A colossal waste of the finite time I had on this Earth.

This book was pitched to me, really, as the gateway into a club of hipsters who managed to have the patience to suffer through this book's over-explanation and lack of editing so atrocious that new words are made around it to justify its unforgivable length and stupidity.

The death of the author does not make this a work of art. The individual parts that would make this funny or prophetic-the singer president, the garbage-launcher to Canada, people dying from a giant cheeseburger held by the Statue of Liberty, the Stand-By-Me Quebec wheelchair cult, and a movie so good people shit themselves to death watching it-are all buried in overexplanation and an utterly miserable slog of Hal's dad's ghost, weird criticism of Alcoholics Anonymous as a concept, addiction, and suicide. All of these are done much better in other books, but forcing them all in one place and watching it unfold is like looking into a madman's brain and hearing others proclaim it as genius.

There is no interpreting this book as a whole. At most, people can cite parts of it, stripped from their context in order to show off what they imagine are the few nuggets of intelligence this book has to offer. I argue it never had to be written this way. This book is the literary equivalent of running a marathon or losing your virginity: after so much hype, it happens and you think "Well, now what." Nothing changes. You will not change as a person, unless you're insufferable and begin writing "w/r/t" in emails, and in such a case I don't think the book changed anything so much as exacerbated it.

There is a chance you might like this book, that everything I've said could be appealing to you. If what I said sounds funny, go for it! But for the love of God, if what you were sold on was "it's a very long book and few people read it lol" then there is no promised land, there is no elite members club, there is no self-improvement to be found.