The Art of Lavish and Fraudulent Praise at Amazon - Man Camp by Adrienne Brodeur

Why do I have to be so negative? Is it because there is so much to be negative about? ... As I was wallowing in my thrill over the Claire Messud reviews being rediscovered (see post below regarding Emperor's Children), I decided to check the reviews of another crappy book that haunts my past, Man Camp by Zoetrope's former editor, Adrienne Brodeur. The novel was a flop, and with good reason--one of the many last gasps for the juvenile genre of chick-lit. And btw, when is someone going to fire the twits in book marketing and turn control back over to a few intelligent editors? When? Anyway, this 2005 catastrophe of a novel, Man Camp, was introduced to the reading public with dozens of fraudulent Amazon reviews (biz as usual). Though old news, I just had to throw these in by way of illustration and because they so nicely complement the crapola reviews of Emperor's Children, one of the worst published novels of all time.

Okay, here we go. The following Amazon reviews of MAN CAMP were supposedly written by real people unconnected to the publishing business, but who nevertheless talk like blurb-programmed robots. It's funny to think the marketing types don't see this stuff as utterly transparent to anyone with a brain evolved past that of a lemur.

• Women can't seem to live with men, but can't live without them, either. Why is that? Perhaps, biology is the answer. Men, unlike their counterparts in the animal kingdom, don't have a clue about how to court a woman.
  
• Although this is a great summer read, it's more than that. Brodeur's characters are both entertaining and touching, and face many issues we all grapple with ...
  
• Man-Camp is fun, witty and a great summer read. Title notwithstanding, the novel looks closely and fairly at both sides of the gender dating gap and comes up with some pretty amusing and accurate observations about both! The author's slyly crafted prose provided many laugh-out loud moments for me, as well as nods of recognition.
  
• Anyone who is ever been on a date will enjoy Man Camp. This story takes all the aspects of dating - the gruesome, the funny, the beautiful - and rolls them into a smart, lively, witty novel that is so fun to read. Male or female, you'll have a hard time putting this down. Adrienne Brodeur is someone to watch!
  

Finally, one purported to be from a college student in San Diego:

• As a second year college student, in the prime of her dating career, advice on the opposite sex is a valuable commodity. Adrienne Brodeur is brilliant. She weaves a tale so honest and REAL you'll find yourself laughing out loud at the blunders everyone can relate too.
  

Vs. reviews by real readers:

• Kind of corny and predictable, but I've read worse ... One thing I could most certainly do without and that has NO place in this type of novel is the detailed and in depth desciptions of milking and inseminating a cow. That's better left to a non-fiction book titled "Milking and Inseminating a Cow" ...
  
• As a woman, I'm a bit bothered by the whole idea of this silly sort of banality. I'm being generous with my two-star rating, because the idea is cute, however simplistic. Cute, however, is not the key to good writing or literary substance. The characters are "stock" and predicatable (see Kirkus Reviews for a similar opinion) and the writing is, at best, formulaic.

Deleted Amazon Reviews of "Emperor's Children" Found - So Pallette-Cleansing!

Happy days. I know, I know, it seems obsessive to continue to rant about the horror of the Claire Messud novel, but I found the old customer reviews which had been flushed from Amazon, and I could not be more thrilled! It seems Messud was not able to purge the web altogether. Therefore, without further ado, I will share a representative sample. And btw, I want to reemphasize that this particular novel garnered overwhelmingly lavish praise from every source imaginable connected to the mainstream publishing industry. Despite this fact, it was not even nominated for a single important book award (Pulitzer, National Book Critics Circle Award, National Book Award, Man Booker Prize, PEN/Faulkner). It is truly the poster child for all that now troubles American commercial fiction. Of the 154 reviews, the publisher's puppet-reviews read similar to this one by "Matt Spruce" ... i.e., rather like a blurb than an honest comment by a genuine human being:

As well as being decidedly-incisive, witty, and often deprecating, THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN is genuine, providing a glimpse (though it's sometimes quite tinted) into the lives of the New York Upper Crust. Amazingly, nothing in this book is superficial; somehow, miraculously, Messud connects the reader with the characters, taking them off their soapboxes and proving that they are, indeed, real people. Along the way, Messud provides rich language full of sensory details that only highten the pallette-cleansing quality of this novel. It's funny, insightful, powerful, has beautiful language, and is ultimately moving, when its characters are faced with tragedy. It's simply amazing.

Simply amazing and pallette-cleansing ... Honest evaluations--mostly focusing on the crappy prose, pathetic characters, and juvenile plot--read like this:

• I actually found myself highlighting sentences in the book and reading them to my husband at night -- for a good laugh! I can't recall ever reading so many clunky, tortured, obtuse sentences in a published book ... Some of the sentences have comically misplaced modifiers, some of them have multiple clauses offset by semicolons within clauses offset by hyphens, some of them are just plain weird.
  


• The characters are trite, their situations are pedestrian, and the story could have been set in any large American city (except, perhaps, LA), in spite of it being hailed as a great portrait of contemporary life (mostly at the top) in NYC ... I guess the only thing that can be said of the book is that none of the characters is all that likable or even sympathetic, which is about as close to "real life" as this book comes.
  


• I don't mind reading about characters that are unsympathetic and dull -- if the story has a point. Unfortunately, this book has no story. The author adequately illustrates the nature of narcissism, vanity, and wanton conceit; but her theme runs around in circles (tediously!) and never goes anywhere. She dangles plot lines that never ripen, and allows all the characters to remain static, essentially unchanged by the events that unfold.
  


• I agree with other reviewers [at Amazon]. It appears the author likes very long sentences; many paragraphs are absolutely incomprehensible. Are we to be impressed with the overuse of commas and dependent clauses so that it often takes two or three readings to render a sentence understandable? If this is the new era of grown-up writing, I'll stick to my mysteries and nonfiction.
  


• If the characters were people in or around my real life, I'd find a way to move to another country and become some real "Emporer's Child." These self-indulgent, pseudo intellectuals make me talk back to the book with bile in my mouth. "Please! Grow up! Get a life," are just a few of the comments that ran through my mind as I read this book. I am disappointed that the book reviewer from NPR gave it rave reviews, leading me to buy it, and I am disappointed that Amazon keeps suggesting that I would like it.
  


• Without a doubt, a favorite of the NY intellgentsia, as it reinforces their view of the importance of the pointlessness of their social structure. Named the NYT "Best Book of the Year", we can merely conclude that the editors of the NYT Book Review are young, shallow and poorly read.
  


• It isn't often that I will not finish a book. I can probably count on one hand how many times its happened. I actually wanted to throw this book across the room because it was so bad. I cannot figure out why it was so hyped. If the author was trying to impress me with all the big words she could throw in, she failed.

Gawker Skewers The Yiddish Cops

I just had to repost this from gawker.com about Chabon's latest. This is entertaining, yes, and what is wrong with him?

"Michael Chabon's new book has been troubled with a bad case of being crap. We've been trying to keep an open mind about The Yiddish Policemen's Union, but he's not making it easy. For starters, it's written in a "hard-boiled, Yiddish-inflected patois." Also, the only thing we've heard about Michael since The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay won a Pulitzer in 2001 has been his personal child-bearer Ayelet Waldman's irrepressible oversharing about his sexual prowess. Now we learn that HarperCollins pulled it from their publication schedule at the last minute! "While long gestation periods and multiple drafts aren't unusual in the publishing industry, the time and effort expended on behalf of Mr. Chabon's vision are illustrations of the book's importance to HarperCollins," the reporter claims. Exactly. Just switch the word "aren't" with the word "are," and the words "the book's importance" with the words "the book's terribleness," and that sentence becomes almost true."

He tries real hard to get this cliche detective thing going in the hook and it just flounders in an embarrassing way ... and so forth. Still, some good stylistic cinema, but not as top quality as Kavalier and Klay.