Normally, my rules for an unreview include an attempt to use E-Prime. In other words, I try my best to avoid using any iteration of the verb “to be.” Let me start this unreview by breaking that rule.
This shit is mean. I mean bleak. I mean if the Red Wedding got you to throw a book across the room, this one is gonna make you head out to the garage for the gas can and start a bonfire. I mean this shit makes Fight Club look like Club Med. In an interview, Chuck said, “My parents are dead. I can write what I want.”
That’s your warning. Your last warning.
When I started reading Adjustment Day, I felt like I was reading Fight Club, Part 3. That’s how I felt at the start. That feeling didn’t last long. I quickly grew to understand this was something different. Something meaner. Palahniuk has always been a satirist, but not all satire has to be mean. This shit is mean.
It’s mean to the identity politics of the Left. It’s mean to the separatist movements of the Right. Like the “protagonists” in the book, this book has a List. And you’re probably on it. I’m on it.
Talking heads who are too busy making millions commenting on the system rather than trying to fix it. They’re on the List.
Politicians who are too busy making millions abusing the system’s loopholes rather than trying to fix them. They’re on the List.
Conservative pundits who scream about globalists, Jews, and Libtards being responsible for all their problems. They’re on the List.
Liberals who weaponize identity politics to make sure they can point blame in all directions. They’re on the List.
Separatists in Texas, Alaska, California and The South who holler about bringing about the next Civil War. They’re on the List.
We’re all on the List. Including me. Including you. Really angry men with guns are tired of our shit.
And Adjustment Day is coming.
I read through the book, laughing all the way. When I laughed, Jessica looked at me curiously. I told her what I was laughing about and she did not laugh. She winced.
I’m laughing because I’m wincing.
This is Swift’s A Modest Proposal on Percocet. And unlike science fiction, this shit ain’t about what could be, it’s telling things the way they are.
People don’t care who the leader is so long as there’s a leader. That may as well be a quote from the book—and I mean the book inside the book, the book called Adjustment Day that’s being passed around by really angry men with guns. And two years ago, I would have scoffed at that thought. Not here. Not in America.
Yeah. I was wrong. I was wrong about a lot of things. Like saying “Adjustment Day is coming.”
Nah. It’s already here.
Well you’ve got me curious, like when I look at a landfill and wonder if anything good was tossed out.