Indecision

by Benjamin Kunkel

Dwight B. Wilmerding is only twenty-eight, but he’s having a midlife crisis. He lives a dissolute existence in a tiny apartment with three (sometimes four) slacker roommates, holds a mind-numbing job at the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, and has a chronic inability to make up his mind. Encouraged by one of his roommates to try an experimental drug meant to banish indecision, Dwight jumps at the chance (not without some vacillation about the hazards of jumping) and swallows the first fateful pill. And when all at once he is “pfired” by Pfizer and invited to a rendezvous in exotic Ecuador with the girl of his long-ago prep-school dreams, he finds himself on the brink of a new life. The trouble–well, one of the troubles–is that Dwight can’t decide if the pills are working. Deep in the jungles of the Amazon, in the foreign country of a changed outlook, his would-be romantic escape becomes a hilarious journey into unbidden responsibility and unwelcome knowledge–and an unexpected raison d’être.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Literature, Contemporary, Travel, New York, Humor

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Benjamin Kunkel is an American novelist. Kunkel grew up in Eagle, Colorado, and was educated at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire; Kunkel studied at Deep Springs College in California, graduated with a BA from Harvard University, and received his MFA in Creative Writing at Columbia University.

He co-founded and is a co-editor of the journal n+1. His novel, Indecision, was published in 2005

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

Blah blah blah. "I can't make up my fucking mind." {Waaaah. Join the fucking club.} Blah blah blah. Experimental drug. Casual sex. Covered with hair. Blah blah blah. Fly to Ecuador to get laid but sort of find meaning/purpose instead but don't write about it very well or very effectively. Blah blah blah. Who gives a shit.

[Greg · Rating 2 out of 5]

What is wrong with me?

Much like the character in this novel I couldn't make up my mind what to give this book. I waffled between two and three stars; but I didn't hate this book. I hated parts of the book, but I didn't hate the book. As far as vapid young writers go, one could do worse.

But don't I have it on good authority that this book sucks donkey balls?

Yeah. And it does. The narrator is a kind of whiny, self-absorbed elitist who can't make up his mind about anything, but knows that life owes him something more than the menial job he holds down and the slacker like lifestyle he lives. He's the kind of person people hate. He's kind of like myself at 27, which just so happens to be the same age the narrator is in 2001, right around the time that planes hit buildings; which my grammatically flawed sentence should make the reader realize would be the same exact age I was when 'shit went down, yo!' Reading this once again made me realize what an awful human being I was / am. This is what I look(ed) like to other people, and it's a pretty disgusting picture. In my own defense though, I was never a) from a rich family and basically floating around in a trust-fund wasteoid haze b) had any of the excess drug/sex this idiot engages in and c) was never in any way shape or form basically a hippie dressed up as a hipster, which is what this guy is. Which regarding point c- Kunkel; you and your publishers may want to get the rights to the Grateful Dead song you pilfer for your cresting the wave of catharticism pot-smoking hippie shit you pull unexpectedly out of no where at the end. Seriously dude, not cool.

Ugh. I've just been outed as giving this three stars!

What to do?

At one point I couldn't figure out if the main character was meant to be so unlikable. One (well the reader, me, maybe you) was told how likable he was, but he was sort of the kind of person that I never did like, the white hat wearing stoner with the button down shirt not tucked in that was soooo mellow and basically a privileged jock fuck who smoked too much pot.

Fuck Fuck Fuck.

Fuck it, this book is getting two stars. Because everything I liked about the book, the legitimately funny parts, the interesting characters that were the dudes sister and father, and well, I guess that is about it, everything good was ruined by something awful. Some banality. Some piece of profundity, that was really as deep as that fucking Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians song that I fucking hate. And the fucking puns! Like his last name that I know was only picked to make an oh so witty and urbane Heideggar joke / play on words in the narrators email address. Uggh. I don't even think this book was necessarily planned out... I don't have the energy to point out why, but it just doesn't, it sort of drifts and meanders around with loss ends and things brought up in the first fifty pages that lead no where.
And then there is the ending!

Oh God, the politically retarded ending. Shoot me in the head, how did I think to give this three stars. All because it wasn't as godawful as the Zweig book, but mostly that is because this was 200 pages shorter, and Kunkel can string together words coherently, something Zweig couldn't do.

Fuck.
I give up. Two stars. The third was guilt for me being an awful douchebag with no direction and being neurotic about making choices, but fuck you I'm so not as loathe worthy as this dude.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

The real indecision here comes in how long you waver before finally giving up on this book. The story meanders aimlessly in a pseudo-philosophical fog that is neither amusing (as advertised on the cover) or in any other way interesting. The premise--a chronically indecisive loser in his late 20's (allegedly representing a whole generation to which I happen to belong--needless to say, I don't agree with the categorization) is offered a miracle drug to relieve his indecision--could be interesting. It is at the very least a meaningful commentary on our society's growing reliance on drugs. But the narrator is dull and unsympathetic, and the author himself seems lost in trying to tell the guy's story. Really, all this book has going for it are a few interesting themes: plot, character, narrative voice, and a sense of story are all (sadly) lacking.

[Cristina · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book embodies the crap I've come to expect from precocious, over-educated hipsters. Granted, there were a few insightful sentences that I really liked. But christ, where do I even begin. The characters blow -- Kunkel thinks he's representing my generation, when really all these characters are just one-dimensional charicatures. The neuroses come off as annoying instead of endearing. A 3rd grader could have come up with a better plot. I've never wanted to throw a book off the subway platform so badly. This book sucks, sucks, sucks. It's like the Garden State of books, but this is much worse and at least you could preoccupy yourself with Natalie Portman's hotness in the movie. argh!

[dianne b. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Couldn’t understand all the “get ON with it already”-type comments in the reviews of this book, as I was chortling regularly through the first half or so. I even thought it was a tiny bit reminiscent of The Confederacy of Dunces - (no praise higher). But, alas, as happens when we age, it began to take itself too seriously, a common, and sadly, malignant disorder.

But it had its moments:

“The regular alliance of happiness with idiocy has always been for me as a happy person one of the world’s more painful features.”

A list with possible causes of his abulia:
“…
Early exposure to other persons
Especially one’s parents
Divorce of those parents
Their marriage beforehand
…”

Trying to explain why he needed to suddenly go to Ecuador to his father:
“...in part because New York interfered with my mind by its abundance of advertisements printed in a language I could read, I was considering going off someplace more quiet, less legible, to do a little thinking.”

Advice from same father:
“There is no worse preparation for adulthood than having been a child….you get trained in that business and forget all about time.”

Upon meeting someone new in Ecuador, when no such untoward crime has occured:
“Estoy Dwight Wilmerding…Me han robado”
(“I am, for now, but not permanently, Dwight Wilmerding. I’ve been robbed.”
I giggled hysterically - perhaps because my painful, essential and persistent monolinguality allows me true empathy.

He fantasizes life as a motivational speaker, in front of a group of men (“I imagined the packed halls of overweight mediocre men, bald and nodding, their eyes shiny with tears -”) in the USA:
“Our life sucks only because we wish it didn’t. Meanwhile we immorally betray the world’s laboring and unemployed poor people…by our failure to enjoy the fruits and nuts of our privileged consumer lifestyle. We have to be happy with this arrangement, so that someone can be.”

Wait…maybe this isn’t irony. “...since without arbitrary goals, fervently chosen, I don’t know what I’d do with myself.”

[JBP · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is awful. I stubbornly made my way to the bitter end just to give it a single star and ravage it in this short, capsule review. Ah, the taste of semi-satisfaction. I should have looked at some of the comments of previous readers via goodreads as it would have made me pass on this irritating, phony, cooler than thou exorcise in superficiality that Kunkel has crafted. The book is lighter than a feather and has absolutely no substance to it as it tells the story of an annoying 20 something who suffers from "indecision" about everything in his life. I guess this is Kunkel's attempt at satirizing the malaise that modern 20 year olds suffer via their overly medicated ADD existences, but I just found the entire story a rambling, meandering, worthless waste of my time. And yours too if you are smart enough to read another negative review of this book and decide not to read it [something I wish I'd done!]. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's funny the way Goodreads can affect your reading of a book. When I started reading this book, I immediately enjoyed it and thought to myself, "Do I have a five star new classic on my hands?" Then, as the story progressed and began to lose a little steam, I thought, "Well, maybe not five stars, but it's still a solid four star story." And I was feeling that way until about halfway through the book, where it rapidly devolved into three star territory, then two, before finally culminating in a one star finish that left me thinking, in all honesty, with about 3 pages to go, "Maybe I should just scrap the book right here and now? I'm not sure I can get through even three more pages of this crap."

However, that seemed to me too much like dropping out of college 3 credits shy of graduating, so I stuck it out. It was sort of a moral victory, I guess.

The biggest problem with the book is that it completely falls apart as soon as the main character (the atrociously named Dwight Wilmerding) leaves New York. While in New York, Dwight is the everyman aimless 20-something, making sad but relevant observations on his life that hit a little too close to home. It's easy to relate to an indecisive young guy living with his equally aimless roommates surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the big city, which he understandably mistakes for his own forward momentum, one of the book's best observations.

However, he takes off to Ecuador and the book just stops making sense. Suddenly it's about 'democratic socialism' and the plight of the worker in the 3rd world, and while it seems somewhat tongue-in-cheek, the joke goes on far too long, to the point that you begin to wonder if it's a joke at all. If it is a joke, it's not funny. If it's an attempt at serious social consciousness, it's half-assed. Kunkel hit that not-so-sweet spot of muddled messages.

The second act's problems, in turn, point out those of the first act's. The shallowness of the "deep" observations in Ecuador renders the depth of the shallow observations in New York for what they are--a spoiled brat whining about his privledged upbringing. The supporting characters, always paper-thin caricatures resembling people you know, become less forgivable as the story becomes more and more flawed on the whole. When you're making a connection with the reader, it's kind of okay to have such shallow characters; they are there mainly to serve their purpose anyway, connecting smaller pieces to the greater whole. However, when you're alienating the reader with your absurd fantastical ideas in foreign countries, such shallowness is less acceptable, and, frankly, downright deplorable.

Other problems with this book, in no particular order:

-The bizarre incest subplot. What was that all about? It didn't really seem to serve a purpose, other than to be creepy and uncomfortable. I don't have a sister, so I don't know how real that felt, but it was definitely not cool.

-The half-assed 9/11 reference. That was just unnecessary and, to be totally honest, a bit embarrassing. I understand what Kunkel was trying to do, but he failed miserably. Trying to link his main character's aimless plight with the magnitude of such a catastrophic world event in his own backyard may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but he should have refrained. It made the whole story for smaller and more contrived, kind of like the way Michael Bay made 'Pearl Harbor' into some fake half-assed love story. That's basically what Kunkel did to 9/11 with his pointless reference. It just didn't work. Just because you set your story in New York doesn't mean you're obligated to make some sort of note about 9/11.

-The unsurprising 'It was never the drugs, it was in YOU all along!' reveal that abulinix was a placebo. No kidding. You almost wish it wasn't, because at least that wouldn't have been such a cop out. The only surprise is that Kunkel would stoop to such a hacky cliche; although, given the 9/11 chapter, maybe it's not that surprising after all.

-The whole 'Brigid is actually Alice's friend and the whole thing was a setup' "twist". Equally hacky, and not all that surprising, but still insulting nonetheless. Kunkel packing in subplots like this in a story that he's purporting to be a 'coming of age' -type novel just shows either a complete lack of understanding of or total contempt for his audience.

-The ending. Just piss poor and seemingly just slapped together. The reunion scene was bad enough (these are supposed to be people in their late 20s and early 30s? They struck me as a middle school cafeteria right before recess), but it again goes to the whole fake social conscience of the story. All along Dwight was really buying what he was selling about democratic socialism? Color me surprised. The whole thing seemed like a lame joke. Now he's living in South America away from the girl who inspired him and pursuing the fight against the plight of migrant workers? Really? That just didn't make sense for the character. Kunkel can't just string us along with this joke, and then say "SURPRISE! He was serious all along!" That's bullshit. It's manufactured growth of a character that didn't earn it.

All that said, I gave it 2 stars instead of the one it probably deserved if only for the first quarter or so of the book, before it completely unraveled. There were some interesting lines and observations that made me think a little more about life in general, and that's worth something, even if the book as a whole is not.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

What an overhyped addition to the already overcrowded "20-something inspects navel, whines unattractively, and expects the world to care" shelf this was.

[Oriana · Rating 4 out of 5]

once finished: Well it has become pretty clichéd to say, but yes, it took me about fifty pages of this relatively slim volume to get over my instinctual hatred of this successful young (my age when published) writer, and just get over myself and enjoy the book. Which, shit you guys, is really fucking good.

(Quick aside: Our Benjamin Kunkel is, as is more or less required for this demographic, clearly enamored with his own writerly talents. Consequently this book can be a bit much at times, overly descriptive and exceedingly clever. So that can be rather off-putting for many, but I have often remarked upon my very high tolerance for pretension, so this wasn't really that big of a problem.)

That aside, the dialogue is great. Snappy and careful and clever and very real. And underlying that, of course, are some just fantastic characters. The women are the best: Vaneetha is guileless and so smart and sexy and fun; Alice is brilliant and funny and even a little tragic maybe; Brigid is really just a phenomenal creation, who speaks in the best and most lovable and slippery broken English, saying beautiful and terrible and hilarious things, and I fell just as in love with her as our hapless narrator. Who, well, him I didn't quite love as much. But that doesn't detract from his realism, oh no, I think really it increases it, and it is another testament to Kunkel's skill that I had pretty strong (though uneven) love and hate for Dwight.

And here is a nice segue, because uneven is really a very important word for this story as a whole. Some of the sections – including the drug ones (see below) and the conversation-heavy ones, especially those involving the above-mentioned terrific women, and also the roommates – were just almost unbearably great, fast-moving and extremely affecting and thoroughly enjoyable. Other sections... mmm, not so much. Much of the geopolitical (is that right?) stuff became very heavy-handed and a bit boring, the work scenes were sort of blah, and Wanda felt like a really flat character. Also some of the middle scenes in the jungle, which should have been the central conflict, really, where Dwight and Brigid find and discard one another, were a bit opaque to me, and I kind of couldn't see why each was so upset and all that. Which is a pity, because that should have been heightening and tautening the romantico-sexual tension between the two, so that when they finally get together (not that you thought they wouldn't), it would have been such a relief and a release. Instead it was more like a foregone conclusion that, yes, made you happy, but didn't make you freak out with joy.

Anyway! I am kind of tired of hearing my own voice, so I will close with this: bravo Benjamin Kunkel for a great debut. I will happily read whatever you come up with next, and maybe one of these days I'll get around to checking out n + 1 too.

a note while reading: This is not remotely related to the review I will eventually write about this book, and I don't want to mislead, because this is not at all the thrust of the story, merely a few-page anecdote, but it's amazing how reading a really well-crafted Ecstasy scene can throw you thoroughly, viscerally back to times of having done it yourself. Seriously, my palms are even a little sweaty right now.

[Stacey · Rating 1 out of 5]

The cover is the only redeeming quality about this book. It looks so cute!! When we chose it for book club I somehow managed to find and read aloud the ONLY two funny sentencess in the entire thing. Thinking that we had a winner, the reading commenced. Bad luck for us! The premise sounds fantastic - the book however is another story.

At the end, I faced my own Indecision - use this one to level a wobbly table leg or pass it on to someone I really, really dislike?!?

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't decide. Maybe because we were interns together ten years ago and I basically liked him, even if the rest of the interns that semester thought he was smug. Everyone said he thought he was smarter than the rest of us. What they didn't know is that they were right. He was pretty open about it and honestly, I thought he was right. So I have these misgivings about Ben himself; I want to take him down a notch, just because I do. But that's not fair. So, he's smart. Who am I to begrudge him a well received novel? I mean really.

So there's that. But then there's the little stuff: I don't buy Dwight. Or Brigit. Or Alice. Or any of the rest of the perfectly articulate archetypes that populate the story. I knew how the drug would turn out before he started taking it.

It doesn't help my impressions that Indecision was sandwiched between watching The Last Days of Disco, With Cocktails at Petrossian Afterwards (self indulgent young people drift about with no real obstacles between them and their whims) and reading How to Save Your Own Life: A Novel (trapped woman can't escape despite abundance of options).

Ultimately, I got all the way to the end and thought "huh. So that's what it'd look like if Ben finally wrote a novel. Okay." which is not at all the same as "I should give this to someone who I bet will love it."

[David M · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I'm not at all convinced the internet has made me a better or happier person, I do really appreciate Benjamin Kunkel's twitter feed. He's able to strike the perfect balance between Pessoa quotes and righteous left-wing sarcasm. See for yourself:

https://twitter.com/kunktation?lang=en

I also respect his trajectory from privileged white boy novelist with nothing to write about to autodidact Marxist intellectual. And not just any autodidact Marxist intellectual, one who really does his homework. It's not every left-leaning literary type who can discuss the intricacies of marginal utility versus the labor theory of value. In his essays, Kunkel shows he's as conversant with Robert Brenner as Frederic Jameson.

Which is all to say I wish I'd liked this particular book more than I did. Decently well-written and clever in places, but overall quite bland. All the drama lies in the narrator's mental flailing, but he's no underground man. The plot is cutesy and contrived. Til the end Kunkel's affect is dutifully ironic, which makes it hard to take the narrator's socialist awakening all that seriously.

[Bonnie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The only reason this book got two stars is because Kunkel has a talent for two things: ideas and clever turns of phrase. but these two things does not a good novel make, unfortunately. I kept reading hoping it would get better, and it didn't. it just got more and more cliche.
I am so sick of reading about the east coast bourgeois, and anything about generation whine, both of which, as a west-coast millennial, I find not in the least bit relatable and entirely contemptible.

[MJ Nicholls]

Imagine waking up every day to a GR review page like this one. Sending Kunkel some love in 2013.

(Or am I?)

[Sue Smith · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lordy. That was bad.

Talk about life mimicking book titles - I just couldn't make up my mind if I should carry on or not. Surely it will get better with the next part, the next paragraph, ..... the next sentence. Nope. It didn't. So I decided to pull the pin on this one and carry on to a book that I will enjoy, with characters and circumstances that I will give a sh*t about - not this pathetic loser of a guy and his delusions of love and grandeur, who can't make a decision if his life depended on it.

Let me help you make a decision with this one - don't bother.

[Lea · Rating 1 out of 5]

Eins der schrecklichsten Bücher, das ich je gelesen haben. Vielleicht sogar das schrecklichste.

Der Titel beruhr darauf, dass einem unentschlossenen Hauptcharakter erzählt wird seine Unentschlossenheit sei eine Krankheit und das ist basically sein ganzes Problem. Dass er unentschlossen ist. Im Endeffekt auch einfach eine wirklich schlechte Verkupplungs-Story.
Ist außerdem das erste Buch, bei dem ich das Bedürfnis empfinde es zu verbrennen.

[Jessie Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a satire, but somehow I liked it much more than Buckley's "Boomsday." I think it is because Buckley was writing a satire of the DC spin machine, which I have little inside knowledge of, and Kunkel is writing satire about confused early adulthood, which I have tons of inside knowledge of. It isn't only hilarious, but I scarily identify with a lot of Dwight's philosophizing about the insanity of it all. In the end he somehow achieves clarity through a mixture of drugs and finding purpose. I didn't love that part, but maybe it's because I haven't gotten that far in my life yet so I don't identify.

There are tons of amazing one-liners scattered all throughout this book.

Favorite bits:

"I guess I'd studied French instead because it seemed like the thing I would do." -pg.8

"The regular alliance of happiness with idiocy has always been for me as a happy person one of the world's more painful features." -pg.37

"...the higher standard of living coupledom..." -pg.40

"...the nature of Sunday as that recurrent day whose tremendous potential seems much more enjoyable that any actual use of it could be." -pg.41

"...a genuine preference for one restaurant or another, something that was a crucial skill in New York and evidently an important contemporary venue for personality-expression." -pg.43

"...people who know you have a way of regulating your behavior to make it conform with your incoherent past." -pg.44

"Normally I didn't pay that much attention to New York. It always seemed weirdly pre-perceived, with other people already on the job." -pg.45

"My own sympathies were more with him, if only because in deserving them less he obviously needed them more." -pg.48

"But then solitary people pretending not to be–that must be how many families start up, and how the race of the lonely has grown so numerous." -pg.55

"A cosmopolitan provincialism is the worst." -pg.59

"Better to lie to other people than yourself." -pg.60

"...all of us showed Mister an affection that was plainer and more extravagant than anything that passed between us actual humans except in times of crisis. Yet this attention to Mister seemed also to be the emblem of our basic mutual filial thing, implying as it did what large volumes of love-grade emotion must get trafficked invisible between us if this was how we treated–I mean, nice as he was–our dog. Our feelings for Mister kind of took the measure of our hearts, is my guess." -pg.75

"Sleep is so nice, I thought. Otherwise things would just add up." -pg.103

"'I like preserving our self-image as athletic people,' Alice had said ...'How infrequently do you think we can do sports before we have to admit that we never do?'" -pg.131

"I've detected that many of my thoughts have become swift and super-sure and that's a big part of what happiness is..." -pg.150

"Look I've known people who've known things about the Middle East–and it was never any good." -pg.191

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

At the beginning, Indecision seems like a slightly wacky take on a slightly "different" coming of age novel (there's a premise of a wonder pharmaceutical that cures indecision; Kunkel's narrator is not a teenager but a 20-something). The narrator prattles on for about 2/3 of the book and then the narrator does (spoiler alert) indeed take the pill and begins to make up his mind about things. Perhaps you could argue the narrator's rapid and barely motivated change of mind is Kunkel's statement about the power of pharmacology, but the ending of the book is so contrived that to even call it a deus ex machina would be flattery.

[Yulia · Rating 1 out of 5]

The most over-hyped book of the year. Every character spoke in one-liners. The plot was contrived, the characters rather pathetic, and the ending a cheap finish. A waste of time, sad to say.

[Arda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two stars or three stars? I am indecisive and this book is about indecision. I was leaning towards three stars, but the inconsistent tones towards the end felt more like two. Or maybe 2.5

I may well be indecisive, in general. The book made me wonder whether I am going through a midlife crisis myself. It introduced me to the term "abulia", and suggested that there may be a pill for the chronic inability to make up one's mind. Dwight is a 28-year old self-absorbed American guy who is seeing one Indian woman in Manhattan, New York while leaving to Quito, Ecuador after losing his job to meet up with another Dutch woman, hoping to have something to return with for his 10-year reunion. He is not particularly likable but at the same time he is so lost it is endearing, in fact identifiable.

I kept on reading this book, hoping that it may help me somehow in making my own decisions, perhaps, and in a way it did suggest that it is a good idea to "hail on the journey that would bring forth an unexpected raison d'être" (as the back-cover suggests), but as I write this review, I realize that the book wasn't exactly helpful, because, as someone noted in another review, the second part of the book, especially the epilogue, seems to have been written by a different person altogether.

Then again, the writing of this narrative was not altogether consistent. While the first-person narrator (Dwight) uses words that require the use of a dictionary, he also happens to say things like "Hmn" at the end of some sentences and for no apparent reason. There were a few such instances in which I wanted to go right up to Kunkel and make a plea for him to trash the mediocre. "I know you're capable of writing good literature," I would say, "Please don't use words like 'cheesy' after you have boasted your wealthy vocabulary, which, by the way, we get already! We can see you're an intellect but please do not use French words midway (like "The beans looked appetizing and tasted that way too, salty, squishy, and with a definite tang of je ne said quoi") just to sound like a connoisseur because it makes you come off as presumptuous. Oh and that whole piece of conversation with Brigid while making out which looked like it was coming out of some cheap soap opera ("..you're not a communist, are you?" Kiss. "Because I can deal with socialism maybe, but..." Kiss. "Or aren't an anarchist, I hope, because" - Kiss...) "Stop. Stop. And speaking of Brigid, I thought she had trouble speaking English. Why does she have no problem using words like 'abscondating'?... And why is it that Dwight who KNOWS what "abscondating" means still cannot differentiate between "its" and "it's" in his emails?!"

On the other hand, I enjoyed the psychoanalysis talks (and the pills) very much. [SPOILER ALERT!] This is obviously set in New York and these people are intellects who spend a lot of time analyzing themselves. The fact that the character goes from September 11 to the Amazon Jungle could have its own interpretations, and the idea that there is so much 'choice' in the United States could be descriptive of why the characters are so indecisive. I appreciated the honesty in which the characters were perceived. While they pass as being very intellectual, smart and perceptive, they are also very much lost, and lonely.

In short, this is a smooth read. It may be quickly forgotten, but it is also quite relevant in more than one way. Do I regret having read it? Not at all. But I am becoming more comfortable with the idea that I gave it 2 stars. I think.

------
Quotes:
"Once you decide you're only an animal, how do you keep from becoming a vegetable?"

"Without arbitrary goals, fervently chosen, I don't know what I'd do with myself."

Alice:
-(On Lying):"Lying is incredibly important in developmental psychology. Telling a lie is the child's way of separating its world from that of the adults. It establishes your independence, it's how you mark off your own private area of the truth."
-(On reality): "So you acknowledge there was a serious question of whether we'd live to see twenty-five. Remember adults would ask us about what we wanted to be when we grew up? And didn't you always feel like you were humoring them, no matter what you said? And then, how it came to a shock to discover midway through prep school, with the Wall coming down, that there really was something to prepare for after all. Yet you had no plans for adult life-none. We could never imagine growing up because the future could always be cancelled at any time. So beyond a certain narrow time frame our desires ran into a kind of horizon and had to stop. There was no such thing as the long term."

Dwight's dad:
-(On the distinction between the natural and artificial): "Food, exercise, sexual intercourse, warmth - all these things function like drugs"
-(On the news that his son lost his job): "It's good to hit bottom, sooner the better. It's a fucking required event, in my book."
-(On relationships): "What can you do? The trouble with your mother and me is that we'd exhausted our illusions. As you grow up, you'll find this, Dwight, you keep getting involved with larger and larger illusions that take longer and longer to fall away. The great hope is eventually to find a delusion that will outlast your life. You'll do well to marry a woman you won't realize you can't live with until you're both dead."
-(On childhood): "Don't make a career out of your childhood! Do you understand me? Don't make a career out of your childhood or you'll never adapt yourself to any other." And on Dwight's desire "I want to start a new life" he answers: "Ah you'll grow old doing that."

Dwight:
-(On getting high): "Global tenderness would radiate from us in waves, and no one could understand why we couldn't kiss just as promiscuously every day, and as sincerely hold hands."
-(On belief):"You don't believe, but you believe the other person believes. I think that's a model for how everything works out in the end. So I'm sure we'll be fine."

[Maddie Quast · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was so hard to get through. I usually don’t like to leave bad reviews, but there’s a lot of drivel and blah-ness you have to wade through to get to anything semi-interesting or introspective. I knew from the beginning what the spoiler would be. Hardly any philosophical questions were raised, other than possibly this: did the author write this book in such a drab way that I’d start contemplating indecision as to whether I’d actually to be to finish this book? (I ALWAYS finish a book, even if I’m disinterested)

To all the readers who want to experience some sort of learning experience or philosophical awareness, I promise you’re missing nothing by skipping this one.

[Rob Trump · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mostly just very funny, Xennial coming of (late) age Vonnegut or Portis with a fouler mouth. The chapter with the dad is the best but honestly the whole thing rips. Baffling that people dislike this so much on Goodreads but humor is very subjective; I found it hilarious.

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good beginning, totally boring middle, and nice boy gets girl ending.

[Hollie Lippert · Rating 1 out of 5]

I saw this book while making my bi-weekly rounds of my favorite used book store. "What a cool cover" I thought. And since you can most definitely begin judging a book by it's cover, I chose to read the blurb on the cover flap to see what this sweet-looking cover had inside it. In the blurb, I spotted the word "Ecuador" and some general rambling about a chronic indecisive 20-something having a quarter-life crisis brought on by disillusionment with his life which he decides to solve by traveling to an unknown country on a whim. SOLD!

"I'm indecisive! I'm 20-something! I feel like I've been in a quarter-life crisis for like 15 years! I like to travel! THIS BOOK IS FOR ME!" So in a moment of unusual decisiveness for me, I added it to my purchases immediately. And dove in with high hopes that this book would fascinate me..and of course give me all the answers to life and make me decisive as added perks- "Indecision" will change my life!

The author is obviously talented and the story premise is intriguing (which is why the damn blurb god me..), but the actually telling of the story is disappointing. Structurally, the story jumps around a lot- usually I like this; however, in "Indecision" I didn't think this structure added anything to the table in terms of understanding and delving into the characters or premise (If I'm going to be jerked around time-frame-wise, I need to have my needs met!). The story had many interesting premises and sub-plots (divorce! job loss! drugs! relationships!), but none were developed even close enough to my liking. Ditto for the characters. The wrapping-up of the story is more annoying then anything and also oddly cliche.

I could go on, but it's not worth it. Just know that my hopes were not fulfilled. I was not fascinated. I did not get any answers to life- besides learning that sometimes you can't judge a book by it's cover. As for making me decisive, "Indecision" just made me angry that I hadn't been my usual indecisive self when buying it- why the hell did I assume a book literally about indecision was a good thing to be decisive about?!. Of course, my indecisiveness about whether or not to finish the book is what eventually caused me to read an entire book that I was not enjoying- I kept thinking or hoping that it would change (stupid!).

So decisiveness led me inside the beautiful "Indecision" gates/cover, but my indecisiveness is what made me stay even after realizing that inside the gates everything..kinda, completely sucked. The gates were always open- I was not being forced to finish the book against my will. I didn't want to finish the book BUT...did I really? or didn't I? I COULD NOT DECIDE. So my indecisiveness decided for me, as it always does if you give it enough time- eventually all options will disappear until you're left with what outlasted your indecision. I couldn't decide whether or not to finish the book; I dithered until I read the last page- so by default I finished it; and I was mad that I did. In the vast majority of cases, only option after indecision = sucking.

So the score evens: -1 point against decisiveness for making me buy the book; -1 point against indecision for making me finish it. Reading "Indecision" made me doubt decisiveness but also made me realize indecisiveness sucks equally. A tie. I CANNOT DECIDE WHICH IS WORSE. "INDECISION" HAS HIGHLIGHTED MY INDECISION.

I am now hopeful that enduring the painful process and result of decisiveness followed by indecision towards "Indecision" will inspire me to follow-up decisiveness with more decisiveness and dive headfirst into the pool of decisiveness! After all, once I'm in the pool, I clearly will never be able to decide whether to get out or not...

[Chris Gager · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure where I picked this one up. Pretty interesting and amusing so far. Very much in the vein of "The Corrections," "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves," and "And Then We Came to the End." Post-modern lightweight??? Easy to see why J. Franzen speaks well of it.

- Similarities to "The Corrections" - the crazy family and a trip to foreign lands. Dwight and Chip are blood brothers! Plus the experimental drug thing...

- Disclaimer: I too am a preppie(Loomis) by way of Colorado and a profoundly messed-up family. I can relate even though I'm just a BIT older than Dwight/Kunkel.

As usual, NFL football and job obligations interfered with reading this weekend. Still, I did get on a bit with Dwight and his not-very-strange and wandering life. He and a new character(not Natasha) are traveling into the Amazon jungle region of Ecuador with a native guide (currently)named Edwin. It's all very droll of course(and occasionally wondrous!) and Dwight does seem to have become more decisive under the influence of Abulinix. What's next? No idea here, but things do seem to have gotten a bit less interesting in S. A.. Still, I'm nearing the end and can't really fathom why anyone would be so mean-spirited and resentful as to give this a 1* rating! Dickens it's not but it's still clever and entertaining. I guess if Dwight's persona turns you off...

- I can see that one thing that may turn some readers off is the preppie-preciousness of both Dwight and the author. Kunkel IS pretty sharp!

- Knittel: "Procrastination is our substitute for immortality" - makes me think of Dunbar in "Catch-22"!

- My main goal last night was to finish Macbeth so I'm still in the Ecuadorian jungle with the ever-more-decisive Dwight and his companions. Things kind of need to pick up a bit! Endless drollery is not enough.

Finished last night and struggling with my final rating. Oddly enough the book turns a bit political(in a mega sense) near the end. The Ecuador part definitely sags a bit but things do pick at the 10-year reunion of Dwight's prep school class. His speech is hilarious... and why won't that beautiful but eccentric Brigid marry the poor sap? This book could use a sequel!

- An issue = the author's precociousness. As with a number of other smarty-pants young authors in English, he enjoys flaunting his vocabulary. Michael Chabon comes to mind... I'm sooooo glad Jane Austen and Charles Dickens didn't graduate from any PhD programs of writing schools. Or vie for any awards. That I'm aware of...

- Dwight and Brigid begin to sound somewhat alike as the story goes onward!

- A drug-induced Adam and Eve thing...

- Too much druggie stuff and talk for me - it becomes sort-of incomprehensible and stream-of-consciousy. I hope Dwight/Kunkel has given that all up by now. The issue is interesting, however. Why shouldn't people with "defective" characters be able to "fix" the problem pharmaceutically? I.E. with Prozac and the like...

- Surprise! It's all a set-up. Seems a BIT unlikely to me - difficult to swallow as it were.

- The message? MORE EMPATHY!

- Final rating = 3.5* rounding down to 3*

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[Josh Friedlander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even more than with fellow n + 1 co-founding editor Keith Gessen's All the Sad Literary Young Men, it's almost impossible to talk about this book without talking about the author's background and subsequent life choices. Like Whit Stillman in his movies, Kunkel is a WASPy prep school grad whose characters are likewise, except they're also dumb, lovable putzes. Kunkel's hero is a slacker with a Philosophy degree (his last name of Wilmerding becomes the email handle 'Wilmerdingansich', get it?) lacking the volition to get past his dead-end corporate job or commit to his girlfriend. Given an illicit sample of a new drug promising to cure indecision, he heads off to Ecuador to visit an old girlfriend and turn a page in his life.

The funny thing is that, despite the protagonist's cluelessness and obvious disinterest in politics, this is a very political book, full of angry lefties fuming about Neoliberalism and Western imperialism in the Global South. It reads very much like satire: the book's narrator feels vaguely bad and flirts with "democratic socialism", but never really seems to buy into the deeper economic worldview. Given the angle of the magazine Kunkel set up, though, and his subsequent move to South America and authorship of the millenial Neo-Marxist manual Utopia or Bust, you have to assume he's at least semi-serious. Maybe this is how things work nowadays. Unable to express anything sincerely, we have to give over political speeches with a self-aware smirk as if to say, I know, I'm a privileged rich kid, and this has all been done before - but so what.

Anyway, I gave it four stars because it had enough funny parts and plot twists. Never has a book been so keen to disavow politics it secretly believes. [Full disclosure: after years of online browsing - and guilted by the paywall - I recently took out a subscription to n + 1.]

[SivanNava · Rating 4 out of 5]

Masterful Mental Masterbation. But alas- premature sputtering?
Beatifully written, with artful insights that pop right off the page. With that said, I can't help but feel Kunkel could have used another couple of years to form the plot of this book. A shame really. Talent like this should be enlightened, not rushed.

Its namesake couldn't ring more true. Was the author struck with a mid-book panic that he must deliver a solution to his afflicting abulia? If all he could surmise up for a cure: "...fruits, nuts, beverages of all kinds [?!] , words on a page, a loved mammal in your arms, music...", I would have preferred no solution altogether. Throw in some neo and ism catch phrases, as the magic wand tapped upon the reader's head saying: believe me, this is a satisfying conclusion because it sounds oh so smart.

Indecision had all the potential to mark a very specific time and place in Western psyche, but falters through the hurry to publish at a young age. Oh Benjamin, you look so good on your back cover shot. But no one would have judged you for a better book and a few more wrinkles.

Writing: Excellent. Literary at best. Thank you Thank you Thank you.
Plot: Great start, slippery downward slope.
Story: All the potential in the world.
Conclusion: Masterful Mental Masterbation- much like this review.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

It started off a little slow, then it picked up, then it slowed down, then it picked way up, then it got near the end, then it got really boring, and oddly preachy for things I have no interest in, then it ended, and I was left with a little dissapointed... not unlike my last relationship. ZANG!
We all of us believe we're the odd balls of life, that we have the most impossible time coming to a decision in what to do with life, so in those respects I could totally relate to the main character. But then he goes off to Ecuador, and I'm thinking, "What? Whenever I can't make a large scale life decision I don't just up and head off to Ecuador, even if a beautiful girl is there (though I have thought about heading off to Mexico on occasion), Usually I just watch television.
So I was in it. I was totally with Dwight Wilmerding until the end... then I just wanted to get through with the book. So over all, good book, but just skip the epilogue, and just make up an ending for yourself. Practice your imagining skills. It'll help mask what your life has become.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic coming of age novel that truly gets at the heart of the post coitus, post early twenty something experience of the semi-autonomous adult, French New Wave neophyte in America today. One criticism, the book could have been written in the 3rd person. The dialogue was unnecessarily and unconvincingly effete. The author is an essayist by trade and the novel reads that way at times to a fault. With an executioner style editor and a switching around of the narrator, I feel (though I could be totally wrong) that this great book could become an instant classic. This lack luster student and semi sentiment being should not have me running to my dictionary when discussing golf with his father. The book has a kinda, like, maybe um a resolution that is perfectly and hilariously patched together with duct tape. It touches upon politics and relationships giving each the due humor and power necessary. It'll make you laugh, think, and relate in all the wrong ways. A must read for those trying to decide whether or not what they're experiencing right now could be called ennui.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

yeah yeah i know. this book was written by some pretentious hipster who sucks, blah blah. but i can't help it, i loved this book. last month, my mother handed me a box of books that she was planning to sell in her annual garage sale, and told me to take whatever i wanted. it was almost full of james patterson and other paperbacks that my mom gets for free in one shady way or another, but this book was in there and its cover caught my eye. i started to read and the main character is about a month away from his 10 year high school reunion and has just lost his job in nyc. weird, because i was in that exact same situation. so i read on, and more similarities presented themselves, one being that dwight meets and falls in love with a belgian (while not in belgium), which is also the situation i find myself in presently. anyway, without being totally cheesy and saying that this coming-of-age novel was SOOO like my own life, i really related to dwight in a lot of ways. beyond that, the book was well-written and absolutely hilarious at times. i eagerly await kunkel's next novel.