.

On the most superficial level, the prose in The Right Kind of Stupid is somewhat rough. Words and phrases often pile up in long, breathless chains without commas, making the text choppy and more tiring to read than it should be. Sometimes words feel wrong, especially when the slang, colloquialisms, and shorthand that make the dialogue distinctive and convincing also appear obtrusively in the third-person narrator’s descriptions. The tone is inconsistent; much of the book is written in a casual voice, but at times it becomes inexplicably formal. On a few occasions, characters launch into speeches that feel unnatural, like they are pontificating on the author’s behalf. Sometimes characters make sudden leaps in development that don’t feel believable. The fast-forward pacing in the second half of the book left me feeling like I was struggling to catch up with development that had happened off the page.

On a thematic level, The Right Kind of Stupid is plagued with the off-page villain. Some characters are built up as major villains, then neutralized and forgotten midway through the book. Other characters are painted as complex antagonists in shades of grey, then suddenly reveal sinister plots that show they were black-hearted villains the whole time, thus reversing their character development. This gives the book the strange feeling of being haunted by a demiurge, as if the author thought its events could only occur if some all-powerful being, unseen to the reader and the characters, was pulling the strings the whole time. But the book doesn't need the puppet master. It stands just fine on its own, and is more interesting that way.

Issues like inconsistent pacing, tone, and characterization crop up for most authors as they wrestle a work into existence over weeks, months, or years. These issues usually aren't resolved in a single editing pass. It takes a lot of work to make a book shine as brilliantly as it has the potential to shine; I personally can often see the ways even the great classics of literature could have been improved, even if only subtly. Virginia Woolf could have edited some of her awkward sentences, for example. (Speaking of Woolf, I found that The Right Kind of Stupid strangely mirrored the theme of To the Lighthouse, which I had read just before it: women are the glue that hold their families together.)

The funny thing The Right Kind of Stupid helped me realize, though, is that while such improvements can make a good book into a great one, they aren’t necessary to make a book good. Perhaps its greatest gift to me as an aspiring writer is how this book showed me that if an author succeeds in giving life to his characters, this shines through no matter what else in the text might frustrate a reader. The purpose of polishing a manuscript is to make the experience of reading more seamless, but if a reader cares about the characters, she keeps reading even when it isn’t seamless.

In other words, I realized that while a more thoroughly edited book with cleaner prose and more consistent pacing would have been more enjoyable to read, it wouldn't have made a single bit of difference in how much I cared about the characters. Though issues that I had with this book kept it from being a five-star experience overall, meeting these characters was a five-star experience. I do hope that eventually, Cody will ride again, and in the meantime, I plan to read Angry Elf so I can spend more time with Winton.

I’m glad John Oakes had the courage and determination to finish The Right Kind of Stupid and put it out into the world. While I’m still mad at him for the ending, I believe that overall, the book’s flaws are part of its charm and its message. First, I learned from the way Cody made good in the world in spite of his flaws. Second, and perhaps more importantly, I learned how as a writer I can make good in the world in spite of my own flaws. No matter how foolish what I’m doing might seem to others, or to myself, there is always some reward in creating something that didn’t exist before, for the creator and for others. I can create something of value even if it’s not perfect--just like Cody did, and just like John Oakes did.

[Beverly June Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Right Kind of Writing.

I've read enough of John Oakes books and shorts to steak a claim to be a fan. Love the characters, the situations, twist and turns. Puts me right back at GILLIES in a line dance,. or the night I was given liquid
Texas hospitality and stood on my Levis, leaned against a pickup, wondering why I couldn't pull up said jeans while my boot heels were caught in the hems. Texas girls know how to party and old time barrel racers in particular are tricky. We're all 80 + (I was the baby) now but we have histories that belong in a book like this. Kate's knows Texans and how to spin a yarn in this one! Thanks John. Keep them coming.

[Audion Audiobooks On Demand · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is fantastic

This book was recommended to me by another author. I have a huge list of TBR books and on his insistence bumped this to the top of the list and I am so glad that I did so. This is a wonderful immersion into the world of Texas and I am so glad I read this I can hardly wait for another book. I went ahead and picked up the book about Winston that looks as though it's part of another series just because I enjoyed this one so much thank you thank you thank you

[BonusMom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good debut novel

This was a pretty good book with plenty of humor. The book dealt with some controversial issues and there were some very profound thoughts expressed here too. Unexpected ending.

[Chaplain Stanley Chapin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Name says it all

The story is about a individual who although has a college degree, acts and talks like a junior high boy. He seems to have some morals, but tries to keep them hidden. The story line has some humor, but never becomes very interesting.

[Kristina Trawick · Rating 5 out of 5]

What fun!

Great story, hard to explain. Boy meets girl, has to prove himself, opens a resort, kicks ass, sees dead people, makes great friends, and not necessarily in that order. Can't wait for Cody's next adventure.

[Mary Hayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Too funny

The twists were great! I loved the humor. If you want a book that makes you laugh out loud, this is it. I will read more by John Oakes, I really enjoyed it.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow.

Yeah, this was pretty good. I found myself wondering who would play who in the movie of this.

The only thing stopping this from becoming a Tom Cruise or Matthew McConaughey tour de force is the somewhat bottom heavy dialog that sometimes weighs this otherwise really good book down.