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Watch Out
Book by Suglia, Joseph
Paperback
First published September 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
November 15, 2020
Look at all those crybaby one star reviews! Wah wah wah, you fucking infants. This book made such an impression on me when I read it during class in my senior year of high school that 11 years later, unable to remember its title, I literally went through my earliest Amazon order history to find it. Could only remember it as "the bizarro book with meat on the cover" and now I find it's worth like 50 bucks a copy! Damn my teenage habit of trading in books.
February 28, 2012
There are three things that make a novel worth reading: the story, the characters, or the writing itself. Finding a book that gets all three right is rare enough, but even rarer (I've noticed) is finding a book that gets the most important one right: the writing. It doesn't matter how clever your plot or how interesting your characters, if you can't write with some measure of skill, you are -- let's face it -- a hack.
(Nothing against hacks, per se. The name itself sounds derived from the blunt, utilitarian chops used to fell a tree, and although the process lacks precision or grace, there's no arguing it gets the job done.)
If there's one thing that can be said about Suglia's "Watch Out," it is that the man is not a hack. He can most certainly write. Every once in a while the prose is scarred by a clumsy cliche ("hard as diamonds") or made flatulent with a preponderance of ten-dollar words, but I'm not entirely sure such missteps aren't intentional. After all, the rest of the writing is so accomplished and organic, it's hard to imagine the man penning it would allow it to be flawed by anything that isn't intentionally self-mutilating.
And there's a hell of a lot of mutilation in the book. The mucilanginous metaphors sometimes drip, sometimes spurt off the page, recalling Burrough's Naked Lunch or Ellis's American Psycho. People lose toes, get shot, vomit torrents of orange fluid, and have their faces removed. And the scatology? Well, let's just say a lot of folks in the book forget to flush.
I think Suglia forgot to do some flushing, too. He has a lot to say about society's self-congratulatory lunacy, and although his point is about as hard to miss as a giant carnivorous butterfly, it's also cleverly parlayed. However, Suglia's writing may be stunning and even gut-wrenching, but it is also maddeningly unctuous -- in every definition of the word. The characters? The story? There's not really much of either. Even our main man Barrows is nothing more than an erudite flesh puppet for a self-destructive ideology. The book doesn't read like a novel so much as it does as visceral exegesis of conflicting philosophies.
This isn't so bad for a while. Suglia is funny enough to keep the repetition from drowning itself out, and he plays it straight enough to keep you turning the pages even as you're shaking your head. Unfortunately, it grows stale -- sickeningly, nauseatingly, you-will-get-dizzy-and-ill stale -- in the last forty pages or so. The book is arranged in two parts, the first of which concerns the madly narcissistic experiences of a man named Jonathan Barrows as he awaits an interview for a professorship at The School of Learning. The second part is a collected pastiche of events from Barrows' life, most of them murderous. Ostensibly a mural of his ego-mania, the second part -- placed where it is -- is gratuitous and out-of-whack. Barrows (and the readers) learn a lesson about life in the first half, but evidence of that lesson doesn't carry over to the second half. Instead, you're treated to such a slew of graphic carnage that the message of it all gets blared out by the white noise of the violence.
Suglia calls this "excessive fiction," and it's a fitting title. I haven't decided either way whether there's much utility to the practice, but I will admit that, on some level, it's entertaining, if not simultaneously distracting and off-putting. With Suglia's talent, however, I wonder how much more he could accomplish given more challenging goals. It's like Scorcese directing a twenty minute commercial for hemorrhoidal ointment. It may be funny. It may reveal unmistakable glints of the talent behind the camera. But you still get the impression that the guy is better than the things on which he's chosen to focus.
Halfway up and halfway down on this one, but --- if I may be cute -- I'll be watching out for his next book.
(Nothing against hacks, per se. The name itself sounds derived from the blunt, utilitarian chops used to fell a tree, and although the process lacks precision or grace, there's no arguing it gets the job done.)
If there's one thing that can be said about Suglia's "Watch Out," it is that the man is not a hack. He can most certainly write. Every once in a while the prose is scarred by a clumsy cliche ("hard as diamonds") or made flatulent with a preponderance of ten-dollar words, but I'm not entirely sure such missteps aren't intentional. After all, the rest of the writing is so accomplished and organic, it's hard to imagine the man penning it would allow it to be flawed by anything that isn't intentionally self-mutilating.
And there's a hell of a lot of mutilation in the book. The mucilanginous metaphors sometimes drip, sometimes spurt off the page, recalling Burrough's Naked Lunch or Ellis's American Psycho. People lose toes, get shot, vomit torrents of orange fluid, and have their faces removed. And the scatology? Well, let's just say a lot of folks in the book forget to flush.
I think Suglia forgot to do some flushing, too. He has a lot to say about society's self-congratulatory lunacy, and although his point is about as hard to miss as a giant carnivorous butterfly, it's also cleverly parlayed. However, Suglia's writing may be stunning and even gut-wrenching, but it is also maddeningly unctuous -- in every definition of the word. The characters? The story? There's not really much of either. Even our main man Barrows is nothing more than an erudite flesh puppet for a self-destructive ideology. The book doesn't read like a novel so much as it does as visceral exegesis of conflicting philosophies.
This isn't so bad for a while. Suglia is funny enough to keep the repetition from drowning itself out, and he plays it straight enough to keep you turning the pages even as you're shaking your head. Unfortunately, it grows stale -- sickeningly, nauseatingly, you-will-get-dizzy-and-ill stale -- in the last forty pages or so. The book is arranged in two parts, the first of which concerns the madly narcissistic experiences of a man named Jonathan Barrows as he awaits an interview for a professorship at The School of Learning. The second part is a collected pastiche of events from Barrows' life, most of them murderous. Ostensibly a mural of his ego-mania, the second part -- placed where it is -- is gratuitous and out-of-whack. Barrows (and the readers) learn a lesson about life in the first half, but evidence of that lesson doesn't carry over to the second half. Instead, you're treated to such a slew of graphic carnage that the message of it all gets blared out by the white noise of the violence.
Suglia calls this "excessive fiction," and it's a fitting title. I haven't decided either way whether there's much utility to the practice, but I will admit that, on some level, it's entertaining, if not simultaneously distracting and off-putting. With Suglia's talent, however, I wonder how much more he could accomplish given more challenging goals. It's like Scorcese directing a twenty minute commercial for hemorrhoidal ointment. It may be funny. It may reveal unmistakable glints of the talent behind the camera. But you still get the impression that the guy is better than the things on which he's chosen to focus.
Halfway up and halfway down on this one, but --- if I may be cute -- I'll be watching out for his next book.
November 4, 2009
I honestly thought I would love this book going into it. Just from the back cover description it sounded so out there and interesting.
Once I started in on it the less and less I got interested in reading more. The only good thing I can think of saying about it was that it was short enough to finish in 2 days and move onto another book.
My main problem with Watch Out was the writing style. Things didn't seem to flow well and sometimes I'd just be completely confused as to what was happening or where everything was going. There would be little tangents on nothingness thrown in at random, at least I couldn't piece these onto the main story or what there was of it. The only example I can think of this is like in the book American Psycho where you'd have chapters on what kind of music the main character liked in depth. Or the level of detail Patrick Bateman put into describing what everyone was wearing. But in that book it kind of worked as setup on how the main character thought and saw the world. In Watch Out I couldn't connect it with anything.
After finishing the book all I could think of was how the author was trying to write a cult classic. It all felt too forced and unfortunately turned me off for ever reading any other books the author might have out there.
Once I started in on it the less and less I got interested in reading more. The only good thing I can think of saying about it was that it was short enough to finish in 2 days and move onto another book.
My main problem with Watch Out was the writing style. Things didn't seem to flow well and sometimes I'd just be completely confused as to what was happening or where everything was going. There would be little tangents on nothingness thrown in at random, at least I couldn't piece these onto the main story or what there was of it. The only example I can think of this is like in the book American Psycho where you'd have chapters on what kind of music the main character liked in depth. Or the level of detail Patrick Bateman put into describing what everyone was wearing. But in that book it kind of worked as setup on how the main character thought and saw the world. In Watch Out I couldn't connect it with anything.
After finishing the book all I could think of was how the author was trying to write a cult classic. It all felt too forced and unfortunately turned me off for ever reading any other books the author might have out there.
August 6, 2011
Absolute trash. No plot whatsoever. I hated the main character. Do not read this book. I would use it for kindling.
July 13, 2019
Joseph Suglia needs to seek help...
September 14, 2021
this book is kinda bananas!
it's fairly graphic but wildly funny. it kinda falls apart at the end, and i think the protagonist kills britney spears(a blond pop star who's "life is a circus")!(?)
it's fairly graphic but wildly funny. it kinda falls apart at the end, and i think the protagonist kills britney spears(a blond pop star who's "life is a circus")!(?)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 28, 2007
Suglia hopes to make an impression with his novel "Watch Out". "Watch out" is the refrain, throughout, a heightened state of alert pumped into the brain stem with no explanation and no true context. "Watch Out" is the story, or several stories, of Professor Jonathan Barrows, a cold, violent, self-pleasuring egoist.
The world of Jonathan Barrows is grotesque, stupid, and, like Jonathan Barrows, focused on Jonathan Barrows. While it is not rare for characters to have an exceptionally large ego, in this case Jonathan's view of the world is largely corroborated by the world's responses to him--even taking into account the self-colored glasses we're reading through.
Jonathan Barrows is the pinnacle of humanity--so far removed that he, at times, considers himself not a member of humanity at all; while at other times he considers himself the only human. We join him on a trip to a small college town where he is to have an interview, and the first half of the book follows that arc--from the filth-ridden train that introduces us to Jonathan's contempt all the way through to a FINAL SHOWDOWN ORGY with his interviewer.
The latter half of the book is comprised of increasingly violent and surreal vignettes of Jonathan's formative years, plus one farewell send-off to cap things--the only indication in the whole work that there might be some semblance of law and order in the world represented.
Jonathan's incessant auto-arousal grows tiresome, but is balanced with the surreal abusement and dislivingmentation of a number of other parties. Suglia pushes the human body's natural resilience to absurd and engrossing dimensions with his vivid descriptions.
The language used is colorful and clever--Suglia is a skilled user and playful inventor of language, and the inventions intensify the unsettling mindset, the disturbitude of it all. I laughed frequently while reading, either at a turn of phrase or at the audacity of the character. Laughter was both glee and surprise, though some scenes gnawed on my brain and others verged on making me uncomfortable.
"Watch Out", with its detached violence, surreallity, and repetition, puts me in mind of a modern pop culture riff on JG Ballard's "The Atrocity Exhibition". Finishing the book left me slightly disconnected from the world, as my mind struggled to come to terms with what I'd just read. It had no real denouement, with the first climax coming halfway through and subsequent climaxes coming more quickly until it just sort of withered off at the end. Watch Out!
The world of Jonathan Barrows is grotesque, stupid, and, like Jonathan Barrows, focused on Jonathan Barrows. While it is not rare for characters to have an exceptionally large ego, in this case Jonathan's view of the world is largely corroborated by the world's responses to him--even taking into account the self-colored glasses we're reading through.
Jonathan Barrows is the pinnacle of humanity--so far removed that he, at times, considers himself not a member of humanity at all; while at other times he considers himself the only human. We join him on a trip to a small college town where he is to have an interview, and the first half of the book follows that arc--from the filth-ridden train that introduces us to Jonathan's contempt all the way through to a FINAL SHOWDOWN ORGY with his interviewer.
The latter half of the book is comprised of increasingly violent and surreal vignettes of Jonathan's formative years, plus one farewell send-off to cap things--the only indication in the whole work that there might be some semblance of law and order in the world represented.
Jonathan's incessant auto-arousal grows tiresome, but is balanced with the surreal abusement and dislivingmentation of a number of other parties. Suglia pushes the human body's natural resilience to absurd and engrossing dimensions with his vivid descriptions.
The language used is colorful and clever--Suglia is a skilled user and playful inventor of language, and the inventions intensify the unsettling mindset, the disturbitude of it all. I laughed frequently while reading, either at a turn of phrase or at the audacity of the character. Laughter was both glee and surprise, though some scenes gnawed on my brain and others verged on making me uncomfortable.
"Watch Out", with its detached violence, surreallity, and repetition, puts me in mind of a modern pop culture riff on JG Ballard's "The Atrocity Exhibition". Finishing the book left me slightly disconnected from the world, as my mind struggled to come to terms with what I'd just read. It had no real denouement, with the first climax coming halfway through and subsequent climaxes coming more quickly until it just sort of withered off at the end. Watch Out!
April 4, 2013
Even years after reading this novel, I am still not entirely sure what to think of it. It's certainly audacious, and Suglia has a definite voice all his own. But of what value and of what artistic merit is that voice, I keep asking myself.
This is a well-written novel, and Suglia manages to fully embody the first-person narrator. Is that good or bad though, when your protagonist is a despicable cretin who is head over heels in love with Himself? It's a lot of sick and twiated fun at first. I couldn't put the book down as I read the first 100 pages or so, but then...
The novel kind of fell apart in the last half. Suglia went off on nonsensical tangents and the book petered out instead of building to an explosive and shocking finale.
Suglia can definitely write, there's no question about it. He just needs to grow up and focus more on narrative than on his style and ability to shock.
This is a well-written novel, and Suglia manages to fully embody the first-person narrator. Is that good or bad though, when your protagonist is a despicable cretin who is head over heels in love with Himself? It's a lot of sick and twiated fun at first. I couldn't put the book down as I read the first 100 pages or so, but then...
The novel kind of fell apart in the last half. Suglia went off on nonsensical tangents and the book petered out instead of building to an explosive and shocking finale.
Suglia can definitely write, there's no question about it. He just needs to grow up and focus more on narrative than on his style and ability to shock.
January 6, 2014
It was only after I started reading this book, that I had learned from an Amazon page that the author "disavows" this version of the book. There is a definite version of the book that was released two years later. My question is: Why bother? Revisiting will not save this novel from itself. This is officially the most pretentious novel I have ever read. Both the main character and the prose were controversial for the sake of controversy. I could actually imagine the author thinking: "I will cover up my bad ideas with my rich vocabulary". All the sex, violence, misanthropy and the preoccupation with the self didn't add up to anything bigger or valuable. Considering a "definite version", I don't think there is much to be done to improve this book. I also happened to read a big part of it in a park, which made me feel guilty for reading about extreme violence and bizarre sexual acts near little children, but I digress. Bottom line: No "definite version" will be worthy of my time.
March 6, 2009
One of the most bazaar, sexual but poetic books I have ever read. What have I learned from reading this book?
Simply put: Just how kinky a person write about sex and human nature. Now onto the movie! More to the point: Its about how we relate to one another. Saw the movie yesterday, (March 5) also very disturbing.
Simply put: Just how kinky a person write about sex and human nature. Now onto the movie! More to the point: Its about how we relate to one another. Saw the movie yesterday, (March 5) also very disturbing.
June 26, 2010
I have to say, I hated this book and couldn't finish it. I'm all for twisted and weird stories, but this guy was trying way too hard to go for shocking. There was no redeeming value for this book and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
November 29, 2008
Both an interesting and strange read.
April 30, 2009
Catch my review here: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-83...
August 19, 2011
I can't believe I read the whole thing! There is nothing for which I can recommend this book, least of all the language. There are some (William Burroughs like) interesting characters and imagery.
January 18, 2012
Awful, just dreadful. How dare this man spew hate towards Chuck Palahniuk.
August 6, 2012
If this guy set out to write a book that everyone is going to read then say, "Well that was just slightly disturbing..." he did it.
December 12, 2013
One of the worst books I have ever read. Puerile drivel that sets out to shock, and not even cleverly. Misogyny also rampant. Fucking hell.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews