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Only Americans Burn in Hell
A hilarious and unmissable provocation about the death spiral of the West
What if you were a novelist in a world where the only media people consumed was spectacular pornography about war with titles like Wonder Woman and Captain America? What if your country had elected as its leader a shameless millionaire who was stealing your money. your democracy and your dignity? What if the media were owned by filthy-rich men who didn't give two shits about any of it as long as it continued to make them filthy rich?
Wouldn't it be enough to send you certifiably insane? To make you write a novel about an immortal lesbian fairy that mimicked the conventions of movies like Wonder Woman but became an accidental allegory for #MeToo? To write a savage death wail of a satire about how the rich stole everything from us?
Enough to make you. reader. consider laying off the spectacular pornography about war for long enough to read it?
What if you were a novelist in a world where the only media people consumed was spectacular pornography about war with titles like Wonder Woman and Captain America? What if your country had elected as its leader a shameless millionaire who was stealing your money. your democracy and your dignity? What if the media were owned by filthy-rich men who didn't give two shits about any of it as long as it continued to make them filthy rich?
Wouldn't it be enough to send you certifiably insane? To make you write a novel about an immortal lesbian fairy that mimicked the conventions of movies like Wonder Woman but became an accidental allegory for #MeToo? To write a savage death wail of a satire about how the rich stole everything from us?
Enough to make you. reader. consider laying off the spectacular pornography about war for long enough to read it?
288 pages, Hardcover
First published April 11, 2019
32 people are currently reading
1026 people want to read
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February 5, 2024
An Advertisement For Me
Jarett Kobek dislikes many people: heterosexual men because of what they do to women; the rich because of their lack of taste; politicians because they have no souls; users of social media because it gives a voice to stupidity; Christians because their beliefs about love have caused tens of millions to die through their hatred; liberals because they promote war; Jeff Bezos because he touches on all his other dislikes; and Donald Trump because… well just because.
I share these dislikes. So it is with shock and horror that I come to learn that Kobek also dislikes me. He’s never met me but he knows who I am. I’m reading his book. That’s enough for him to despise me: “I’ve duped you into buying my turgid work.” That’s not even on the cover blurb. I feel well and truly ambushed. He does relieve the shame a smidge by qualifying his condemnation: “Unless you’ve pirated this book. If you have, then good for you!” I did. So the pain of victimisation eased a little.
But Kobek doesn’t stop there. He also knows that I’m going to write something about him. This alone puts me on the top of his hate list, up there with Bezos and Trump: “I don’t blame anyone for getting addicted to their smartphones. I only blame people for their terrible attempts at reviewing my work.” And not in some literary space with editors and other writers who can impose some standards of grammar and imagination about what I might write. No, my comments, he knows, will be “in cheap little reviews on Goodreads.com and Amazon.com.” Talk about surveillance! Kobek must have agents everywhere. I can’t seem to find a hole hidden enough to escape.
It’s obvious I’m trapped by Kobek’s omniscient gaze. I can only submit. “Everything’s an advertisement,” he says. Of course. So obvious, but only once it’s said.. Everyone has an angle, is on the make, wants to separate someone else from their cash, and probably lusts after tickets to a revival Guns n’ Roses concert. Oh my God, that’s it: I want to be Jarett Kobek. But Kobek wants to be Kurt Vonnegut, a guy who never advertises. I think I’m too old for this. Someone please tell me what it all means.
Jarett Kobek dislikes many people: heterosexual men because of what they do to women; the rich because of their lack of taste; politicians because they have no souls; users of social media because it gives a voice to stupidity; Christians because their beliefs about love have caused tens of millions to die through their hatred; liberals because they promote war; Jeff Bezos because he touches on all his other dislikes; and Donald Trump because… well just because.
I share these dislikes. So it is with shock and horror that I come to learn that Kobek also dislikes me. He’s never met me but he knows who I am. I’m reading his book. That’s enough for him to despise me: “I’ve duped you into buying my turgid work.” That’s not even on the cover blurb. I feel well and truly ambushed. He does relieve the shame a smidge by qualifying his condemnation: “Unless you’ve pirated this book. If you have, then good for you!” I did. So the pain of victimisation eased a little.
But Kobek doesn’t stop there. He also knows that I’m going to write something about him. This alone puts me on the top of his hate list, up there with Bezos and Trump: “I don’t blame anyone for getting addicted to their smartphones. I only blame people for their terrible attempts at reviewing my work.” And not in some literary space with editors and other writers who can impose some standards of grammar and imagination about what I might write. No, my comments, he knows, will be “in cheap little reviews on Goodreads.com and Amazon.com.” Talk about surveillance! Kobek must have agents everywhere. I can’t seem to find a hole hidden enough to escape.
It’s obvious I’m trapped by Kobek’s omniscient gaze. I can only submit. “Everything’s an advertisement,” he says. Of course. So obvious, but only once it’s said.. Everyone has an angle, is on the make, wants to separate someone else from their cash, and probably lusts after tickets to a revival Guns n’ Roses concert. Oh my God, that’s it: I want to be Jarett Kobek. But Kobek wants to be Kurt Vonnegut, a guy who never advertises. I think I’m too old for this. Someone please tell me what it all means.
March 31, 2025
[Edit 2: 2025 Re-read, and Nostradomus (sp?) is indeed vindicated. For it hath come to pass, my friends:
-----------------------------------------------
[Edit: critic Matthew Chesney performs a deep dive into OABIH and makes a strong case for this most underrated novel:
https://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/2021/0... ]
Ever get that delusional feeling that you want nothing more than to have several beers with the author of a book you just read and with which you really "clicked" (and which seems to "get" you, maybe even "gets" the whole world)?
When Dante felt that feeling, he wrote to Guido Cavalcanti, the author of the sonnet* that made him feel that way, sending him a sonnet in return. Yeah, so, well, times change! & I'm writing this GR review. & I guess that "in return" I'll just be happy to settle for reading another of his books (I Hate the Internet, which I enthusiastically ordered when I hit 2/3rds of the way through this one) then review it here on GR (boo!) and hopefully discuss it with all y'all (yay!).
If you choose to pay him to do so (or better yet, as he insists, steal his book somehow) Mr. Kobek will make you laugh out loud, push all of your buttons, make you long for a world before the death of...of pretty much everything, I'm afraid: of truth, of the unitary self, of democracy/society/the novel... Even as he's taking all of these away from you (or strictly speaking, telling you how you lost them), he (the brutal/sensitive type) makes you yearn for them, especially even if they were all illusory/delusory to begin with.
So Only Americans, then = what we found at the bottom of Pandora's Box after all of the 21st century's demons (aka those 100k men of the Davos Elect** who control the lives of the 7 Billion preterite) rushed past us, cackling the hyperreal cartoon cackles at our collective idiocy as we watched that video on FacePlant titled All That Seemed Solid Melted The Air.
No, this mere book won't cure our ills, much less turn the clock back to a time before books like this (or any) were culturally irrelevant. It is not clear where we (can) go from here, if anywhere—or where here is, exactly (or even roughly).
Yes, this brave book (which makes a brainy, brazen, brassy, bedeviled stab at trying to get a GPS fix on where 'here' really is, though), even claims that its author is more a part of the problem than anything.
Don't believe it/him. Read it, citizen! (It might even make you feel like downing a couple beers with that most illusory, evanescent of fictions, the implied author).
Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering. Cos it's still worth it (Ithink feel), this readin' 'n writin'.
Let's get over ourselves, people. Get real, be kind, and—in an age of Climate Catastrophe, Fake News and a runaway kleptocracy—keep cool, but care.
Amen***.
*
**
***
****
...the writers of Science Fiction got the robots wrong.(Or of any of the other 1500 or so High Value Net Worth Individuals in search of the Singularity, or the next orgy, Beyond the Cash Horizon
In the whole history of Science Fiction, across all those tedious narratives bound in paper, not a single writer predicted the actual world in which we live.
No one ever suggested that the robots would be total fucking jerks controlled by Russia, or that the robots would use social media platforms to inflame emotions around the hot-button issues facing the 1993 AD Whitney Biennial, and that this use of social media would be part of a campaign to ensure that liberal democracy ate itself from within, and that in using these social media platforms, the robots would enrich a transnational class of oligarchs.
[...]
By the mid-2010s AD, this was the state of the publishing industry: there were five major publishers, all owned by mega-companies, with three of the five owned by corporations not based in the United States.
[...]
MEET RUPERT
Maybe you’ll recognize one of my profitable divisions. It’s called Fox News. It does a cracking job of getting the olds upset about global warming and Christmas.
I also own HarperCollins, and one of the things that Harper-Collins does is publish books by American liberals. Strewth, it’s a great deal! I use Fox News to make money off rightward turns of public opinion, and then I make money off the reaction to those rightward turns of public opinion by publishing books which the ideological opponents of Fox News quote like gospel scripture.
The defense mechanisms that you’ve been given as a member of a Western liberal democracy will not save you and they will not save your children.
It will take several decades, but your future, and theirs, is digitally inflected feudalism.
There’s a slow train coming.
Everyone knows it.
Your life, and your body, will have only one purpose.
You will make money for monsters beyond the Cash Horizon.
You will be the slave of HRH [His Royal Highness Mamduh bin Fatih bin Muhammad bin Abdulaziz Al Saud]
-----------------------------------------------
[Edit: critic Matthew Chesney performs a deep dive into OABIH and makes a strong case for this most underrated novel:
https://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/2021/0... ]
Ever get that delusional feeling that you want nothing more than to have several beers with the author of a book you just read and with which you really "clicked" (and which seems to "get" you, maybe even "gets" the whole world)?
When Dante felt that feeling, he wrote to Guido Cavalcanti, the author of the sonnet* that made him feel that way, sending him a sonnet in return. Yeah, so, well, times change! & I'm writing this GR review. & I guess that "in return" I'll just be happy to settle for reading another of his books (I Hate the Internet, which I enthusiastically ordered when I hit 2/3rds of the way through this one) then review it here on GR (boo!) and hopefully discuss it with all y'all (yay!).
If you choose to pay him to do so (or better yet, as he insists, steal his book somehow) Mr. Kobek will make you laugh out loud, push all of your buttons, make you long for a world before the death of...of pretty much everything, I'm afraid: of truth, of the unitary self, of democracy/society/the novel... Even as he's taking all of these away from you (or strictly speaking, telling you how you lost them), he (the brutal/sensitive type) makes you yearn for them, especially even if they were all illusory/delusory to begin with.
So Only Americans, then = what we found at the bottom of Pandora's Box after all of the 21st century's demons (aka those 100k men of the Davos Elect** who control the lives of the 7 Billion preterite) rushed past us, cackling the hyperreal cartoon cackles at our collective idiocy as we watched that video on FacePlant titled All That Seemed Solid Melted The Air.
No, this mere book won't cure our ills, much less turn the clock back to a time before books like this (or any) were culturally irrelevant. It is not clear where we (can) go from here, if anywhere—or where here is, exactly (or even roughly).
Yes, this brave book (which makes a brainy, brazen, brassy, bedeviled stab at trying to get a GPS fix on where 'here' really is, though), even claims that its author is more a part of the problem than anything.
Don't believe it/him. Read it, citizen! (It might even make you feel like downing a couple beers with that most illusory, evanescent of fictions, the implied author).
Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering. Cos it's still worth it (I
Let's get over ourselves, people. Get real, be kind, and—in an age of Climate Catastrophe, Fake News and a runaway kleptocracy—keep cool, but care.
Amen***.
*
**
***
****
April 20, 2019
‘Only Americans Burn in Hell’ is the first book I have reviewed on goodreads in which the author explicitly and specifically expressed contempt of goodreads reviews. His point is well made and I definitely feel more self-conscious writing this in the knowledge that Kobek (or the authorial voice he adopts in this novel) would hate it. Kobek includes a reminder that amazon owns goodreads and thus every word I post on here is somehow being monetised for Jeff Bezos and his shareholders. I hate this fact and so try to ignore it, because I like writing book reviews and there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. I’m keenly aware of the irony that my reviews of anti-capitalist books are essentially property of the world’s richest man. 21st century neoliberal capitalism is fucking crazy, so what you gonna do? We are all collectively morally compromised, each drawing the line somewhere (or nowhere). My lines are that I don’t use a smart phone, or facebook, or apple products, but I can’t take any moral high ground as a result. I’ve tried smart phones, facebook, and apple products; I couldn't stand any of them.
Unfortunately for Kobek’s dislike of goodreads reviews, I found his book thought provoking and will therefore review it at length. Apologies, but it could be worse - at least I have no plans to write a book of my own. My reason for choosing to read his was simple: the title caught my eye and I wondered whether it was possible to satirise the utterly bonkers world of 2019. Reading the news has become an exercise in observing your conception of reality dissolve into brightly-coloured shards of chaos. That’s a weak metaphor, because how can I possibly describe the endless barrage of sentence-long conflicting statements about Brexit? Another attempt: trying to understand what is actually happening in UK politics is a lot like an intense migraine. What I can state with more confidence is that parody has become increasingly difficult to distinguish from reality (whatever that is). Parodic responses to events are news and sincere responses nearly impossible to identify, if indeed there is a difference. Who’d be a political satirist today?
Thus I pondered throughout whether ‘Only Americans Burn in Hell’ is satire. Alan Moore states on the cover that it is, however I disagreed with Moore’s views on The Vorrh so wasn’t willing to take his word for it. As I read on, however, I found myself doubting that I could even define satire in a 2019 context. Kobek preempts reviewers early on by pointing out the similarity of his style to Kurt Vonnegut’s, which I can certainly see. He addresses the reader throughout in the omniscient first person. Kobek is a lot less allegorical than what I recall of Vonnegut, though. There are also shades of Chuck Palahniuk, without the obsession with unpleasant bodily fluids. Much of the book’s wordcount consists of anecdotes from his life and bald statements about global capitalism, media, politics, and culture. A story about fairies is also present, but doesn’t seem intrusive enough to be a framing device. It interjects periodically yet is easy to disregard. Mostly, Kobek confronts the reader with facts that it is a great deal more comfortable to ignore, such as:
It happens that I’m also reading The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power at the moment, which has so far made exactly the same points as ‘Only Americans Burn in Hell’ just at greater length. This one in particular:
Kobek explains his own inability to follow this advice as follows:
That is a very good question. My personal excuse for engaging with this book, or indeed with any book, is that I’ve always wanted to understand the world better. As a teenager, I thought it was possible to not only understand the world but to use that understanding to make it better. In my twenties, I thought I could at least understand some very limited parts of it. As I neared my thirties, I realised that all attempts to understand something so massive, complicated, and dynamic are utterly hopeless, as additional knowledge merely opens up massive new realms of ignorance, often by calling previous assumptions into question. As I get older I know less and less of the world, because it is much too vast, inchoate, and changes faster than I could. Moreover, since I was a teenager it definitely seems to have got worse. So why even try to understand? Because that’s still what my stupid brain wants to do. It’s a futile yet mildly comforting way to assert some personal control over the utterly chaotic and terrifying nature of existence. It’s an escape and a distraction because of the focused flow state that it entails. It’s also a calming counterpoint to the internet, my favourite parts of which are the most book-like.
Of course, I could just read books without writing reviews of them, rather than giving in to the 21st century compulsion of public performance. Reviews are an excellent way to exorcise my thoughts about books without imposing them upon everyone I speak to; I wrote them in my teenage diary before I had internet access. Posting them in public, though, I have no good excuse for. I’m not immune to the appeal of the goodreads platform, particularly the tempting tools for quantifying and classifying all the books I have read or want to. At least I’ve never made money from my book reviews, even if Bezos has. I understand that for some monetising their hobbies is a means of survival under capitalism; I’m lucky enough to have a full-time job that I hate, so can keep hobbies and paid labour separate. For some reason I cannot stand being paid money for doing things I actually enjoy. That may sound archaic and/or perverse; like Kobek I can only assert my stupidity and craziness as explanations.
Reading ‘Only Americans Burn in Hell’ and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power at the same time is enough to make you want to smash your devices and avoid being online entirely. I do avoid the internet for a day a week, which gives me some psychic breathing space but is also a reminder of daily life’s dependence on connectivity. During my internet-free days friends and relatives insist upon reciting things they've read online to me. The internet is inescapable and, as Kobek repeatedly points out, the main prop for grotesque global wealth inequality. He calls it digital feudalism, which I quite like as a term. Perhaps a better description for this book than satirical is diagnostic. It describes wealth inequality, the dysfunction of Western democracy, the War on Terror, and the culture wars with impressive clarity. Then takes a slightly surprising turn towards lamenting the loss of Christianity as a moral control over baser instincts. While Kobek undoubtedly has a point about Christ’s actual teachings, surely there has always been a vast gap between theory and practise. Did the European rich used to be more ethical in centuries past because they were Christian? I personally doubt it. They paid for some beautiful churches rather than alleviating famines. Judging such choices from the perspective of the present doesn’t seem particularly helpful, though. Given that white Christians in America mostly voted for Trump, the actual teachings of Jesus have clearly been subsumed into a completely different discourse. The point about needing some ethical, moral framework to resist capitalism stands, though. Concepts like solidarity and compassion really don’t seem to be enough.
I need hardly comment that this is a very depressing book. I chose to read it during a sunny Easter weekend, my first real holiday of the year, because I apparently hate fun. There is a glimmer of hope to be found, though, in the form of an extended anecdote about the author and his friend going to a Guns & Roses reunion concert. Kobek buys one very expensive ticket to the concert and is sent two. He invites his friend along. When they arrive, one of the tickets isn’t valid. The friend nonetheless manages to talk his way in. They both have a great time. I’ve leached all the joy out of that story in the retelling, but it remains a little example of kindness and companionship in our capitalist hell. The message, if any, could be that it’s worth appreciating happy moments whenever we can, because the world is terrible. That’s good advice, albeit a platitude that has been thoroughly masticated and regurgitated by advertising.
I recommend ‘Only Americans Burn in Hell’. It both made me want to change my life and reminded me that my petty personal choices are totally meaningless in a commodified world. It compelled me to write more than 1,500 words, mostly about myself. It did not make me laugh, as the cover promised, but was definitely more fun than The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power is shaping up to be. If you are seeking a synthesis of just how fucked up the world is, Kobek’s is certainly pithy:
Although books won’t save us, they do make life more bearable. Even while claiming not to.
Unfortunately for Kobek’s dislike of goodreads reviews, I found his book thought provoking and will therefore review it at length. Apologies, but it could be worse - at least I have no plans to write a book of my own. My reason for choosing to read his was simple: the title caught my eye and I wondered whether it was possible to satirise the utterly bonkers world of 2019. Reading the news has become an exercise in observing your conception of reality dissolve into brightly-coloured shards of chaos. That’s a weak metaphor, because how can I possibly describe the endless barrage of sentence-long conflicting statements about Brexit? Another attempt: trying to understand what is actually happening in UK politics is a lot like an intense migraine. What I can state with more confidence is that parody has become increasingly difficult to distinguish from reality (whatever that is). Parodic responses to events are news and sincere responses nearly impossible to identify, if indeed there is a difference. Who’d be a political satirist today?
Thus I pondered throughout whether ‘Only Americans Burn in Hell’ is satire. Alan Moore states on the cover that it is, however I disagreed with Moore’s views on The Vorrh so wasn’t willing to take his word for it. As I read on, however, I found myself doubting that I could even define satire in a 2019 context. Kobek preempts reviewers early on by pointing out the similarity of his style to Kurt Vonnegut’s, which I can certainly see. He addresses the reader throughout in the omniscient first person. Kobek is a lot less allegorical than what I recall of Vonnegut, though. There are also shades of Chuck Palahniuk, without the obsession with unpleasant bodily fluids. Much of the book’s wordcount consists of anecdotes from his life and bald statements about global capitalism, media, politics, and culture. A story about fairies is also present, but doesn’t seem intrusive enough to be a framing device. It interjects periodically yet is easy to disregard. Mostly, Kobek confronts the reader with facts that it is a great deal more comfortable to ignore, such as:
In an era when significant amounts of social protest occurs on the Internet, it necessarily means that all of social protest is monetised.
And not by the protestors.
#MeToo generated unbelievable amounts of web traffic.
For months, it was an international spectator sport.
Almost every time that someone interacted with #MeToo, they were generating income for Facebook or Google or Twitter, which were the three companies that dominated advertising and political expression on the internet.
It happens that I’m also reading The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power at the moment, which has so far made exactly the same points as ‘Only Americans Burn in Hell’ just at greater length. This one in particular:
In an era when public discourse was the bought-and-paid property of roughly twenty companies, and the airing of an opinion could subject a person to unfathomable amounts of abuse and recrimination, the only reasonable option was to be quiet.
Kobek explains his own inability to follow this advice as follows:
Regarding public opinions offered up in this book, they are they products of both idiocy and bad craziness.
But at least I have some justification for engaging with the stupidity and insanity of this book.
I wrote the thing.
Reader, what’s your excuse?
That is a very good question. My personal excuse for engaging with this book, or indeed with any book, is that I’ve always wanted to understand the world better. As a teenager, I thought it was possible to not only understand the world but to use that understanding to make it better. In my twenties, I thought I could at least understand some very limited parts of it. As I neared my thirties, I realised that all attempts to understand something so massive, complicated, and dynamic are utterly hopeless, as additional knowledge merely opens up massive new realms of ignorance, often by calling previous assumptions into question. As I get older I know less and less of the world, because it is much too vast, inchoate, and changes faster than I could. Moreover, since I was a teenager it definitely seems to have got worse. So why even try to understand? Because that’s still what my stupid brain wants to do. It’s a futile yet mildly comforting way to assert some personal control over the utterly chaotic and terrifying nature of existence. It’s an escape and a distraction because of the focused flow state that it entails. It’s also a calming counterpoint to the internet, my favourite parts of which are the most book-like.
Of course, I could just read books without writing reviews of them, rather than giving in to the 21st century compulsion of public performance. Reviews are an excellent way to exorcise my thoughts about books without imposing them upon everyone I speak to; I wrote them in my teenage diary before I had internet access. Posting them in public, though, I have no good excuse for. I’m not immune to the appeal of the goodreads platform, particularly the tempting tools for quantifying and classifying all the books I have read or want to. At least I’ve never made money from my book reviews, even if Bezos has. I understand that for some monetising their hobbies is a means of survival under capitalism; I’m lucky enough to have a full-time job that I hate, so can keep hobbies and paid labour separate. For some reason I cannot stand being paid money for doing things I actually enjoy. That may sound archaic and/or perverse; like Kobek I can only assert my stupidity and craziness as explanations.
Reading ‘Only Americans Burn in Hell’ and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power at the same time is enough to make you want to smash your devices and avoid being online entirely. I do avoid the internet for a day a week, which gives me some psychic breathing space but is also a reminder of daily life’s dependence on connectivity. During my internet-free days friends and relatives insist upon reciting things they've read online to me. The internet is inescapable and, as Kobek repeatedly points out, the main prop for grotesque global wealth inequality. He calls it digital feudalism, which I quite like as a term. Perhaps a better description for this book than satirical is diagnostic. It describes wealth inequality, the dysfunction of Western democracy, the War on Terror, and the culture wars with impressive clarity. Then takes a slightly surprising turn towards lamenting the loss of Christianity as a moral control over baser instincts. While Kobek undoubtedly has a point about Christ’s actual teachings, surely there has always been a vast gap between theory and practise. Did the European rich used to be more ethical in centuries past because they were Christian? I personally doubt it. They paid for some beautiful churches rather than alleviating famines. Judging such choices from the perspective of the present doesn’t seem particularly helpful, though. Given that white Christians in America mostly voted for Trump, the actual teachings of Jesus have clearly been subsumed into a completely different discourse. The point about needing some ethical, moral framework to resist capitalism stands, though. Concepts like solidarity and compassion really don’t seem to be enough.
I need hardly comment that this is a very depressing book. I chose to read it during a sunny Easter weekend, my first real holiday of the year, because I apparently hate fun. There is a glimmer of hope to be found, though, in the form of an extended anecdote about the author and his friend going to a Guns & Roses reunion concert. Kobek buys one very expensive ticket to the concert and is sent two. He invites his friend along. When they arrive, one of the tickets isn’t valid. The friend nonetheless manages to talk his way in. They both have a great time. I’ve leached all the joy out of that story in the retelling, but it remains a little example of kindness and companionship in our capitalist hell. The message, if any, could be that it’s worth appreciating happy moments whenever we can, because the world is terrible. That’s good advice, albeit a platitude that has been thoroughly masticated and regurgitated by advertising.
I recommend ‘Only Americans Burn in Hell’. It both made me want to change my life and reminded me that my petty personal choices are totally meaningless in a commodified world. It compelled me to write more than 1,500 words, mostly about myself. It did not make me laugh, as the cover promised, but was definitely more fun than The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power is shaping up to be. If you are seeking a synthesis of just how fucked up the world is, Kobek’s is certainly pithy:
Donald J. Trump was elected to the Presidency of the United States!
So there’s really no point.
Stop hoping that books will save you.
Stop pretending.
Everyone else has.
Although books won’t save us, they do make life more bearable. Even while claiming not to.
May 7, 2019
Blimey. Really not like anything else I've ever read. The level of satire was lost on me at times, but it still made for an entertaining, terrifying and thought-provoking read all the same.
Surprising fact: this author hates Goodreads reviews more than most.
(Might write a longer review soon...)
Surprising fact: this author hates Goodreads reviews more than most.
(Might write a longer review soon...)
September 23, 2021
What a wacky, strange little book!
What's it about? God knows, really. But how can you resist a book with that title? Because who among us doesn't judge a book by its title, if not its cover as well? I know I do.
This is a curious blend of non-fiction and fantasy, where chapters featuring the author doing his author things and offering brilliant, cutting commentary on 21st century American life are interspersed with tales of "fairyland", a magical, feminist paradise. As I said, it's all a bit strange.
But enjoyable! Even when I didn't understand all the gibes Kobek is throwing, it was hard to stop reading, because it's so different!
I particularly enjoyed the author's definition of popular social media sites, like Instagram and Twitter.
"Instagram was a social media platform that existed on telephones and computers. Its users shared pictures of their squalid lives, which fostered the illusion of human connection while generating revenue for Facebook, which was a publicly traded company headquartered near San Francisco.
"Instagram was also history's single most successful terrorist attack on the self-esteem of women."
Twitter, meanwhile, "was a place where people practiced bumper-sticker morality while other people threatened to rape and murder each other for expressing simple sentiments about banal objects."
There's a lot more where that came from, targeted towards Snapchat, Newsweek, Amazon.com, and, yes, Goodreads.
No, it's definitely not for everyone, but what it certainly isn't is boring!
What's it about? God knows, really. But how can you resist a book with that title? Because who among us doesn't judge a book by its title, if not its cover as well? I know I do.
This is a curious blend of non-fiction and fantasy, where chapters featuring the author doing his author things and offering brilliant, cutting commentary on 21st century American life are interspersed with tales of "fairyland", a magical, feminist paradise. As I said, it's all a bit strange.
But enjoyable! Even when I didn't understand all the gibes Kobek is throwing, it was hard to stop reading, because it's so different!
I particularly enjoyed the author's definition of popular social media sites, like Instagram and Twitter.
"Instagram was a social media platform that existed on telephones and computers. Its users shared pictures of their squalid lives, which fostered the illusion of human connection while generating revenue for Facebook, which was a publicly traded company headquartered near San Francisco.
"Instagram was also history's single most successful terrorist attack on the self-esteem of women."
Twitter, meanwhile, "was a place where people practiced bumper-sticker morality while other people threatened to rape and murder each other for expressing simple sentiments about banal objects."
There's a lot more where that came from, targeted towards Snapchat, Newsweek, Amazon.com, and, yes, Goodreads.
No, it's definitely not for everyone, but what it certainly isn't is boring!
Read
September 29, 2024Jarett Kobek likes telling you to fuck off. I’m cool with that. I am enough of an emotional masochist that I like being told to fuck off, and enough of an emotional sadist to enjoy other people being told to fuck off.
He hates the Vonnegut comparison, but I’ll do him one worse – a Tao Lin comparison. But better, because I love Kobek. I don’t love Tao Lin. Jarett, if you’re reading this I’m sorry for being a dope. But I still love your writing.
What can I say? This felt good, because I have similar levels of and to a certain degree similar targets for contempt. If you do too, you’ll probably like it too.
He hates the Vonnegut comparison, but I’ll do him one worse – a Tao Lin comparison. But better, because I love Kobek. I don’t love Tao Lin. Jarett, if you’re reading this I’m sorry for being a dope. But I still love your writing.
What can I say? This felt good, because I have similar levels of and to a certain degree similar targets for contempt. If you do too, you’ll probably like it too.
June 20, 2019
Bloody brilliant. Many thanks to Mr Kobek for this, I'm now a fan.
April 27, 2019
Lots going on here, let’s talk about it. Only Americans Burn In Hell is astute, incredibly bleak and incredibly funny. “Novel” doesn’t really capture what this text feels like, it’s more like a mix of fiction, nonfiction, biography, autobiography, pop culture criticism, social commentary, manifesto, YouTube video recommendations, digressions, etc. It doesn’t just break the fourth wall, it actively argues the social construct known as the “fourth wall” has become irrelevant and should be ignored entirely. It’s also interesting how the text uses a lot of the forces it has contempt for: it’s a self-centered text, the prose is plain, direct and has little room for nuance, etc, and I am guessing some of the institutions the book ridicules will end up lapping it up and praising it because they very much agree with the criticisms. In conclusion, I love to imagine your average MFA workshop discussing this text and being absolutely completely bewildered and losing their minds and quitting writing forever to become web developers.
September 6, 2020
I don't think it's possible to talk about this novel coherently let alone intelligently to people who haven't read it (just take a look at the flap copy as evidence), but this is probably the best thing I've read in the last five to eight years.
May 17, 2020
The cover of this caught my eye as I was walking out of a bookstore in Portland some months back.
Oh brother, I thought. What smug, attention-seeking edgelord would ever...
Then I saw the book was by Jarett Kobek.
I bought it on the spot.
This is sort of a spiritual successor/victory lap/reflection to Kobek's 'I Hate The Internet', which is pretty much the only American novel in our age that had the guts and the anger to explain how the internet (and really, America itself) actually work.
Sorry to the young, would-be Don Delillos and David Foster Wallaces out there. Go home. Kobek already scooped you.
Again, he uses a fast-and-loose fictional framework for throwing acid in the face of..well...everything. To be fair, his description of America in these books feels less and less inflammatory and just coldly accurate with every passing day, as we move from one socio-cultural nadir to another. The compounding interest of our collective awfulness creating bizarre, tragi-comic resonances and connections all along the way.
He even manages to get in a few jabs at people who review books on goodreads! So by extension...he's also basically attacking people like me! Granted, I think being disgusted with one's fans and admirers is kind of the prerogative of any decent artist.
What's easy to miss amidst the wrath is that Kobek is an artist. Only Americans Burn in Hell, for all its white-hot anger, feels more personal, and more poignant than his earlier books. He manages to incorporate charming (and horrifying) details from his own life which, for better or worse, help frame his perspective. And his ability to create these unexpected moments of tenderness and empathy from gruel-thin, pseudo-characters that he admits are just gruel-thin pseudo-characters, is weirdly masterful. I can't wait to read what he does next.
Make sure you've read 'I Hate The Internet' first, because a good deal of what he's talking about here will make no sense without that book and its fallout.
Oh brother, I thought. What smug, attention-seeking edgelord would ever...
Then I saw the book was by Jarett Kobek.
I bought it on the spot.
This is sort of a spiritual successor/victory lap/reflection to Kobek's 'I Hate The Internet', which is pretty much the only American novel in our age that had the guts and the anger to explain how the internet (and really, America itself) actually work.
Sorry to the young, would-be Don Delillos and David Foster Wallaces out there. Go home. Kobek already scooped you.
Again, he uses a fast-and-loose fictional framework for throwing acid in the face of..well...everything. To be fair, his description of America in these books feels less and less inflammatory and just coldly accurate with every passing day, as we move from one socio-cultural nadir to another. The compounding interest of our collective awfulness creating bizarre, tragi-comic resonances and connections all along the way.
He even manages to get in a few jabs at people who review books on goodreads! So by extension...he's also basically attacking people like me! Granted, I think being disgusted with one's fans and admirers is kind of the prerogative of any decent artist.
What's easy to miss amidst the wrath is that Kobek is an artist. Only Americans Burn in Hell, for all its white-hot anger, feels more personal, and more poignant than his earlier books. He manages to incorporate charming (and horrifying) details from his own life which, for better or worse, help frame his perspective. And his ability to create these unexpected moments of tenderness and empathy from gruel-thin, pseudo-characters that he admits are just gruel-thin pseudo-characters, is weirdly masterful. I can't wait to read what he does next.
Make sure you've read 'I Hate The Internet' first, because a good deal of what he's talking about here will make no sense without that book and its fallout.
June 11, 2019
look i realise that it’s ironic that i’m reviewing this on goodreads but i liked it and also i’m a slave to capitalism
April 24, 2019
Kobek's (predictable) contempt for Goodreads reviews is of course the best reason to write a review for this.
This "novel" continues where I Hate the Internet left off, and seems to do to LA what the previous one did to SF: catch the waves radiating outward into the larger world from some urban conglomeration or other.
Where Kobek admits to ripping off Vonnegut's style (one-sentence paragraphs ending in exclamation marks! Hooray!), I myself kinda borrowed I Hate the Internet's shtick for my own novella (which, by the way, was an even worse "bad novel" than Kobek's bad novels - which is to say it was even worse at pretending to be a novel - which is to say it is either very good or very bad - or laudably average).
I think what attracts me to Kobek's work, apart from the insightful probing of our weird weird weird world, is our agreement over the fact that writing fiction in the most commonly accepted way seems like a really odd and artificial thing to do.
I think what it comes down to is that you can have a lot of fun when you get the chance to make up your own world. Text in many ways offers fewer of the limitations that its competitors, video, photographs, and sound, do.
You can get a little crazy.
Even have fairies!
Go all out!
Yet so many writers don't have and/or offer any fun at all.
They are dry as fuck!
Incredible!
Almost every writer of fiction - even those who write in a genre like fantasy - aim for their story and their characters to be believable. Aim to sustain the suspension of disbelief.
Kobek does not. He puts the story squarely in service of the idea.
And it's a good idea!
(But then again, all ideas sound good followed up by exclamation marks!)
This "novel" continues where I Hate the Internet left off, and seems to do to LA what the previous one did to SF: catch the waves radiating outward into the larger world from some urban conglomeration or other.
Where Kobek admits to ripping off Vonnegut's style (one-sentence paragraphs ending in exclamation marks! Hooray!), I myself kinda borrowed I Hate the Internet's shtick for my own novella (which, by the way, was an even worse "bad novel" than Kobek's bad novels - which is to say it was even worse at pretending to be a novel - which is to say it is either very good or very bad - or laudably average).
I think what attracts me to Kobek's work, apart from the insightful probing of our weird weird weird world, is our agreement over the fact that writing fiction in the most commonly accepted way seems like a really odd and artificial thing to do.
I think what it comes down to is that you can have a lot of fun when you get the chance to make up your own world. Text in many ways offers fewer of the limitations that its competitors, video, photographs, and sound, do.
You can get a little crazy.
Even have fairies!
Go all out!
Yet so many writers don't have and/or offer any fun at all.
They are dry as fuck!
Incredible!
Almost every writer of fiction - even those who write in a genre like fantasy - aim for their story and their characters to be believable. Aim to sustain the suspension of disbelief.
Kobek does not. He puts the story squarely in service of the idea.
And it's a good idea!
(But then again, all ideas sound good followed up by exclamation marks!)
July 29, 2019
Vonnegut!
Amazon!
Goodreads Reviews!
Amazon!
Goodreads Reviews!
August 16, 2019
Kobek is my favorite author. As this isn't published in America I traded an Irishman a bag of swedish fish for the book. Best bag of candy I ever bought.
November 25, 2020
Mr. Kobek continues to hate the internet, especially Instagram, Twitter and Goodreads. And who can blame him? As I said when I reviewed his other book I said I don't know what Instagram is*. Maybe he read, and hated, my "review" because here he provides a definition of Instagram. I've already forgotten what it is though. Something about yoga poses apparently.
Though this will be shelved as fiction, and it is sort-of a novel about fairy characters from Tom a Lincoln visiting modern Los Angeles, it is also a memoir and a rant. From time to time I love a good rant, and this doesn't disappoint.
Flannery O'Connor may have said: "When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs as you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock, to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind, you draw large and startling figures.".
This is definitely on the shouting end of the spectrum. I doubt it will convince anyone who doesn't already share his views, but it will amuse those of us who do.
* Actually, I said that in a comment on someone else's review.
Though this will be shelved as fiction, and it is sort-of a novel about fairy characters from Tom a Lincoln visiting modern Los Angeles, it is also a memoir and a rant. From time to time I love a good rant, and this doesn't disappoint.
Flannery O'Connor may have said: "When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs as you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock, to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind, you draw large and startling figures.".
This is definitely on the shouting end of the spectrum. I doubt it will convince anyone who doesn't already share his views, but it will amuse those of us who do.
* Actually, I said that in a comment on someone else's review.
February 21, 2023
The definition of a Curate's Egg; parts of it were great. The actual plot with the immortal women from Fairy Land is quite good, and the chapter with Fern and her mortal boyfriend Anthony was fantastic and heartbreaking. The others were chapter after chapter of thin-skinned, narcissistic, mean-spirited complaining. Kobek spends many, many pages telling us how it's actually really funny that he got nominated for a Bad Sex in Fiction award, he's not annoyed, no, definitely not. He moans about being compared to Kurt Vonnegut on Goodreads specifically, don't worry mate, not gonna happen here!
June 3, 2019
Soz.
I enjoyed Jarett Kobek's book I Hate the Internet but I'm afraid I couldn't get on with this one at all.
Apologies, Mr Kobek, I tried and you sound like one of 'the good guys' but it was just too offbeat for me.
I enjoyed Jarett Kobek's book I Hate the Internet but I'm afraid I couldn't get on with this one at all.
Apologies, Mr Kobek, I tried and you sound like one of 'the good guys' but it was just too offbeat for me.
January 31, 2020
I bought this book mainly because of its cool, unique title and cover. The few words on the back cover seemed promising, so I decided to give it a shot, having never read a book by this author before. What I got was a psychedelic trip between a autobiography and something vaguely resembling satire. The author wildly jumps between chapters focused on his own life, his views on current issues and a fictional narrative about magical beings. The autobiographical part had some interesting story elements, although the narrative voice throughout the whole book is so obnoxious that those interesting parts get swallowed up in incessant self-praise and whining. The fictional narrative had some good dialogues, mainly from Rusticano, but it fell flat because it wasn’t allowed the space, time or attention to flourish. Interspersed between those two narratives was a near constant stream of critical comments on just about every single thing in the world, like one had thrown leftist twitter, reddit and a cable news guest panel in a blender. Most annoyingly was the extreme discrepancy of knowledge needed for this book, the most simple things (like the internet) are layed out in detail while a whole paragraph of the book is in French, there is a lot of reference to extremely obscure facts and events, and the author uses terminology such as haute bourgeoisie and anachronicity. After reading this book, I mainly felt sorry that the author doesn’t seem to be able to enjoy anything at all in his life. These times are hard, but it is easy to be cynical. It is hard to be hopeful. Being a realist doesn have to mean being delusional, and being a satirist is possible without being hyper-cynical. Overall, a thoroughly unsatisfying read for me.
September 27, 2021
Shame he dies in the end.
June 2, 2019
Hi Jarett! Your book is engrossing! And funny!
And your style is contagious!
I don't think you're like Vonnegut though! He had more optimism!
But you're a lot like Stewart Lee!
Except American!
Very entertaining up-to-date satirical novel/ autofictional memoir / stand up comedy rant. Sets out to do the same sort of thing as Olivia Laing's Crudo, ie responds to the madness of writing intelligent prose in the age of Trump in a metafictional way, but with a vicious line in self-deprecating humour that is entirely Kobek's own. I love him for daring to start a sentence with 'Because I'm a terrible writer...' alone.
'Cruder than Crudo' - there's your paperback blurb!
And your style is contagious!
I don't think you're like Vonnegut though! He had more optimism!
But you're a lot like Stewart Lee!
Except American!
Very entertaining up-to-date satirical novel/ autofictional memoir / stand up comedy rant. Sets out to do the same sort of thing as Olivia Laing's Crudo, ie responds to the madness of writing intelligent prose in the age of Trump in a metafictional way, but with a vicious line in self-deprecating humour that is entirely Kobek's own. I love him for daring to start a sentence with 'Because I'm a terrible writer...' alone.
'Cruder than Crudo' - there's your paperback blurb!
January 14, 2020
Jarett Kobek can get into big trouble. Jerett Kobek provokes everyone that has some kind of significance. Jerett Kobek's satire has no limits. Jarett Kobek is a genius for this exactly reason. Jerett Kobek's writing style consists of short sentences.
"Only Americans Burn in Hell" is a serious comment on America's contemporary ills. Kobek does not shy away from any delusions of his profession and his place in American society to demonstrate how the rich are using the poor to increase their wealth. And it is done not only in material sense, but most importantly in an intellectual, spiritual, and cultural way, that led the US to wage sevaral wars in the Middle East since the end of the Cold War. Kobek incorporates his commentary while narrating a fictional story of a land full of supranatural women who visit the world during different eras of world history. He also draws heavily from his own life experiences to support his arguments.
What distinguishes this book from similar attempts is the humorous and inconsistent style of writing that alternates between simplistic description and elaborate monologues. Kobek does not hesitate to use language that is not exactly politically correct. The American electoral system becomes "an arcane process that had been designed, originally, to make sure the United States was cool with enslaving people from Africa", p. 50. Christianity in America. "Christian sermons in American life were always more about America than Christianity, and America was always the ideological enemy of Christianity" p. 184. Tobacco is described as "a very pleasurable form of suicide", p. 260. Kobek correctly points to the fact that sexually harassment is about power and humiliation, because "fixating of sex, the discussion around sexual harassment misses the key element. Which is the harassment." p. 154. For him the currencies of the world do not measure value, but the humiliation that people are prepared to go through to accumulate money, p. 155. The writer's satire extends to the tech industry too. He characterises Amazon as a once," website dedicated to the destruction of the publishing industry", p. 236, Instangram as "history's single most successful terrorist attack on the self-esteem of women", p. 104, and Twitter as a place where people practice "bumper-sticker morality while other people threatened to rape and murder each other for expressing simple sentiments about banal objects", p. 105.
So what is Kobek's life philosophy? He writes that the only things that the rich people can't monetize upon are individual acts of kindness and this is why he is a Christian. Everything else is sold and bought.
"Only Americans Burn in Hell" is a serious comment on America's contemporary ills. Kobek does not shy away from any delusions of his profession and his place in American society to demonstrate how the rich are using the poor to increase their wealth. And it is done not only in material sense, but most importantly in an intellectual, spiritual, and cultural way, that led the US to wage sevaral wars in the Middle East since the end of the Cold War. Kobek incorporates his commentary while narrating a fictional story of a land full of supranatural women who visit the world during different eras of world history. He also draws heavily from his own life experiences to support his arguments.
What distinguishes this book from similar attempts is the humorous and inconsistent style of writing that alternates between simplistic description and elaborate monologues. Kobek does not hesitate to use language that is not exactly politically correct. The American electoral system becomes "an arcane process that had been designed, originally, to make sure the United States was cool with enslaving people from Africa", p. 50. Christianity in America. "Christian sermons in American life were always more about America than Christianity, and America was always the ideological enemy of Christianity" p. 184. Tobacco is described as "a very pleasurable form of suicide", p. 260. Kobek correctly points to the fact that sexually harassment is about power and humiliation, because "fixating of sex, the discussion around sexual harassment misses the key element. Which is the harassment." p. 154. For him the currencies of the world do not measure value, but the humiliation that people are prepared to go through to accumulate money, p. 155. The writer's satire extends to the tech industry too. He characterises Amazon as a once," website dedicated to the destruction of the publishing industry", p. 236, Instangram as "history's single most successful terrorist attack on the self-esteem of women", p. 104, and Twitter as a place where people practice "bumper-sticker morality while other people threatened to rape and murder each other for expressing simple sentiments about banal objects", p. 105.
So what is Kobek's life philosophy? He writes that the only things that the rich people can't monetize upon are individual acts of kindness and this is why he is a Christian. Everything else is sold and bought.
November 11, 2019
of course i liked this
“Here’s another thing that you should know: everything is going to be okay.
It isn’t easy living in a world where every device of mass communication has been designed to tell you that you’re horrible.
It’s no picnic being taunted by a Greek chorus when your only economic future is feudalism.
Take a deep breath.
Make sure your exhale is longer than your inhale.
You’re on Planet Earth until you’re dead.
Everything between now and then is survival.
And survive is what you’ll do until you don’t.
Calm down.”
“Here’s how to murder a culture: create a system in which every fucking thing, no matter how small or tedious, is smothered in bullshit instant commentary and hot takes by the stupidest people on the planet.”
“I don’t blame anyone for using a smartphone to alleviate boredom while riding public transit. I know that pictographic messages about sexual encounters with Santa Claus are slightly less boring than reading novels about Life in Our Time.”
“Despite being correct in their thinking, the socialists were the most annoying people in America. When they spoke, it was like bamboo slivers shoved under a fingernail.
I don’t know why.
It was the single biggest American tragedy of the last one hundred years.”
“The appearance of things were more important than the things themselves.”
“He was like everyone else.
He felt that he was more important than he actually was.
But no one was any more or any less important than anyone else.
You can beg the Earth to stop turning, but it never listens.”
“Here is the simplest way to describe how awful Instagram was for women: it had weaponized yoga.”
“If anything could have resisted, it was yoga.
Yoga was as old as the hills.
It was ancient technology…
And it too had fallen.
It was like everything else on Instagram.”
“That’s how history works.
That’s how politics work.
You figure out how to get along with people you find unpalatable. You figure out how to make a decent argument that convinces people who don’t agree with you. You don’t throw away people because you think they’re powerless and worthless.
Of you end up like Michael Kinsley.
Totally forgotten and left behind.
Just a smug asshole no one remembers in a video that no one watches.”
“It wasn’t an iPad.
It was an Android tablet.”
“Life became a cartoon.
A new pantheon was required.
And there was Batman.
And there was Mr. Spock.
And there were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
And there was Harry fucking Potter, still unbuttered, still longing for the strong and nurturing caress of a same-sex hand job.”
“Stop hoping that books will save you.
Stop pretending.
Everyone else has.”
“…I had moved to Los Angeles with the unconscious desire to be one of the people who come to California to die.”
“If you were delusional enough to be an artist or writer, you had to anticipate that the only possible reaction your work could receive was unfathomable amounts of hatred."
“Here’s another thing that you should know: everything is going to be okay.
It isn’t easy living in a world where every device of mass communication has been designed to tell you that you’re horrible.
It’s no picnic being taunted by a Greek chorus when your only economic future is feudalism.
Take a deep breath.
Make sure your exhale is longer than your inhale.
You’re on Planet Earth until you’re dead.
Everything between now and then is survival.
And survive is what you’ll do until you don’t.
Calm down.”
“Here’s how to murder a culture: create a system in which every fucking thing, no matter how small or tedious, is smothered in bullshit instant commentary and hot takes by the stupidest people on the planet.”
“I don’t blame anyone for using a smartphone to alleviate boredom while riding public transit. I know that pictographic messages about sexual encounters with Santa Claus are slightly less boring than reading novels about Life in Our Time.”
“Despite being correct in their thinking, the socialists were the most annoying people in America. When they spoke, it was like bamboo slivers shoved under a fingernail.
I don’t know why.
It was the single biggest American tragedy of the last one hundred years.”
“The appearance of things were more important than the things themselves.”
“He was like everyone else.
He felt that he was more important than he actually was.
But no one was any more or any less important than anyone else.
You can beg the Earth to stop turning, but it never listens.”
“Here is the simplest way to describe how awful Instagram was for women: it had weaponized yoga.”
“If anything could have resisted, it was yoga.
Yoga was as old as the hills.
It was ancient technology…
And it too had fallen.
It was like everything else on Instagram.”
“That’s how history works.
That’s how politics work.
You figure out how to get along with people you find unpalatable. You figure out how to make a decent argument that convinces people who don’t agree with you. You don’t throw away people because you think they’re powerless and worthless.
Of you end up like Michael Kinsley.
Totally forgotten and left behind.
Just a smug asshole no one remembers in a video that no one watches.”
“It wasn’t an iPad.
It was an Android tablet.”
“Life became a cartoon.
A new pantheon was required.
And there was Batman.
And there was Mr. Spock.
And there were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
And there was Harry fucking Potter, still unbuttered, still longing for the strong and nurturing caress of a same-sex hand job.”
“Stop hoping that books will save you.
Stop pretending.
Everyone else has.”
“…I had moved to Los Angeles with the unconscious desire to be one of the people who come to California to die.”
“If you were delusional enough to be an artist or writer, you had to anticipate that the only possible reaction your work could receive was unfathomable amounts of hatred."
February 19, 2025
You read blurbs of books that say things sort of tongue-in-cheek like "reader beware, this author is merciless, even toward you" and you're like, whatever... until you read "Only Americans Burn in Hell" and Jarett Kobek just straight up calls you a fucking idiot for leaving his novel "I Hate the Internet" a shitty Goodreads review. As somebody who left "I Hate the Internet" a shitty Goodreads review, I gotta say that one stung.
But I promise I'm not giving this book, which is sort of a sequel to that one, a one-star-better rating just because I'm afraid he's going to call me a moron again. I think "Only Americans Burn in Hell" is funnier and angrier and zanier than its predecessor, even less committed to Iowa Writer's Workshop-approved "well rounded characters" and "plausible narratives", even more hell-bent on stabbing on empire, novelistic pieties be damned. Once again, Kobek is at least five years ahead of his time here. He solves the "problem" of writing wacky fiction during a wacky reality (see: any interminable 2016 article about Trump and satire) by totally abandoning the pretense of doing anything but criticizing/ analyzing / living through that wacky reality. I suspect that, fifty years from now, when we're finally able to start building libraries from the rubble again, the readers of the future will reach for "Only Americans Burn in Hell" before, say, "Lincoln in the Bardo" when trying to come to grips with what the fuck happened.
Credit to Kobek too for somehow making the act of going to a Guns 'N' Roses show sound like anything other than a totally insufferable experience.
But I promise I'm not giving this book, which is sort of a sequel to that one, a one-star-better rating just because I'm afraid he's going to call me a moron again. I think "Only Americans Burn in Hell" is funnier and angrier and zanier than its predecessor, even less committed to Iowa Writer's Workshop-approved "well rounded characters" and "plausible narratives", even more hell-bent on stabbing on empire, novelistic pieties be damned. Once again, Kobek is at least five years ahead of his time here. He solves the "problem" of writing wacky fiction during a wacky reality (see: any interminable 2016 article about Trump and satire) by totally abandoning the pretense of doing anything but criticizing/ analyzing / living through that wacky reality. I suspect that, fifty years from now, when we're finally able to start building libraries from the rubble again, the readers of the future will reach for "Only Americans Burn in Hell" before, say, "Lincoln in the Bardo" when trying to come to grips with what the fuck happened.
Credit to Kobek too for somehow making the act of going to a Guns 'N' Roses show sound like anything other than a totally insufferable experience.
June 21, 2020
"And please, reader, don't get amped up on this statement of your relative position of egalitarian non-importance. You're still not qualified to review this book on Amazon.com." :-)
Even if Jarett's not interested in my opinion, I still love his work. There is no way to explain the narrative of this book so that it makes sense in a few sentences. It`s a satire and part of the truth regarding the world we have been living in for probably decades, culminating in political extremes, chaos and the complete takeover of people's private life by social media and the internet.
It is also a story about fairy women on the road and the unexpected importance of Norwegian Black Metal. Pick it up and laugh and cringe and think about life!
Even if Jarett's not interested in my opinion, I still love his work. There is no way to explain the narrative of this book so that it makes sense in a few sentences. It`s a satire and part of the truth regarding the world we have been living in for probably decades, culminating in political extremes, chaos and the complete takeover of people's private life by social media and the internet.
It is also a story about fairy women on the road and the unexpected importance of Norwegian Black Metal. Pick it up and laugh and cringe and think about life!
January 9, 2020
The first successful, fully-realised work of post-Trump art I’ve come across, I think. Hilarious and destabilising this is more of an autobiography than a satirical fantasy. Kobek himself likens his style to Kurt Vonnegut (not wholly unreasonably) but I found this book more suggestive of a sweary Douglas Adams in its painstaking, pedantic, sarcastic digressions.
Some of the funniest bits are the author’s jeremiads about the illegitimacy of reviews such as this one on sites such as this, so I’ll shut up now.
But it is brilliant.
Some of the funniest bits are the author’s jeremiads about the illegitimacy of reviews such as this one on sites such as this, so I’ll shut up now.
But it is brilliant.
May 11, 2021
With a title like "Only Americans Burn in Hell," I expected something of a "great novel" for our troubled times. You know, a work of incandescent prose about privileged people whose artistic, cultural, and familial foibles result in a plot-and-character-driven catharsis, with an undertone of social commentary. Instead it's just another guy ripping off Vonnegut. What gives!
April 28, 2025
A fantastic and ridiculous book. Very meta. Very strange. I feel pretentious as hell for liking it so much. It was very funny.
“Money doesn't measure value.
Money is the measure of humiliation.
What would you do for a dollar?
What would you do for ten dollars?
What would you do for a million dollars?
What would you do for a billion dollars?”
“Money doesn't measure value.
Money is the measure of humiliation.
What would you do for a dollar?
What would you do for ten dollars?
What would you do for a million dollars?
What would you do for a billion dollars?”
May 19, 2020
it has enough righteous poison to satisfy alan moore.
get it from serpent's tail.
get it from serpent's tail.
August 9, 2020
I admire jarrets honesty a lot. His cultural commentary is great. I’d prefer essays and diatribes like the stuff about Matt drudge & his literary death match story over the narrative of this.
August 29, 2019
Get ready to be absolutely confronted by the modern American horror that is the United States and its current sociopolitical nightmare. No one escapes Kobek's criticism in this contemporary piece.
Blending fiction and non-fiction, Kobek brings a strange reality into semi-existence. It's about America (and the world) as it is right now, but with the added addition of Fairy Land.
Truthfully, Kobek would have done a better job if he had cut all of the fiction out and had just published a commentary piece on the current state of America (and in some cases, the world as a whole.) A lot of the thoughts and comments are jarring and confrontational—a refreshing change from constantly being pandered to and told that "it'll all work out in the end."
I, of course, see the irony in even commenting on the quality and content of Kobek's novel at all, given how frequently he denounces the constructions of Amazon and Goodreads as useless platforms to give unknown losers a place to talk about how much they hate things created by people who are more successful than themselves. It's almost artistic.
The story is contemporary (read: weird) and the commentary is refreshing (albeit a bit vulgar.) It's an interesting read given the current state of affairs.
Blending fiction and non-fiction, Kobek brings a strange reality into semi-existence. It's about America (and the world) as it is right now, but with the added addition of Fairy Land.
Truthfully, Kobek would have done a better job if he had cut all of the fiction out and had just published a commentary piece on the current state of America (and in some cases, the world as a whole.) A lot of the thoughts and comments are jarring and confrontational—a refreshing change from constantly being pandered to and told that "it'll all work out in the end."
I, of course, see the irony in even commenting on the quality and content of Kobek's novel at all, given how frequently he denounces the constructions of Amazon and Goodreads as useless platforms to give unknown losers a place to talk about how much they hate things created by people who are more successful than themselves. It's almost artistic.
The story is contemporary (read: weird) and the commentary is refreshing (albeit a bit vulgar.) It's an interesting read given the current state of affairs.
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