offensive
The Poor Man’s Guide To Suicide
Warning: Extreme Profanity
by Andrew Armacost
Overall: Steer clear from this book at all costs
This book is the biggest, steamiest piece of shit that I ever read in my life.
I cannot begin to explain how mad this book made me. It was disgusting, racist, misogynistic, and a complete cheap rip off of which is a fantastic classic. I would never give this book to anyone and if I ever saw this book in the bookstore I am boycotting that bookstore for the rest of my life. This book better not cross paths with me in a dark alley and I swear if I met this author he would feel my wrath about the extreme river of disgust I felt for this racist garbage.
I received this book from Netgalley in return for an honest review.
The Poor Man’s Guide to Suicide is the biggest fucking lie of a title you would ever get from a book.
Summary: Wesley Weimer is an annoying, whiny, racist, misogynistic pig who is twice divorced with two children that he has no custody of. He lives in a cheap, run down shotgun style house and works twelve-hour shifts in a Level 4 Correctional Facility in Indianapolis. He is “depressed”, as the author likes to describe it (but I will talk about that later), and is constantly thinking about committing suicide due to his shitty life and his shitty existence. However, for some reason, that doesn’t make much logical sense for someone who is so seriously depressed as the author likes to describe to us, does not want to kill himself.
My initial suicidal ideations were pretty straightforward but have recently grown more elaborate, more ambitious, more demanding on the imagination.
And over the time period of Christmastime to January of the next year, Wesley is “plotting” on how to end his life. What would Wesley like to do? He would like to instead find someone willing to kill him for some small monetary payment.
True, most people don’t know many professional killers but, lucky me, I’m a prison guard.
As someone who has struggled with my own depression, I can understand the strong desire to want to end your life. But you want to know the problem? Wesley goes in briefly about how he accidentally killed some escaped prisoner and that is what caused the downward spiral. But I do not believe that one bit. Wesley’s depression immediately goes away when his best friend gets in a very depressed slump and Wesley appears to be the better off one as his best friend struggles with family issues and his life that is falling apart.
Because The Author Likes Buzzwords and Shocking Topics: THE TOPIC OF WESLEY WANTING TO KILL HIMSELF IS ONLY ONCE MENTIONED IN THE FIRST 3% OF THE BOOK AND THEN LATER TOWARDS THE 60% MARK FOR MAYBE 10 PAGES. Wesley spends 80% of the book reminiscing about how fucking amazing he was in high school and about all the chicks he had sex with and about what he does in prison that means NOTHING.
Wesley has a friend named Cooper (Coop) who is a happy-go-lucky guy unfortunately with an alcoholic father who gets himself in and out of trouble. Cooper is one of Wesley’s only friends, but you know what Wesley likes to do? He likes to insult his friend. How? By calling him a fat slob and saying that Cooper isn’t deserving of his college degree. After all, WESLEY is the smart one!
I was always the more studious of the two, yet Coopers the one who graduated from college
Don’t get me fucking started on this college shit. Wesley likes to go on and on about how he wasn’t able to go to college. He blames his father because his father wouldn’t pay for him to go to college.
”Well, if you really wanna talk about it. It might’ve helped, you know, you would’ve paid for college. Like you said you would. I might’ve been someone. Maybe not. But maybe.”
Oh BOO-FUCKING-HOO. Sorry, Wesley. You’re not the only one whose parents didn’t pay for your college. But you could’ve done other fucking things other than being the waste of oxygen that you are now.
His first ex-wife, Claudette, who is the mother of his daughter Gretchen is a nurse who went to college while Wesley worked. SHE OFFERED TO HELP HIM GO TO COLLEGE. BUT AGAIN HE REFUSED.
”Ever heard of, you know, debt being in the best interests of our long-term financial future?”
“Nope.”
Oh wait! EVEN HIS FRIEND COOPER SAID THAT WESLEY COULD LIVE RENT FREE AT HIS PLACE TO LET WESLEY GO TO COLLEGE.
”You don’t want what? To try??” (yes that extra question mark is in there)
”No charity.”
Sorry, Wesley. Money doesn’t fall out of your fucking ass and you’re not getting handouts. Get a loan, go into the military, do something and pay for school if you want to go so bad. Quit bitching.
Because The Author LOVES Fat-Shaming: If you read this book, I would like you to point out a character that ISN’T fat. Wesley is the only “in-shape” character of this entire book and boy does the author like to make this clear. Everyone is a flat slob, including his own 14 year old daughter who he likes to also remind us who doesn’t have any friends, will always be made fun of, and should not be wearing what she wears because she’s too fat for it.
Okay, she’s a fat unhappy teenager. But a beautiful person, I think.
Oh, that’s not the only time.
I believe, she thinks that making herself look taller lends her the appearance of being less fat.
If his daughter isn’t safe from his rampage of fat shaming, what about his best friend?!
Like me, Cooper once had a pit-bull body. We used to hit the weights six days a week. While I’ve slimmed down, he’s kept his bulk, though a good bit of it has turned to flab. Our bodies have devolved in opposite directions.
What about others?
I should’ve accepted his friendship when he offered it. I know that goodhearted slob must be rotting away behind four walls of loneliness because he’s fat, I mean really fat, and a little smelly, and getting old, and he never started a family. I bet the few friends he had are married now and couldn’t care less about him. He has that pitiable Saint Bernard aura.
Trust me, there is more of this fuckery. I looked up the author and I saw he’s some muscle-bound dude and great, I’m glad that you’re in shape but you have no right to insult people including the daughter who seems to love Wesley. This guy is the biggest fucking prick and I bet if he even had custody of his daughter he would’ve been the most emotionally abusive parent. If you think such cruel things about your child do you really think that helps them? Do you think that’s going to motivate them positively?
Because The Author Is Blatant With His Racism: I swear one of the most angering parts of his book was Wesley’s clear racism; no, the racism that is littered throughout the entire book with Wesley and many of the characters who happen to talk. Wesley likes to hide—or explain—this racism with the excuse that he has two biracial children and his two ex-wives are black. Other than that, the narrative is frequently filled with mentions of race where black men are compared to animals with giant, threatening penises.
”I said I’m goin to the chapel.” He stared me down, still naked and brandishing three quarters of a hard-on, by the way.
NOT ONLY THAT, but the only black women are only mentioned in Wesley’s sexual relationship with him. Claudette, Wesley’s first love is described as beautiful and intelligent, but we are only forced to hear about her in all of their sexual endeavors as well as her early-age promiscuity. The author, or is it Wesley, even has the nerve to describe one instance of when he and Claudette had just finished having sex.
”Baby, might sound crazy but sometimes I forget you’re white.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know.”
But I think maybe I do know what she meant.
SORRY MISTER WHITE AUTHOR, I GUESS YOU LIKE TO FETISHIZE THE BLACK BODY AND MAKE BLACK MEN NOTHING BUT THEIR GIANT PENISES, SOMETHING THAT SHOULD BE PRAISED AND SEEN AS THE PINNACLE OF SEXUALITY, I GUESS? LAST TIME I CHECKED BLACK MEN ARE NOT BREEDING ANIMALS.
Oh yeah, and when they don’t have dicks the size of tree trunks, they are completely ignorant or just plain stupid.
…the door finally swung inward and I was greeted by gilt teeth and gold chains. Yellow, that nitwit, dressed like a teenaged gangster. The smell of a recently consumed meal poured out the house along with the low, steady bumping of gangster rap in the background:
“Mother-fuck you, damn bitch-ass nigga.”
I was completely disgusted with this ridiculousness. And don’t get me started on Wesley’s second wife, Cassandra who is literally described as some black-face minstrel performer.
My second wife had the darkest skin encountered in nature. So black it was almost blue. Her big brown eyes…would bug out cartoonishly whenever she was shocked or angry, which was often. Her narrow waist accentuated the noticeable verbosity of her derriere. Her breasts were ample, though nothing to write home about. We usually did it from behind. Doggy style, if you like.
Oh yeah, and she can sing well too!
Oh, and that woman could really sing. Jesus could she sing. She’d hum a few bars with that soulful voice of hers, just hum, and I’d have to stop whatever I was doing.
Probably his inner slave master enjoying some traditional negro spirituals. I can hear the ragtime music playing in the background. Oh! But what about his daughter? She’s half black. Well not really. She’s only attractive, but that is only because she has passable, Eurocentric features.
Nice nose. Pretty eyes. Olive skin. No zits. Cooper says ‘she could pass for being white’.
His son, however, can’t. At least that’s what I’m assuming, that’s maybe why he doesn’t love him.
Frankly, I don’t like my son. Maybe I love him, maybe I don’t. Regardless, I don’t like him. I just don’t like him.
Wesley and the author can go fuck themselves. But don’t let that racism put you off, Wesley and the author don’t mind flaunting their privilege to mock and copy from black culture—the same culture that Wesley (and the author) love to insult so much.
”What’s up homee?” he says ebonically. Our antiquated terms of endearment are spoken ebonically. It’s a holdover from our youth, from Da Hood.
The author constantly makes all of the black characters uneducated, speaking in slang and calling him honky and cracker and whatever dumb ass shit he can think of. In turn we got him and his friends mocking black culture, insulting young girls to try to “change their ways” and at one point he even had a white supremacist whose only issue is that he didn’t speak proper English.
Because I Smell Pork and It’s Not The Special: A stretch, but the fact that Cooper’s father was drunk driving and killed an innocent kid, Cooper (who is a cop) and Wesley go to smuggling in tobacco and nicotine gum so his father can pay off some Aryan Brotherhood. Not only that, but to get custody of his son, Wesley buys crack cocaine and hides it in his sons backpack to blame it on his ex-wife and her new boyfriend.
The worst fucking part? That is the end of the fucking story. THAT IS THE HAPPY ENDING. The happy ending that this piece of shit got his son through planting evidence while all his cop buddies just turned a blind eye because that’s what they do for each other. AND WESLEY IS ABLE TO GO TO SCHOOL WITH ALL THE DRUG MONEY THAT HE GOT FROM SMUGGLING IN WHATEVER THE FUCK IT WAS BECAUSE I STOPPED PAYING ATTENTION TO THIS BULLSHIT
Because Wesley is a “Nice Guy”: Wesley masturbates. Constantly. He likes to tell us about how much he masturbates and how fucking alone he is (in fact, it’s the reason he got with his second wife). But now he’s alone and bitching because he’s alone. Wesley is the guy that would complain about the friendzone. Wesley is the guy who will passive aggressively guilt trip into you dating him. Wesley is the guy who wears a fedora (sorry not sorry). He likes to think that just because he’s “smart” (I guess if you’re able to breathe without thinking you could be considered smart) and he is not a fat fucking Jabba the Hutt or whatever excuses he constantly made. His entire narration of himself was a fucking advertisement.
But sorry Wesley, I will not be another black female who you fetishize.
Growing up in a downtown white-trash ghetto, I had presented myself as an athlete, a jock, because it had behooved me to do so much more than if, for example, I had joined the choir—I did love to sing—or auditioned for a play with the drama club, where I probably belonged.
Oh and don’t get me started. This thirty-something year old can’t seem to get past high school. It was the peak of his life, sadly, and he will never let you live that down.
RESPECT HIM. HE WAS SO GREAT IN HIGH SCHOOL. RESPECT HIM. AND PLEASE, PLEASE NON-WHITE LADIES, PLEASE HAVE SEX WITH HIM.
Oh yeah, and he’s sooOOoOOOooOOOoOoOOoooOooooo deep.
My tenuously existing hovel, with it’s leaking pipes, dripping faucet, imploding roof and thin drafty walls, serves as an accurate picture of my soul…if I have a soul.
Because The Author Isn’t Original: When I was about 20% in the book, I was thinking, “This book is like someone read Catcher in the Rye and thought they could write a book like that so they ate the pages and shit out these results to send to publishing”…and guess what! I was pretty much right! Wesley is a cheap, Vietnamese Pokemon Crystal bootleg version of Holden Caufield. Holden had teenage angst, bubbled within his intelligence and his nihilism. Wesley’s whiny bitch of an attitude comes from the fact that everyone is better than him and he doesn’t like it. He even gives his daughter a copy of Catcher in the Rye in which I shouted out “OH MY GOD”. He even gives a cheap ass “phony speech”….and he even uses the word phony several times in the book.
Me, I blame the upper class. I blame the snobs; I blame them for not being snobs, for not giving us any aspirations. They’re just like us only with bigger houses, safer neighborhoods. Seabrook was wrong about her Nobrow culture: lowbrow trickles up, sure, but there’s no highbrow trickling down, no throngs of enlightened proletariat lined up for some celebrated ballet or even the latest art house flick. Give me a break. We are bombarded daily with non-art that’s cranked out by automatons for people trained by television to have bad though consistent taste in everything so that marketing is that much easier.
Give me a fucking break. Gouge my eyes out now before I read more of this bullshit. I can read books and spew off quotes just like I can listen to the radio and adopt whatever fucking opinion the personality is puking up. That doesn’t make me smart, deep, intellectual, philosophical. And you know what’s worse? Being a pretentious ass by having this sort of attitude and looking down on everyone for not being an annoying bitch like you.
Because This Writing Is Atrocious: The formatting sucks. The author cannot spell if that meant that his book was going to be a hit (it wouldn’t even be a hit if he fixed these typos). The formatting was annoying to read and was filled with multiple punctuation marks (??). I believe it is evidence to prove that someone just slammed their head against a keyboard to write this book.
It was a struggle to finish this book and dammit if I don’t need trauma counseling after this. This book is a lie. You get maybe twenty pages of suicide while you get some broke ass, racist, misogynistic piece of shit character that would much rather care about getting laid than doing shit to get his kids.
Don’t get this book. Don’t buy this book. Don’t look in this book’s direction. Don’t use this book for toilet paper.
Actually, buy this book if you hate someone. Give it to them to piss them off.
And then you go read Catcher in the Rye.
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