The Subject of Steve

The Subject of Steve

Cost: 99 cents
Amazon.com Cost: $11.86

Quality: *----

Zack:
The second I found out our dollar store even had a novel section my mind exploded with possibilities. What if there's a masterpiece hidden under this rubble of outdated sports almanacs and Backstreet Boys biographies? Is it possible that the great American novel has been long lost in this 99 cent treasure trove?

I assumed so.

So when I noticed that the Subject of Steve came highly recommended by novelist Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club and Survivor (one of my personal favorites), I thought I'd give Steve a chance and pick up this forlorn title from underneath a pile of Batman Begins novelty books.

I'm going to be completely honest with you. I couldn't even make it past the first chapter. After that I flipped through it and read passages here and there. It was a painfully dull experience. Although Steve sits unassumingly on my book shelf, I still can't read it. It's not necessarily "bad," just so self-assuming, self-indulgent, and blandly uninteresting, that I simply cannot pay attention.

It's meant to be a satirical piece of literature making a stab at the dullness of the human condition. Steve is a man who has been diagnosed with a new and unusually vague disease, one that will kill him, eventually. What's supposed to follow is a "hilarious" and "introspective" journey. It doesn't. From what I can tell, that's the entire plot, and there's no development beyond that.

It's almost as if the author is reading the book over your shoulder, periodically poking you to say "Hey! Get it? It's SATIRE! You know!? Isn't this clever and off-beat? It's smart too! Do you want me to lecture you about philosophy?"
"Sure," you say, "since the characters are so one dimensional, I'm willing to at least hear your point. Any point. Really."
"Well that's too bad, because I don't have one," he would say. "Instead I'll ask you questions with no answers and provide you with quotes that are deep only on an extremely shallow level."
"Oh. Okay." You'll say, as you silently weep for those poor souls who spent eleven dollars for a book you could gladly buy ten more of for that same amount, just so that you could burn them all in a satisfying pile.

Final Words:

Maybe I'm being too hard on the book. It is paper, has good quality binding, and well written quotes on the back by other authors. Unfortunately, I'm out one dollar I could have spent on a sack of moldy mangoes. So maybe I'm just bitter. Yeah, that's it.