Junior

I bought Macaulay Culkin's book "Junior" on Ebay for $1.10. One dollar and ten cents. Obviously, with a deal like that, I couldn't say no. I refused to look at any of the reviews online until I had read the book. I don't normally take reviews to heart anyway, because I mean, I'd prefer to find out for myself. But you can't help it. Once you've heard somebody's opinion, it's seered into your brain forever and interupts your own thoughts. It's like if you read Harry Potter before the movies started coming out - now all you see in your mind's eye when you read Harry Potter is Daniel Radcliffe.

I finished the book tonight (it took me less than 24 hours to finish. I have a broken ankle. What the hell else would I be doing with my time?). I immediately jumped online to read reviews, and I must say, I was shocked with what I had come across. Words such as "incoherent", "meaningless", "pretentious" and "simply terrible" appeared on my screen. I closed the screen faster than the page took to load. I musn't spoil this book with bad reviews.

Culkin advises the reader very early on that he is not a writer. If you're looking for a book with a clear beginning, middle, climax and ending, then you shouldn't read Junior. You will simply be disappointed. This is not a novel. It is not a work of fiction or non-fiction. It is not a book of poems or letters. Nor is it excerpts from drunken ramblings or crazy ideas and scattered thoughts. It is a combination of all of the above, and that is exactly the point. I found it difficult to understand why readers couldn't grasp that. I mean, talk about "pretentious".

I'm not sure if I am being biased because I write in a similar fashion to Culkin, but more than anything, I found the "incoherent"-ness of his passages to be strangely comforting. It reminds me of the way everything really is, not the way an editor wanted it to be. It's raw and it's honest, and it's as close to reality as you're going to get in a publication. A peice of work that has been sugar-coated is far more "meaningless" than this book.

And you know what's "simply terrible"? The inability to look beyond "pretentious", "incoherent", "meaningless" passages and not be able to connect with the book and relay it back to your own personal thoughts.

Happy reading.