Serious business! James prepares for some "political fallout" over owning a business in the past that LGBT people used. This is a strictly uber-religious person problem with no real grounds in reality, as the past few years have proven. I was a teenager in 2006, though--was it really political, social, and business suicide to be connected to LGBT people? Holy fuckwaffles, no wonder they have the highest suicide rate out of anyone else.
The main character calls for a press conference, because we hate LGBT people but we desperately need drama, to announce that he is pulling out of the political landscape and will blow his load elsewhere.
"Jim's face took on contortions that indicated that his mind was in a stressful state."
Dude, Proctor, you are the author. This is in Jim's POV. Why not just say how he feels instead of that garbage sentence?
It goes on to discuss how Jim Watkins had become "an icon of promise of and stability". Yeah, you keep saying that, man, but you've only said it. You've never said how this is or who it effects or what it means. You just assert things and "this is how it is in A Father's Discipline world" without ever going into detail about it. As an author, you can write "she has brown hair" and that's a fact in your world. What makes this word vomit rather than quality reading material is "Watkins is the greatest person ever" without ever expanding upon this idea. From what I've seen, he doesn't do anything that would live up to that title.
The crowd at the press conference "voice their disapproval" when Watkins announces the end of his political career. Fuck, Proctor. What did they say? Was it a quiet grumble? There are reporters there--did they really just stand there stunned? You really think they had no questions? Not a one of them?
He says that instead of spending all his time on politics, he'd like to spend his time on his son
Apparently, his announcement is so stunning that even the reporters are silent. Proctor, you realize it is literally in their job description to not be silent, yeah?
Watkins finds some solace in the time-honored traditional religious thought of "it's all in *insert deity's name here* hands/noodly appendages/trunk/wings/tentacles/whatever". If total lack of control is comforting (it is to some people), good for you I guess? I'd rather not feel like a helpless ant at the mercy of a psychopathic child, but that's just me. We create our own destiny, blah blah blah. Soapbox.
Then the very next paragraph has him finally freak out. Ha--so much for peace through submission to deity.
He goes into his office and packs up his crap, then apparently becomes catatonic until well after the building has closed and the janitor knocks on the door. Being a janitor, he has a key so he just comes in.
Apparently, Janitor Bruno and Watkins are friends. There is no explanation other than "strange how it even developed". Really, Proctor? You're that unimaginative? He didn't say, stay up all night at the office, working long hours into the night and the kindly janitor brought him a cup of coffee and the warmth of the coffee-flavored water (cream and sugar served by a smiling woman would be best, remember) and they bonded over an act of human kindness?
Proctor insists that Janitor Bruno is "sort of an armchair philosopher". Dude, you really don't have to tell your audience that. You can fucking convey that through things the guy actually says.
Well then, interesting revelation: Janitor Bruno has been the only character who speaks in slang, outside of the phrase "hang out" that was in quotations that I mentioned in an earlier post. This literary tool works well to hammer home a person's accent and whatnot. In this book's case, every slang word is put in quotations, so I am just imagining the character overemphasizing every slang word as if they are quoting some movie and only using slang "ironically". Everyone officially has a hipster 'stache in my mind's internal theater.
Proctor, you are a pretentious used catheter tube.
Like my own life choice to read your garbage, so I'm not sure what that says about me as a person.
Before I have a crisis of identity, let's move on to the subject at noodly appendage.
Does Bruno have any sagely advice? The wise janitor trope has become a bit cliche at this point, but Proctor likes cliches as much as the gods in American Gods and it's practically expected, so I anticipate his janitorial advice, like how to properly wax floors or something.
...
Words cannot express my disappointment.
Proctor is so fucking unimaginative and has so little to say, in terms of wise words, that Armchair Sage Bruno just says some generic shit like "The Lord is 'gonna' work things out, okay" and goes off to get doughnuts to cheer up Watkins. If this is Watkins' idea of a janitorial sage, I am not terribly surprised that he is so stunned by Rose Ann's lackluster shell of a personality.
When Bruno the Wise leaves, Watkins "sensed a divine touch on his shoulder".
There's a line of dialogue that the prose never quite addresses. I think the reader is supposed to infer that it's Christian God talking to Watkins, but it never distinctly says so. Never says there's a disembodied voice, or a voice in his head. So I'm going to assume that in this world, schizophrenia is contagious, and he caught the demons of mental health issues.
So from his perspective, he "hears": "See there. You're all right after all."
What a fucking wise deity you worship, man.
But from my perspective, his voice altered like a cartoon voice actor's and he spoke that out loud himself.
Proctor could have had Wise Bruno come back and finally deliver some copy pasta of sagely advice, but he never does. That might require work and we can't overtax
So all of this garbage has boiled down plot to what Proctor no doubt intends to be some really dramatic moment where, for some insane reason, Watkins is allowed to deliver a speech to the court before the trial commences. He spouts some reiterated trash about how he's given politics a miss and then does the unthinkable and tells the entire court that he used to *gasp* own a men's bathhouse and his son was being blackmailed about it.
"The courthouse, by this time, was filled with emotion."
Was it boredom? I felt boredom. And confusion. I also wondered if Proctor had ever read a book in his life, seen a movie... had a conversation with an adult.
"I was not part of that life style but simply saw a way to earn a substantial amount of money from the behaviors of many men."
Picking at the grammatical errors is too easy at this point.
Proctor, man, you really could have been more dramatic about this. It could have been his big reveal--ermahgerd, the District Attorney "used to be gay" or some other fictional nonsense word diarrhea. No, no--that might be too heavy for you, so Watkins was still straight of course; he would never be a part of that "life style". The scandal!
Loosely speaking, hookup culture is a lifestyle, sure. Being gay is exactly like being straight, dude. It's not a fucking "life style".
My incredible straightness prevents me from wearing color or glitter.
This is how they give you the gay.
"Behaviors of many men."
Behaviors.
How dare someone have anonymous sex with someone with the same genitals. Or really, anonymous sex in general. Celibacy, yeah. Castrate the deviants. They don't use their body in godly ways anyway.
Moving on before I make a nice long rant to people who've heard it all before...
After Watkins' comparatively long speech, Proctor describes the trial in a seven sentence summary.
A summary.
Once again, we skip over any real action and just have a damned summary of what could have been interesting events. I know I certainly would have enjoyed watching Proctor's anal seepage of words creep across the page and slither into my brain. With a sick delight, I might have reveled in his uneducated attempt at speaking legalese. I must remain disappointed.
Worse, rather than any despair at all that his son was sentenced to ten years in prison, Watkins just whines to himself about how he won't be seeing Rose Ann any longer. What a fucking selfish little lobster dropping.
I suppose his "Prize" wasn't much of a Precious, was it? It's like Gollum deciding, nope, not worth it.
"Gross darkness closed in as--"
As opposed to net darkness?
"--as Jim Senior trudged out of the courtroom into what seemed like empty air."
Air isn't exactly empty, dude. It's filled with dust particles, pollen, countless molecules, but we all know he's referring to the Holy Spirit being ever-present, wrapping the entire universe in an eternal, everlasting, all-encompassing full-bodied hug.
Jim Watkins has now hit rock fucking bottom.
Did he lose his house? Do people picket his business? Did he go bankrupt paying for Rose Ann's half-assed legal defense?
No, no. The idea of being poor is so alien and unbelievable to Proctor that he can't even imagine it happening.
Jimmy Manchild just opened his own law firm, and apparently being a business owner is "rock bottom". Dude, you quit your job of your own volition within this same fucking chapter. You get no pity. It's not even some ratty one-room office either; it has a lobby that seats eight people, a secretary office, and an "empty inner office". It must be lovely to think this is poverty, Proctor.
Who else shows up to his new law firm but Rose Ann: "'Yes, it's me, the Counselor,' Rose Ann said humbly."
Yeah, that just screams "humble".
It seems like she has found it in her heart to forgive him for owning a sex club for LGBT people. What a kind, wonderful, loving person she is.
She hires herself to work at his law firm and he says he needs her to act as secretary and a paralegal (not that Proctor knows that word--he used the term "investigator"). She says it's better than "office girl" so apparently that's the most a mere woman can hope for.
Also, apparently asking someone to be a "helpmate" is a proposal of marriage, according to the author. "Cunningly romantic", isn't he?
Rose Ann asks if they can call the firm "Rose Ann and Husband", which is the worst thing I've ever heard of, to which Jim replies that "Man is the head of the household."
Rose Ann thinks this is just darling of him to say and reminds him that the office isn't a house. She relents and decides the name should be "Watkins and wife" with a lower case "w" to show her submission, I assume.
They ultimately agree to "Watkins and Watkins".
Most fucking romantic marriage proposal ever.
So, in summary, since summary is Proctor's favorite thing: Watkins' son went to jail. Instead of placing a phone call, he and his two-dimensional love interest book a flight to Colorado because phones exist but there are no phones in Colorado. This succeeds in wasting time and being totally irrelevant to what I assume passes for plot in an alternative universe. Once owning a business that caters to gay people will ruin your career and get your son involved in drug peddling, ultimately landing the poor kid in prison for 10 years for a first offence as a minor, but Watkins prayed to Baby Jesus, so it's all okay.
My rating:
On a scale of tulip to powdered wigs, I'd have to say "because jet fuel can't melt steel beams." That's how much fucking sense this book made.
Say something fucking nice, you whore:
Proctor did a great job of writing an example of an extremely sheltered average middle schooler's grasp of politics, adult conversation, and real life.
If you want me to review anything specific, just let me know. It needs to be badly written and religious, but doesn't have to be Christian to fit my parameters. I have a preference for "free" and "short", just like I prefer my victims.
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