Overton Window: Chapter 1-2

[sabotabby]

Chapter 1

The passage that follows was in one of the excerpts that I’d read before. I was vastly disappointed to read the prologue because, as an opening, it’s one of the worst I’ve ever read. As it stands, it’s still one of the worst chapter openings I’ve ever read, but that’s not nearly as impressive.

Most people think about age and experience in terms of years, but it’s really only moments that define us. We stay mostly the same and then grow up suddenly, at the turning points.

While you savour that Chicken Soup For the Right-Wing Blowhard’s Soul, let’s meet our protagonist, Noah Gardner.

The thing with hack writers is they always make their protagonist a slightly younger, better-looking version of themselves. When teenage fanfic writers do it, we call the character a Mary Sue, but this seems unfair when you read a description like this:

Good-looking, great job, fine education, puckishly amusing and even clever when he put his mind to it, reasonably fit and trim for an office jockey, Noah had all the bona fide credentials for a killer eHarmony profile. Since freshman year at NYU he’d rarely spent a weekend night alone; all he’d had to do was keep the bar for an evening’s companionship set at only medium-high.

Give me raven tresses, violet eyes, and a great singing voice any day. This description is so bland and insipid that I already want to punch the guy in the face. The only specific information we get about this character is that he’s been slutting it up since undergrad and, at 28, he’s decided that he’s had it with those shallow women in bars. Mary Sue might be irritating, but a misogynist trope she’s not.

Conveniently as he’s contemplating the error of his tomcat ways, Noah sees a hot chick pinning a red, white, and blue flier on the company bulletin board and ogles her. She’s “aloof,” dressed like a hippie but not quite like a hippie, and he declares her to be the woman of his dreams. We are also treated to the worst sentence I’ve ever read in fiction, and it’s only page 10:

Top psychologists tell us in Maxim magazine that the all-important first impression is set in stone within about ten seconds.

You guys, I am not sure I can make it through this book.

Noah ogles a girl at work. That’s the only thing that happens in this chapter. I’m not even kidding.


Chapter 2

We are immediately subjected to some painfully awkward flirting between Noah and the Aloof Hippie But Not Really a Hippie Chick. Our hero is desperately in love. He drops his Tootsie Roll. She ignores him. He persists. We’re treated to a horrifying passage:

Without a doubt all the goodies were in all the right places, but no mere scale of one to ten was going to do the job this time. It was an entirely new experience for him. Though he’d been in her presence for less than a minute, her soul had locked itself onto his senses, far more than her substance had.

I would hate to think of what a woman would look like if her goodies were in the wrong places. “You have such beautiful breasts! Pity that they’re on your knees.” Also, what sort of substance are we talking here? Is she excreting something? I want to know these things, Glenn Beck!

There’s much more physical description of this woman, who has auburn hair, or possibly chestnut, and light green eyes, but I’ll spare you. Think teenage fanfic writer, and then take it down a few notches.

The flyer she’s putting up is for a talk put on by Founders Keepers, which, unfortunately, is a real thing as well. They are one of those groups that believe that the Founding Fathers had magical powers. Curiously, they have a list of recommended books on their website, but The Overton Window isn’t one of them.

We finally figure out what Noah does for a living—he’s the VP of a PR firm, she sorts the mail, she pretty much insults him and he nods along to it. His daddy is the firm’s owner. Her name is Molly, she has a tattoo and wears a cross, and she tells a pretty pathetic joke about Noah’s Ark.

Their interaction reads like low-grade romcom, with a hint of kinkiness implied in her initial rejection. We know nothing about his politics, but presumably, a flyer for a teabagger-esque group would elicit some surprise and discomfort for most people. Instead, he decides he’ll go to her meeting because he wants to get into her tight weathered jeans. (Still not kidding.)

Conspiracy count: 2
Chapters in which nothing really happens: 2
Demonstrations of Noah Gardner’s puckish amusingness: 0

Comments

[lienne.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes it would.