I have no idea how I’m going to justify giving this story four stars in this review.

UPDATE—since this story has not updated its chapters in a year, I have downgraded it to three stars, as there are only 15 chapters or so for readers.  While the review below still applies for the writer’s capabilities, there’s no point in giving 4 stars to an incomplete story with no signs of completion.

I pride myself on my literary background and the time I put into analyzing stories.  I try to set aside personal feelings and look at a story’s plot and logic and premise when reviewing, to let the work stand on its own merits.  Then, I’ll factor in my personal reaction as well.  Some stories have technical merit, but just don’t interest me personally, and I’ll give them a four stars just because there is tremendous skill.  Sometimes the premise or technique is flawed, but the story affects me in an powerfully emotional way, and I give that four stars.  There’s a balance between how well-written a story is, how much it pulls me in as a reader personally, and five star stories do both.  Stories with flaws in technique that can’t get me interested start getting three stars or less, depending on how much potential I see in the author.

For example, (using films to illustrate because they’re more well known) if I was a film critic, I would give "The Changeling" by Clint Eastwood a four star rating.  It was emotionally affective, had good performances, dealt with history in an interesting way.  I found it overlong but technically beautiful.  I would also, however, give "Stepbrothers" starring Will Farrell a four star rating.  It doesn’t have any of the artistic depth of Eastwood’s movie, but it was tremendously hilarious to me personally.  But it too was overlong, and I find that less forgivable in comedy.  However, "The Usual Suspects" is a five star film, in my eyes, because it’s technically superb, thrilling, suspenseful, dark and funny and fascinating.  Changeling succeeds as art, Stepbrothers succeeds as personal enjoyment, and the Usual Suspects does both.  With me on my rating logic?

So, based on my perspective, I would never rate Bob Collins as five star, because I personally find the narrative’s subject matter grotesque.  I can’t give it a three star, because the technique is sound and I actually find the story hilarious.  So four star it is—the story is a work of art I would never show my parents.

But how do I explain it to you, the reader looking for something to spend your time on?  Especially if I want to maintain any kind of personal integrity?

Here goes:

At first glance, The Adventures of Bob Collins seems like a poorly written letter to Hustler.  It’s filled with grammatical mistakes, a ridiculously self-congratulatory protagonist narrator who is immensely proud of the size of his enormous genitalia, and obscene language and subject matter.  The plot concerns him meeting a young prostitute in a brothel and his subsequent rough love affair with the woman, who quickly becomes his bride.  This would be beyond R rated if it was a movie.  Its harsh, rude, and completely disgusting.

So far, the story should deserve maybe one star, and I should be telling you to run in the opposite direction.  However, on closer inspection, the merits of the story shine out.  The author is utilizing bad grammar consistently, as part of the protagonist’s characterization.  Otherwise, the description, dialogue and vocabulary of the narrative are skillfully handled with masterful technique, and often with humorous results.  The more I read this, the more I’m convinced that The Adventures of Bob Collins is an experiment in absurdist fiction.  Comedy for its own sake, through the form of the story.

The protagonist, "Bob Collins," has to be seen as a caricature.  He seems like a guy who sits around watching football, drinking beer, and watching Die Hard and then looking for a hooker, and writing about it for Hustler.  He is a constructed stereotype, the worst of American culture, and entirely proud of it.  I don’t like anything about Bob, aside from his ridiculously funny narrative.  But the narrative is funny because it’s coming from a cartoon-figure.  This seems to me to be the author, poking fun at cultural memes, tongue in cheek.  Only through this perspective can I stomach the harsh language and brutal landscape of Bob’s world.  Because otherwise, I’d stop reading after the very first sentence of the first chapter.  Read it for yourself if you don’t believe me.

I don’t recommend this to anyone for its plot or characters, as a novel that people will enjoy reading.  It’s too obscene for that.  Instead, I recommend it as an example of a skilled author utilizing text to play a game and make societal commentary.  A place where obscenity isn’t used for shock value, as it is in most movies or hip hop or novels.  It isn’t there for "realism" either, like in the way Stephen King’s characters will swear considerably (though King was never this vulgar) because people swear in real life.  The obscenity exists, in my eyes, as a medium to comment on obscenity in our culture, pointing out how absurd it has become.  By creating an absurdly obscene protagonist in an absurdly vulgar world, the author makes it a funny commentary on culture and its values.

At least, I hope that’s what’s going on.  Otherwise, my credibility is shot to hell.

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