Right Here, Right Now: A Novel

by Trey Ellis

Through the Self-Help Glass -- Very Darkly
Meet Ashton Robinson, a dashing playboy whose suave charm, worldly pretensions, and ecstatic seminars have made him one of the most successful motivational speakers in the country.
After an encounter with the synergistic effects of marijuana and expired cough syrup, Robinson renounces his life as a self-help icon and pronounces himself a spiritually enlightened master. Overnight he invents the world's newest religion, based on meditation, bungee-cord jumping, tantric sex, and The Gap. Has he stumbled upon one of the great truths of the universe? Or has the same outsized ego that fueled his success as a motivational speaker driven him over the edge?
With surgical wit and acuity, Trey Ellis has written a titillating and trenchant tale about the revivalist fervor of the American self-help industry. Right Here, Right Now is a corrosively funny and provocative exploration of the impulse to self-improvement -- one of the most salient features of American popular culture at the close of the twentieth century.

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Trey Ellis (born 1962) is an American novelist, screenwriter, professor, playwright,[1] and essayist. He was born in Washington D.C. and graduated from Hopkins School and Phillips Academy, Andover, before attending Stanford University where he was the editor of the Stanford Chaparral. He is also an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of the Arts at Columbia University.

(from WIkipedia)

Reviews

[Jesse Rhines]

Wild!

[Reed Stratton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the behind-the-scenes look at the bizarre cult that the lead character creates in this book, but my pleasure ends there.

The sexuality Ellis originates within the cult is harsh and borders on misogynistic. Ellis's portrayal of a self-absorbed businessman who becomes vividly immersed in his own delusions of granduer makes you wonder if the book isn't somewhat autobiographical. Yet, as much as I am appalled by the lead chracter I am still somewhat intrigued and even charmed by him, which, I suppose, makes him the perfect cult leader.

You may have some decently complicated feelings about this book as well, but I wouldn't recommend it overall.

[Kevin Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book. Part of the reason is that the author, Trey Ellis, is having so much fun skewering about a dozen new age and self-help tropes (that I am personally well acquainted with, having written three books of meditation myself) that I couldn't help but be drawn into the joke (often laughing at my own past--and present--foibles). What better effect could a satire have? I get the sense that the author has been around his own experiential-block more than a few times in his personal history before he wrote this book, more likely that than he simple researched the subject matter; the atmosphere is too clear, the characters too sharply illuminated, to be only conjured by a single imagination. On the other hand, maybe Ellis is really that brilliant and just made the whole thing up...? (I'll have to ask him one day.)

If you've ever been to psychotherapy, read a self-help book (and tried at least a few of the exercises in the privacy of your own mind), or actually joined some kind of "movement" or religion (other than the one forced on you while growing up), then you will recognize at least a part of yourself in this great, rollicking story of fame, sex, being really, REALLY stoned, and (did I mention?) sex.

Funny. Witty. Incisive. Even scary at times. Trey Ellis masterfully weaves a tale that is strangely uplifting and deeply critical at the same time. As I said up top: What better effect could a satire have?

The man knows his shit!

Read it. Love it. Be it.... ;-)

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of me wonders if Ellis was acquainted with Percival Everett. The satire here really reminds me a lot of Everett’s work and its executed just as well. I could do with less of the sex scenes that crowd the second half of the book just a little too much.

[Chris Repka · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, but a little too much "graphic detail" of coital scenes ruined it for me. If the author had shifted some of the energy and focus from this aspect to the other aspects that he did well, this could have been a more solid read.

[Melinda · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was so weird. I had a hard time with this book. It took forever to read because I just was not into it. About half-way into it I started to like it a little more. The story is interesting. It is neat to see how one person can make people do some odd things and why they would do them.