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You Comma Idiot
“You're the kind of guy who falls in love after one date.” Marginalized and alienated, perennial fuck-up Lee Goodstone is a resounding a low-rent hash-dealer with delusions of inadequacy. He's content to while away the hours of his life drinking, smoking, hanging out, playing the occasional game of hockey, and generally ignoring the world outside his tiny neighbourhood. But Lee's near-idyllic existence is about to grind into second gear. His friend Henry has been accused of kidnapping and Lee's been cornered by the local media. Another friend has decided to shoehorn his way into Lee's drug business. And he's just made it with his best friend's girlfriend. Clearly, Lee needs a Plan B — not easy for a guy who long ago decided that the correct plan of action is to have no plan at all. A hip, comedic novel, Doug Harris's YOU comma Idiot is a dark, demented, deeply delightful excursion into youthful alienation and ennui. (20120504)
328 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
February 4, 2019
Interesting style- not often you get to read a book written In second person. I liked the Ode to Montreal. But it felt ugly, reading it. Like, insight into the male mind of that particular male, kind of fascinating but unsavoury and disturbing, in all its simplistic banality- I believe it, it rings true, but it doesn’t spark much joy in the reading. It was honest, and that was the most disturbing part- is it about slacker mentality? Aimless existence of the terminally uninspired? There’s aching for belonging and companionship but mostly just horniness, it seems, as the identifiable drive. I think it was supposed to be about friendship and community and I suspect men might really identify with its rawness but, um, I didn’t. It just made me depressed. Too real? I want some fairy tale? Or just hope. Ambition? Aspiration? Not sure.
December 1, 2010
High marks to Harris for employing the little used second person point of view for an entire novel and succeeding. All the more challenging because he asks us to identify with the “you” of an aimless, small-time drug dealer named Lee who is difficult to admire. Lee’s voice is intimate, idiosyncratic and compelling. He presents himself as a Charlie Brown/Rodney Dangerfield kind of guy girls don’t like and guys walk all over but Harris leads you to a subtle, at first, questioning of the narrator’s self-characterization: he has money, his best friend is handsome, talented and well connected and, as the novel opens, a beautiful woman has had sex with him. He fact that this woman is Lee’s best friend’s girlfriend is the act on which the plot pivots and which changes Lee’s narrow, insular world.
What gives, you wonder? Is Lee or isn’t he one of the losers in the world of losers Harris creates?—twenty and thirty-somethings, suffering from arrested development, propelled by adolescent impulses rather than deep desires, each brought to life through defining details. These friends have little else but each other to sustain them; they make and break emotional bonds and the bounds of their friendships are tested as the story progresses.
What gives, it appears, is that Lee is more complex than he appears. He has little or no sense of his impact on others and is locked into the view that he’s nothing compared to his handsome, athletic friend Johnny, even though the actions of two women indicate he’s more to them than he thinks. The novel’s events take him from his “I’m of no consequence” view to one that begins, ever so gently, to allow him to take responsibility for his relationships with others.
The story is laugh out loud funny in places, poignant in others. The pace is quick and the dialogue snaps. One scene with a cab driver is notable because it relies solely on dialogue to convey the cabbie’s ethnicity. Harris is effective in allowing us to experience Lee’s emotions, such as his fear when someone breaks into his apartment and is humiliation when his drug boss makes it clear Lee’s cousin is taking over some of his route.
The novel disappoints near the end by the facile way it explains what happened with Lee’s friend Henry and the once-missing Darlene. However it redeems itself with a hockey game in which Johnny overcomes his anger and comes to Lee’s rescue in a brawl, giving us a satisfying resolution without implying everyone lives happily ever after.
What gives, you wonder? Is Lee or isn’t he one of the losers in the world of losers Harris creates?—twenty and thirty-somethings, suffering from arrested development, propelled by adolescent impulses rather than deep desires, each brought to life through defining details. These friends have little else but each other to sustain them; they make and break emotional bonds and the bounds of their friendships are tested as the story progresses.
What gives, it appears, is that Lee is more complex than he appears. He has little or no sense of his impact on others and is locked into the view that he’s nothing compared to his handsome, athletic friend Johnny, even though the actions of two women indicate he’s more to them than he thinks. The novel’s events take him from his “I’m of no consequence” view to one that begins, ever so gently, to allow him to take responsibility for his relationships with others.
The story is laugh out loud funny in places, poignant in others. The pace is quick and the dialogue snaps. One scene with a cab driver is notable because it relies solely on dialogue to convey the cabbie’s ethnicity. Harris is effective in allowing us to experience Lee’s emotions, such as his fear when someone breaks into his apartment and is humiliation when his drug boss makes it clear Lee’s cousin is taking over some of his route.
The novel disappoints near the end by the facile way it explains what happened with Lee’s friend Henry and the once-missing Darlene. However it redeems itself with a hockey game in which Johnny overcomes his anger and comes to Lee’s rescue in a brawl, giving us a satisfying resolution without implying everyone lives happily ever after.
November 23, 2010
Although not my usual style of novel, I quite enjoyed YOU comma IDIOT. Usually I’d summarize the book in my own words here, but the blurb from the back of the book does a pretty good job of describing the plot. The story is very much Lee’s life. Told from a first person POV that utilizes ‘you’ instead of ‘I’, the reader is sucked in to the ins and outs of Lee’s slowly wasting away adulthood. And Lee himself? What a character. A genuine normal guy (albeit one who sells drugs, is a handyman in a renovated warehouse turned apartment and sleeps with his best friend’s girl), Lee has a very pragmatic and sometimes cynical outlook on life. He’s incredibly harsh on himself, doesn’t always make the right decisions and skirts the law, but he’s a good guy.
While I may not have completely loved the book (though it’s a good story), I did love Doug Harris’ writing style. I can tell you right now, it was his prose and writing style that kept me sucked in and reading. It’s an incredibly well written novel, with smooth prose (even with some shorter sentences), good description, emotion and pacing, and has a very real and raw feel about it. The mystery surrounding Henry and the missing girl was done wonderfully, Lee’s emotions about Honey – his best friend’s girl – and his decisions regarding selling drugs and maybe getting a job come across loud and clear. YOU comma IDIOT is a book about life choices, events and the hassles of bad decisions.
While I may not have completely loved the book (though it’s a good story), I did love Doug Harris’ writing style. I can tell you right now, it was his prose and writing style that kept me sucked in and reading. It’s an incredibly well written novel, with smooth prose (even with some shorter sentences), good description, emotion and pacing, and has a very real and raw feel about it. The mystery surrounding Henry and the missing girl was done wonderfully, Lee’s emotions about Honey – his best friend’s girl – and his decisions regarding selling drugs and maybe getting a job come across loud and clear. YOU comma IDIOT is a book about life choices, events and the hassles of bad decisions.
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August 12, 2016This review was deleted following Amazon's purchase of GoodReads.
The review can still be viewed via LibraryThing, where my profile can be found here.
I'm also in the process of building a database at Booklikes, where I can be found here.
If you read/liked/clicked through to see this review here on GR, many thanks.
The review can still be viewed via LibraryThing, where my profile can be found here.
I'm also in the process of building a database at Booklikes, where I can be found here.
If you read/liked/clicked through to see this review here on GR, many thanks.
April 2, 2011
Lee is a small-time dealer, pot smoker, lazy and always the wing man in his group of Montreal friends. Then his friend Henry is accused of kidnapping and murdering his girlfriend, and somehow Lee gets caught up with the media and the police.
On top of that, he somehow ends up in bed with his best friend's girlfriend, and his drug source is more than a little pissed off at all of the attention and drama.
Now what?
Definitely urban and darkly funny.
On top of that, he somehow ends up in bed with his best friend's girlfriend, and his drug source is more than a little pissed off at all of the attention and drama.
Now what?
Definitely urban and darkly funny.
December 12, 2020
Review available in Antigonish Review 171.
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October 24, 2010You comma Idiot is, in short, the story of Lee Goodstone, small-time drug dealer and general layabout. One of his friends stands accused of murdering a 17-year-old girl, a rival is horning in on his drug business, and he has just inadvertently slept with his best friend's girlfriend, by which I mean to say that, while he can't claim the idea wasn't entirely his, at least he wasn't the instigator. Complications, understandably, ensue.
All this is given to us in the second person, a tricky gambit. Some reviewers have complained that the second-person litany of Lee Goodstone's faults alienates the reader; no reader likes to be informed, page in and page out, that he is an idiot. But this misses the point. Second person narration does not, obviously, seek to tell us about ourselves; it's a rhetorical device a narrator employs to persuade us to take a certain perspective on the viewpoint character. And this, in turn, may raise the question of just who is narrating, and why. It gets complicated.
You gotta be ambitious to try it, in other words. And to begin that attempt by calling out the best-known second-person narrative, that staple of creative writing texts, Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City ... well, you gotta have guts.
Both You comma Idiot and Bright Lights, Big City feature protagonists who dabble with drugs -- and won't leave home without their sunglasses. But Harris is the bizarro-McInerney. McInerney's characters are glamorous, while Harris's are losers. McInerney's narrator loses his wife; Lee Goodstone takes up with a woman who has left her boyfriend. And in what is surely not a coincidence, McInerney begins his novel by telling us what kind of guy his protagonist is not, while Harris takes great pains to tell us what kind of guy Goodstone is. Those reviewers who complain that Harris alienates the reader are missing the point.
Jay McInerney opens by making excuses: "You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are...." McInerney's narrator argues that his character is better than this, that he doesn't belong here, that this is not really him. Harris does precisely the opposite. "You're the kind of guy who falls in love after one date," he declares. "You're the kind of guy who rehearses a conversation fifty times in his head and then blows it when it's for real. You're the kind of guy who...." And so on, and so on, and so forth, and so on: Harris devotes his entire opening chapter to ensuring that we know precisely what kind of a guy Lee Goodstone is, and the portrait isn't pretty.
If McInerney's narrator argues for absolution, Harris's portrays a toxic self-loathing. But despite the litany of condemnation, Goodstone soon emerges through his actions as no idiot at all, especially when compared with the company he keeps. He simply doesn't have faith that he can be anything more than what he is.
And this is where the problem lies: the novel, in a sense, seems to lack the faith that it can be more than what it is. The characters don't emerge as fully formed; Harris seems content to leave most of them flat. Goodstone is so averse to taking himself seriously, and so singularly lacking in ambition, that he rarely emerges as anything more than a comic figure. Harris is a more subtle writer than he seems to be, as when Goodstone watches a child, still out playing after all the others have been called it; we're given to understand that he could be watching himself, that he must either eventually go in, or exist forever as a kind of Peter Pan of the streets. But Harris continually undermines these effects by playing for the quick laugh, a laugh that is, unfortunately, sometimes forced. You comma Idiot seems not to be able to decide whether to be a purely comic novel, and so falls short of its promise.
All this is given to us in the second person, a tricky gambit. Some reviewers have complained that the second-person litany of Lee Goodstone's faults alienates the reader; no reader likes to be informed, page in and page out, that he is an idiot. But this misses the point. Second person narration does not, obviously, seek to tell us about ourselves; it's a rhetorical device a narrator employs to persuade us to take a certain perspective on the viewpoint character. And this, in turn, may raise the question of just who is narrating, and why. It gets complicated.
You gotta be ambitious to try it, in other words. And to begin that attempt by calling out the best-known second-person narrative, that staple of creative writing texts, Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City ... well, you gotta have guts.
Both You comma Idiot and Bright Lights, Big City feature protagonists who dabble with drugs -- and won't leave home without their sunglasses. But Harris is the bizarro-McInerney. McInerney's characters are glamorous, while Harris's are losers. McInerney's narrator loses his wife; Lee Goodstone takes up with a woman who has left her boyfriend. And in what is surely not a coincidence, McInerney begins his novel by telling us what kind of guy his protagonist is not, while Harris takes great pains to tell us what kind of guy Goodstone is. Those reviewers who complain that Harris alienates the reader are missing the point.
Jay McInerney opens by making excuses: "You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are...." McInerney's narrator argues that his character is better than this, that he doesn't belong here, that this is not really him. Harris does precisely the opposite. "You're the kind of guy who falls in love after one date," he declares. "You're the kind of guy who rehearses a conversation fifty times in his head and then blows it when it's for real. You're the kind of guy who...." And so on, and so on, and so forth, and so on: Harris devotes his entire opening chapter to ensuring that we know precisely what kind of a guy Lee Goodstone is, and the portrait isn't pretty.
If McInerney's narrator argues for absolution, Harris's portrays a toxic self-loathing. But despite the litany of condemnation, Goodstone soon emerges through his actions as no idiot at all, especially when compared with the company he keeps. He simply doesn't have faith that he can be anything more than what he is.
And this is where the problem lies: the novel, in a sense, seems to lack the faith that it can be more than what it is. The characters don't emerge as fully formed; Harris seems content to leave most of them flat. Goodstone is so averse to taking himself seriously, and so singularly lacking in ambition, that he rarely emerges as anything more than a comic figure. Harris is a more subtle writer than he seems to be, as when Goodstone watches a child, still out playing after all the others have been called it; we're given to understand that he could be watching himself, that he must either eventually go in, or exist forever as a kind of Peter Pan of the streets. But Harris continually undermines these effects by playing for the quick laugh, a laugh that is, unfortunately, sometimes forced. You comma Idiot seems not to be able to decide whether to be a purely comic novel, and so falls short of its promise.
April 15, 2016
You've picked up enough books for this trip but walking past the shelves you see at the end of the row and at eye level this book. The title isn't great, it's a bit downmarket really, but its mix of blunt and playful appeals to you. You take the book off the shelf to see what it could be about. Oh, it's slacker fiction, stories about losers, the sort of book you often enjoy, because you can identify. And it's set in Anglo Montreal. You like Montreal.
You wish there were more books like this. No precious tuning of every word and sentence. Just pick a voice and tell the story. Its characters are funny without needing to be the sort of quirky literary inventions that have never walked the earth. The choice of second person narration helps you climb inside self-critical headspace of the central character. Exploring him from the same angle could have been too whiny in first person, too clinical in third. The worry with a book of less obvious literary aspirations like this is that it could feel too thin, too formula. There may be a couple spots here when that line is approached, like when the (anti)hero goes hiding beneath a bed, but overall the story is inventive and constantly funny, it has its own voice, it has heart, it has the right amount of heft for the kind of story it wants to tell.
You wish there were more books like this. No precious tuning of every word and sentence. Just pick a voice and tell the story. Its characters are funny without needing to be the sort of quirky literary inventions that have never walked the earth. The choice of second person narration helps you climb inside self-critical headspace of the central character. Exploring him from the same angle could have been too whiny in first person, too clinical in third. The worry with a book of less obvious literary aspirations like this is that it could feel too thin, too formula. There may be a couple spots here when that line is approached, like when the (anti)hero goes hiding beneath a bed, but overall the story is inventive and constantly funny, it has its own voice, it has heart, it has the right amount of heft for the kind of story it wants to tell.
September 29, 2011
Not only does Goose Lane release some of the best literature this country is capable of (see: this year's wholly remarkable quartet of The Town that Drowned, The Time We All Went Marching, Tide Road, and Kalila), but last year's YOU comma Idiot is one of the best, and my favourite novel of 2010. Writing in the second person, a format only off-putting for the first paragraph, Doug Harris' tale of a low-level drug dealer eking out his existence in Montreal by doing as little as humanly possible is a treat on every level. His dialogue is the highlight, as crunchy as Elmore Leonard and quick-witted as Nick Hornby, but his empathy for character and his sharpness in motivation and plotting keeps the novel humming. So sure of itself, so fleet-footed yet grounded, it is hard to believe this is a debut novel. It's as entertaining as anything out there, better written than most, and it's lack of presence on major awards lists is a devastating oversight by people who cannot comprehend that just because it's funny, that doesn't mean it's undeserving of attention.
Read the full review here.
Read the full review here.
July 22, 2013
You Comma Idiot is a comedic novel about a directionless guy drifting through life who suddenly has several problems hit him at once, disrupting the rut his life had become. It is written in the second person, which isn't used often. The book isn't hilarious, but it is amusing. And yes it does take place in Montreal, so you Montrealers out there will recognize the locales portrayed in the story.
The narrator is the idiot of the title, but after a few pages of self-deprecation reveals that he considers himself more intelligent than those around him. His actions do not back that up however, and often his much-maligned side-kick demonstrates more sense.
The narrator does show some growth by book's end, but very little,extremely little, probably less than the author intended. That is, my impression is that the author thought his main character was much more impressive in those final scenes than he actually is. But the novel is after all a set of character types set in a Montreal milieu the author is very familiar with, used for comic effect. I suggest that the city of Montreal is actually the main and best - developed character.
The narrator is the idiot of the title, but after a few pages of self-deprecation reveals that he considers himself more intelligent than those around him. His actions do not back that up however, and often his much-maligned side-kick demonstrates more sense.
The narrator does show some growth by book's end, but very little,extremely little, probably less than the author intended. That is, my impression is that the author thought his main character was much more impressive in those final scenes than he actually is. But the novel is after all a set of character types set in a Montreal milieu the author is very familiar with, used for comic effect. I suggest that the city of Montreal is actually the main and best - developed character.
February 10, 2014
«Ce que je suis en train de te dire, c'est que tu devrais prendre un peu de temps, mais après, oublie ça. Passe à autre chose. Ceci est arrivé, cela est arrivé. Les choses ont changé. O.K. Beaucoup de choses ont changé. "Les choses changent", Lee. Ne prends pas trop de temps. Ne prends pas une éternité. Soit pas le genre de gars qui prend une éternité. Sois pas le genre de gars qui se complaît à ne rien faire. Tu auras soixante ans un jour. Essaie de comprendre. Qu'est-ce que tu auras derrière toi? Y aura-t-il quelque chose? À un certain point, il est tout simplement trop tard, vieux. Est-ce que tu comprends? Trop tard. Pour accomplir quoi que ce soit. Pendant combien de temps penses-tu attendre avant d'essayer de faire quelque chose d'utile, au moins?»
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 20, 2014
I enjoyed reading this book. Funny writing. The only fault was that I times I could not understand who was speaking and had to reread areas numerous times because lines were spoken down the page without fallowing she said he said. Over all good read, differnt story of a average guy living around some not so average people.
December 5, 2010
cbcreads 2010 book
September 9, 2014
Couldn't read it. The second-person thing just doesn't do it for me.
October 3, 2014
Fun to read.
April 10, 2017
If you happen to be someone who tried to hang on to their teenage years during your twenties you will probably be able to relate to this book. And, let's face it; who didn't try to hang on to their teenage years during their twenties. You may not see the situation of the book as something you relate personally to, but certainly you will recognize similarities in social immaturity that are very humorous. If not yourself, others you may know.
This story reads true as if the author is just recalling his past and perhaps he is with a few twists. It's refreshing to read a story that doesn't sound made-up or over done and can survive on its own merits. I found it very amusing. Probably would appeal more to a male audience, but I don't see why the girls wouldn't get a chuckle or two out of it as well.
This story reads true as if the author is just recalling his past and perhaps he is with a few twists. It's refreshing to read a story that doesn't sound made-up or over done and can survive on its own merits. I found it very amusing. Probably would appeal more to a male audience, but I don't see why the girls wouldn't get a chuckle or two out of it as well.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews