Sarah Montague wants to prove to the world that she's a smart, modern writer.
She knows her alphabet. She can write with a fifth grader's sentence structure. And if we ask nicely enough, she will even illustrate her books with stick figures.
"You Can Be Anything from A to Z: An Anti-inspirational Guide to Adulthood" is 53 pages of cynical, offensive writing, portrayed in an imitation child's handwriting font and accompanied by non-cute, non-deep imitation children's art.
It's listed under "humor" at Amazon.com, but really, the only humorous thing about it is that it ever got published in the first place.
This is pretentious American generalization at its worst.
The book is composed of 26 sections, one for each letter of the alphabet and each devoted to a type of person.
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A drawing and a one-to-three sentence description of why that particular breed of person is unimportant or laughable accompanies every section.
For example, the T section reads "Todd is a 'trekkie.' He's really into sci-fi and actually dresses up like Spock at Star Trek conventions . he's a virgin. Do you like tv?!" And for L, Montague writes "Luke is a lawyer.
His parents have lots of money, so he was afforded opportunities most kids don't get . he will always be a little better than you or me. I hope you have really rich parents!"
The book attacks everyone from drug addicts to artists, hitting a few especially shallow lows with passages about Fiona the failure, Sasha the schizophrenic and adopted Amy.
Fiona's a failure because her husband left her, Sasha is stupid because she hears voices and Amy was dumped on other people because her parents didn't like her.
All of these immature, simplistic stereotypes are followed by a demeaning and senseless little question such as, "Are you good enough so people won't leave you?"
These questions are no doubt meant to imitate children's books, but only manage to further emphasize the book's complete failure to be thought-provoking.
Author Montague seems to think she's a well of witty insight into adulthood.
In the back of the book is a short blurb about the author, which states only that "she currently lives in New York," and that "she does not know how to cook."
Using the creative genius inherent in that statement, she should have just put "she does not know how to write." It would have been deep. Really.
A possible motive of the book is to point out everything bad about American society, such as the stereotypes and assumptions that cause rifts between classes and races.
If this is the case, Montague has fallen short by a mile. She's put all of these evils into one concise little tribute to apathy and self-righteous arrogance.
Or maybe she was just trying to point out how pointless and fake the American lifestyle really is. Thanks, Ms. Montague, we know.
Films such as "American Beauty," as well as authors more talented than you, have already shown us.
