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Unknown Knowns
Jim Rath's wife has grown tired of his hobbies: his immaculately maintained comics collection, his creepy underwater experiments, and his dreams of building a museum based on the Aquatic Ape Theory of Human Evolution. On the night that she leaves him, Jim thinks he has spotted an emissary from a lost aquatic race called the Nautikons. In truth, the man is a low-level agent of the Department of Homeland Security. What follows is a riveting story of two quixotic men who stalk each other toward a bloody showdown -- a spectacularly moronic act of terrorism at an aging water park.
"The Unknown Knowns" -- its title is a reference to a quote from former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- is a brilliant send-up of the insidious language and sometimes tragically comic focus of our country's Homeland Security Department. Combining the social satire of Kurt Vonnegut with the paranoid delusions of Thomas Pynchon, Rotter takes everyday domestic fixations and turns them into a hilarious assessment of the human condition. Fresh, imaginative, and deft, "The Unknown Knowns" marks the arrival of a unique new voice in literary fiction.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
About the author
Jeffrey Rotter
4 books13 followersJeffrey Rotter is the author of The Unknown Knowns, which was a New York Times Editor's Choice. His writing has appeared in The Oxford American, The New York Observer, McSweeney's, and elsewhere. He has assembled modular furnishings at NORAD, dressed up as Clifford the Big Red Dog for Texas school children, and written romance copy for flower-seed packets. He now resides in Brooklyn, New York, where he's edging ever closer to Green-Wood Cemetery and the eternal verdict of the earthworm.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
March 12, 2009
For the first hundred pages or so, I found this book to be inexplicably charming and laugh-out-loud funny. Poor delusional, maladjusted Jim is sweet in his own pathetically disengaged way. He's a gawky comic book nerd raised to be hyper-femininely aware, and the fantasy of Nautika becomes a bizarre marriage of the two viewpoints. The introduction of the character of Agent Les Diaz, though, takes what could have been an interestingly witty examination of one man's obsession, and twists it, through the introduction of a watered-down (plenty of pun intended) satirical look at governmental incompetency and idiocy, into a stand off between two delusional individuals, one looking far too hard to find a terrorist plot, and another looking far too hard to find proof for his own creation myth's creations.
This devolved into a trying work, disappointing because the first pages held such promise of insight.
This devolved into a trying work, disappointing because the first pages held such promise of insight.
November 22, 2011
I really wanted to like this one more, mainly because it garnered a favorable review from Douglas Coupland and, although I found the writing at times quite clever and engaging, the plot really isn't all there and though it succeeds in being partly a fantasy world of the protagonist's delusions of an entire secret underwater civilization that he finds in hotel pools and partly a minor statement about the ideas Americans currently have about terrorists, it's a little half baked and not all there. It works as a creative light and entertaining read but the ideas are not substantiated enough and after awhile, it seems like the kind of novel I'd forget about easily.
I do like the comic book angle in some of the chapters, though, and the writing style is quirky in a good way..so I bet I might like another novel of his that he put more time and thought into.
Still, there are quite a few great passages....some quotes:
pg. 50 "Conviction. Such a funny two faced word. The minute I started having them, they wanted to give me one."
pg 52 "Entering a hotel room is like walking into a civilized world that was there before human occupation."
pg. 54 "Morning came like sharks."
pg. 182 "...he looks at her with profound anxiety. His thoughts reach her in tangles."
I do like the comic book angle in some of the chapters, though, and the writing style is quirky in a good way..so I bet I might like another novel of his that he put more time and thought into.
Still, there are quite a few great passages....some quotes:
pg. 50 "Conviction. Such a funny two faced word. The minute I started having them, they wanted to give me one."
pg 52 "Entering a hotel room is like walking into a civilized world that was there before human occupation."
pg. 54 "Morning came like sharks."
pg. 182 "...he looks at her with profound anxiety. His thoughts reach her in tangles."
May 24, 2009
Ever read those 'choose your own adventure' books as a kid where you would skip pages to come up with your own story?... Well this is much like that to a sense that certain areas should be skipped in the book for the book to be somewhat enjoyable. Allow me to elaborate, the present modern day story is quite good, humorous as well on some occasions, but once our main character drifts off to la-la-land it gets to be dreadfully boring not to mention entirely too descriptive. This "la-la-land that the author created and so often brings up serves as no purpose to the book except to instill the idea of insanity among our main character. So why the description of every pillar, crack, air bubble in this fantasy land? I don't know, my thought is its a page filler needed to fill space.
By now you have most undoubtedly seen me use the phrase 'main character' in my review and are wondering why I have not used the word protagonist or antagonist, well I would if i could but unlike 90 percent of the novels out there, good ol' Jeff decided neither pro nor ant were needed. What it comes down to is that with each page turned no character changes character and you ( the reader ) find yourself hating each character.
P.S. I hope this review had enough 'character'
By now you have most undoubtedly seen me use the phrase 'main character' in my review and are wondering why I have not used the word protagonist or antagonist, well I would if i could but unlike 90 percent of the novels out there, good ol' Jeff decided neither pro nor ant were needed. What it comes down to is that with each page turned no character changes character and you ( the reader ) find yourself hating each character.
P.S. I hope this review had enough 'character'
July 17, 2025
I don't think this book is for everyone, but it worked for me.
August 18, 2009
Jim Rath is an antihero the likes of the guy from A Confederacy of Dunces. The Unknown Knowns is painful to read at times, but in the end it carries a good message. Okay, maybe the message is just a bit late coming now 8 years after 9/11, but we still do live in a society controlled by fear and paranoia, and we are still governed by power hungry politicians who take the easy way out when it comes to truth and justice. And yeah, it is believable that the Department of Homeland Security actually does have a program to monitor water quality in public pools and water parks. Scary but possible.
I don't know. This is an interesting read. A weird book, overall. But through it's weirdness it is readable, sometimes engaging, and it carries a great theme under the odd, unlikable characters and bizarre storyline.
I don't know. This is an interesting read. A weird book, overall. But through it's weirdness it is readable, sometimes engaging, and it carries a great theme under the odd, unlikable characters and bizarre storyline.
July 23, 2017
So unique - sci-fi that feels absolutely unlike sci-fi. I wish Americans were denied bank loans unless they could write a book report on it. Just.....GREAT.
August 4, 2019
not bad but not good
January 30, 2011
Bless his heart, I'm looking forward to Jeffery Rotter's next attempt. He's obviously a very well trained writer. His turns of phrase are evocative, his descriptives are full bodied...and yet none of that is enough to save this book.
I get the anti-hero thing. I get the whole decent into madness genre. I get the nod to Confederacy of Dunces...but it just never coalesces. I couldn't work up any empathy for the main character. (It's important to note that Jim is a main character, and not a protagonist. This novel doesn't seem to have a protagonist, as such.) Jim is an overly broad caricature of "enlightened man"...you know, the sort of guy who lectures women on feminist ideals. Yawn. As well, I can't decide if the way Jim named things was supposed to be a signal to the reader about Jim's mental acuity...or if the author was terribly unoriginal. I believe that Rotter is probably a good enough writer that it was intentional...but it's really hard to tell. Either way, the naming of the fantasy world objects is jarring.
The government agent responsible for checking terrorism levels at Holiday Inn pools is so absurdly over the top that reading his "transcript" was as painful as watching a Will Ferrel movie without anesthesia.
I had to force myself to finish this book. I kept waiting for it to all come together...for there to be a denouement...resolution...something.
The book held great promise, it could have been either very funny, or very tragic...or even both; but it never delivered. Mr. Rotter has a lot of talent however, and I look forward to watching his evolution as a writer.
I get the anti-hero thing. I get the whole decent into madness genre. I get the nod to Confederacy of Dunces...but it just never coalesces. I couldn't work up any empathy for the main character. (It's important to note that Jim is a main character, and not a protagonist. This novel doesn't seem to have a protagonist, as such.) Jim is an overly broad caricature of "enlightened man"...you know, the sort of guy who lectures women on feminist ideals. Yawn. As well, I can't decide if the way Jim named things was supposed to be a signal to the reader about Jim's mental acuity...or if the author was terribly unoriginal. I believe that Rotter is probably a good enough writer that it was intentional...but it's really hard to tell. Either way, the naming of the fantasy world objects is jarring.
The government agent responsible for checking terrorism levels at Holiday Inn pools is so absurdly over the top that reading his "transcript" was as painful as watching a Will Ferrel movie without anesthesia.
I had to force myself to finish this book. I kept waiting for it to all come together...for there to be a denouement...resolution...something.
The book held great promise, it could have been either very funny, or very tragic...or even both; but it never delivered. Mr. Rotter has a lot of talent however, and I look forward to watching his evolution as a writer.
October 5, 2012
This was a weird one. (Disclosure: I picked it up on the merit of a positive Coupland blurb on the back.) It's a rippingly quick read, and delightfully delusional.
Everything splits in three story streams-
-There is Jim Rath chasing his enlightened aquatic being (a Nautikon) around Colorado, and creating a "feminist" atlantis-like culture (Nautika) in his notebook. He remenisces about his recently estranged wife, but doesn't seem capable of any emotional clarity yet regarding her. For a man who "respects" women, he is awfully naive, which leads us to the weirdest narrative...
-His underwater kingdom, its queen O, the lost princess and last mother (and an inexplicable time leap of 1000 years or so.) There's more female genital imagery than you can imagine. Despite the sheer madness of Jim's ooee visions, I found myself wanting to paint much of this hallucinatory land of pearl, blood, and jellyfish. Feels like a whole other book.
-And the hearing transcripts with Agent Diaz, and Rep. Frost. I thought this thread would serve as the real-world counterweight to Jim's delusional narration, but as it turns out, the hearings reveal some shaky thinking and paranoid tall tales as well. There is no trustworthy narrator. Well, Frost seems straightforward.
I feel like the point of this one got over my head. I pictured a real-life manchild from my dating past as Jim, and despite that, I ultimately don't understand him. What's his deal with the ladies? What's his deal with his mom? The key's in his precious Nautika, I'm faintly sure. But what Jim was struggling to do, I still don't know.
Everything splits in three story streams-
-There is Jim Rath chasing his enlightened aquatic being (a Nautikon) around Colorado, and creating a "feminist" atlantis-like culture (Nautika) in his notebook. He remenisces about his recently estranged wife, but doesn't seem capable of any emotional clarity yet regarding her. For a man who "respects" women, he is awfully naive, which leads us to the weirdest narrative...
-His underwater kingdom, its queen O, the lost princess and last mother (and an inexplicable time leap of 1000 years or so.) There's more female genital imagery than you can imagine. Despite the sheer madness of Jim's ooee visions, I found myself wanting to paint much of this hallucinatory land of pearl, blood, and jellyfish. Feels like a whole other book.
-And the hearing transcripts with Agent Diaz, and Rep. Frost. I thought this thread would serve as the real-world counterweight to Jim's delusional narration, but as it turns out, the hearings reveal some shaky thinking and paranoid tall tales as well. There is no trustworthy narrator. Well, Frost seems straightforward.
I feel like the point of this one got over my head. I pictured a real-life manchild from my dating past as Jim, and despite that, I ultimately don't understand him. What's his deal with the ladies? What's his deal with his mom? The key's in his precious Nautika, I'm faintly sure. But what Jim was struggling to do, I still don't know.
October 15, 2011
The backmatter on this book might have overstated some the way this book engages the war on terror-- somehow I thought this'd be like DeLillo or something, and this book is considerably lighter than that.
In fact, it's pretty silly-- the main character is a deluded gent who believes, essentially, in a gynocentric Atlantis called Nautika, and this delusion takes over his life, making him cross paths with a homeland security agent who is, himself, somewhat or perhaps largely deluded. The novel springs in part from the conflict between their points of view (with occasional chapters that are, I guess, sort of the chapters from a novel of like in Nautika that the primary narrator is writing? He refers to notes he is taking, but they come out as much more narrative than note-like).
The writing has a lot to recommend it-- I kind of groan at puns, and the ones in this book are no exception, especially those that concern the undersea feminist paradise, from the estrodus to the vulvorum, the book is full of ridiculous terms that, well, would likely populate a b-grade fantasy novel set in such a world. And DHS agent Les Diaz really does sound a lot like GWB. I know this has been done before, but Rotter is very good at it, not, to the best of my knowledge, repeating actual malapropisms from our former Prez, but rather coining new ones in the same spirit.
I'm not sure about the ending-- it felt a little too much as well as too neat. But still, a really fun read that I almost abandoned when it didn't align with my expectations. I'm glad I persisted.
In fact, it's pretty silly-- the main character is a deluded gent who believes, essentially, in a gynocentric Atlantis called Nautika, and this delusion takes over his life, making him cross paths with a homeland security agent who is, himself, somewhat or perhaps largely deluded. The novel springs in part from the conflict between their points of view (with occasional chapters that are, I guess, sort of the chapters from a novel of like in Nautika that the primary narrator is writing? He refers to notes he is taking, but they come out as much more narrative than note-like).
The writing has a lot to recommend it-- I kind of groan at puns, and the ones in this book are no exception, especially those that concern the undersea feminist paradise, from the estrodus to the vulvorum, the book is full of ridiculous terms that, well, would likely populate a b-grade fantasy novel set in such a world. And DHS agent Les Diaz really does sound a lot like GWB. I know this has been done before, but Rotter is very good at it, not, to the best of my knowledge, repeating actual malapropisms from our former Prez, but rather coining new ones in the same spirit.
I'm not sure about the ending-- it felt a little too much as well as too neat. But still, a really fun read that I almost abandoned when it didn't align with my expectations. I'm glad I persisted.
November 5, 2009
I don't know why I even finished this book except that I always hoped something good would happen. It never did.
This novel is about a bona fide loser and his skewed grasp of reality based on the thousands of comics from his cherished comic book collection. The protagonist couldn't fit in with the rest of humanity if they put him in an internment camp for the chronically delusional. The sequences with the magical queen of oe, or whatever it was called, can be skipped. They add nothing to the novel and I feel they are very misogynistic.
I only gave this book two stars because it is well written. But I thought all of the characters are unlikeable, the plot is so long and drawn out that this book could have been easily shortened by about 200 pages and the ending isn't even sad or unpredictable.
Spend your time reading something else.
This novel is about a bona fide loser and his skewed grasp of reality based on the thousands of comics from his cherished comic book collection. The protagonist couldn't fit in with the rest of humanity if they put him in an internment camp for the chronically delusional. The sequences with the magical queen of oe, or whatever it was called, can be skipped. They add nothing to the novel and I feel they are very misogynistic.
I only gave this book two stars because it is well written. But I thought all of the characters are unlikeable, the plot is so long and drawn out that this book could have been easily shortened by about 200 pages and the ending isn't even sad or unpredictable.
Spend your time reading something else.
Read
May 29, 2016The crossing of realms is not a science fiction/fanstasy, but a reality. It happens everday, most people call it miscommunication. That is what we have here, "a failure to communicate". A man who wants to live in a perfect aquatic world, and seeks to create it. A man who has created world that is full of terrorists, seeking to create said at the expense of innocents. Their paths cross at a hotel and the insanity ensues. This book takes as many wild turns as a water park theme ride, and each one as enjoyable as the first.
I picked this book up at the library, as the title was remiscent of the Rumsfeld crazy quote. The book, in a strange way, pays homage to him by weaving a strange tale of non-existent worlds and non-existent threats. I recommend this book, and look forward to reading another title by the talented Jeffry Rotter.
I picked this book up at the library, as the title was remiscent of the Rumsfeld crazy quote. The book, in a strange way, pays homage to him by weaving a strange tale of non-existent worlds and non-existent threats. I recommend this book, and look forward to reading another title by the talented Jeffry Rotter.
September 7, 2011
Started out very promising, much like Tomcat in Love or A Confederacy of Dunces. The main characters have rather pristine views of themselves and their actions that, as the story unfolds, are obviously not as noble or misunderstood as they lead us to believe. Unlike the books listed above, though, this one didn't have enough forward motion on the narrative to keep the character device interesting beyond the first 100 or so pages.
I would probably try another book from this author in the future provided there is a bit more to the story then quirky characters.
I would probably try another book from this author in the future provided there is a bit more to the story then quirky characters.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 1, 2010
I'm going to be honest. I got to page 13 and stopped reading. Was it all that bad? No. But he names this underwater city Nautika. Nautika, really? You couldn't think of anything better than that?
I was drawn to the cover of this book more than the storyline. I didn't know much of what it was about, but 3 chapters in I was bored out of my mind. I was going to make myself read at least to page 50, but then I thought 'There are so many good books out there, why am I wasting my time on a book that bugs me?'
I was drawn to the cover of this book more than the storyline. I didn't know much of what it was about, but 3 chapters in I was bored out of my mind. I was going to make myself read at least to page 50, but then I thought 'There are so many good books out there, why am I wasting my time on a book that bugs me?'
June 10, 2010
Rotter is imaginative and funny, but this novel still managed to drag and I struggled to finish it. The characters are not believable, their actions are not believable, the climax of the plot fizzles, and the embedded fable of the underwater utopia brings the story to a halt several times. A quivering arrow of sexual and political themes, symbols, and absurdity aimed at the hearts of graduate students.
Want to Read
July 20, 2009Veni, vidi, I quit. This is staying on my to-reads because I think it has potential, but the immortal words of a recent book title sum up what I can say to this book at this particular point in my life: he's just not that into you (he being me, and the book being personified as you, or the other). I'm sticking to a healthy diet of non-fiction for awhile.
July 14, 2009
why would humans be hairless except for an interlude back in the seas? o might queen o of nautika teach us of your matrilineal ways... full disclosure: mr. rotter is a friend of mine but i swear the book is good.
October 18, 2012
This was recommended to me by two hard core readers...readers I respect. I liked the hipster language and story at first, but it lost me. I never even finished. I'm sure that's an unpopular statement, but it's what happened.
July 22, 2015
This is the first I've read of this author, whom I heard about from a review of a new novel of his. I'll be wanting to read more. This one satirizes the security madness "we" instituted during Bush's time.
September 3, 2009
Check out FWR's interview with Jeffrey Rotter: http://fictionwritersreview.com/inter...
September 25, 2010
I really just skimmed it. Jim was creepy and I didn't want to read about him.
June 3, 2009
A pretty good book. The first two pages were fantastic. A few bum premises but well-written and pretty well paced.
July 15, 2009
Enjoyed this book but feel at times the story could of used a bit more harrumph. Seemed to be missing something but a good first novel. Looking forward to Mr. Rotter's next novel.
August 27, 2009
Very Vonnegut-esque, only Vonnegut did it better. I have high hopes for Jeffrey Rotter, nonetheless.
November 5, 2009
Great allegorical story and one hell of an imagination. Check out Fogged Clarity's interview with Rotter: http://foggedclarity.com/2009/09/jeff...
December 6, 2009
collect comic books
a stalker of nautikans
water, water, *glup*
a stalker of nautikans
water, water, *glup*
March 22, 2010
Um... Wow... I don't know if I would recommend anyone read this book. I liked the writing style, but that's it.... Wow....
January 30, 2012
Quirky book but fun to read once you get use to the quirkiness.
July 21, 2012
I liked the prose much better than the story.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews