Sock

Penn Jillette's first novel is weird and entertaining, which isn't really surprising. Also unsurprising is the fact that it's a platform for Penn to stump for atheism and, to a lesser degree, libertarianism, but in this he's just too heavy-handed and thus ends up preaching to the choir (irony!).

Penn Jillette.. The louder half of Penn and Teller.

Penn wrote a book back in 2004. When i saw it in the book store, i said to myself, that looks awesome! The story is narrated by the sock monkey of a NYC Police Diver. Said diver runs across the body of an ex-girlfriend and spends the rest of the book determined to locate the killer and take him down. Did i mention it was narrated by a sock monkey?

The book (aptly named “Sock”) was one of the lousiest reads i have ever mucked through. The story was interesting. the characters kept me interested as the story progressed, i was surprised by the ending. the problem was the damn sock monkey. as far as narrators go, he was the most annoying, hard to follow story teller i have ever run show more across. i slogged through the book determined to find out who the killer was, but everytime someone asked me about the book i would tell them i hated it. it was annoying and painful to read.

I was not lying.

The monkey is overly descriptive, worse than Anne Rice, and we all know that she can describe a room for 50 pages with no difficulty. The monkey was full of itself and held itself up as if it were the worst thing ever created. it would tell stories and jokes. It would say dirty things and then put itself down for being dirty… and we are really talking 7th grade humor here.. so far from being truly dirty that it was once again annoying.

The monkey spent a fair amount of time in the past listening to the radio by itself. The damn monkey was written so that it would end nearly every paragraph with the lyrics of a song. You may think i am exaggerating, and i am, but not much. You would find odd paragraphs with no song reference, but most paragraphs… LYRICS. Just when you think you can get past the asinine phrases and buggy bits of the narrator character, he tosses out lyrics to a song. You compulsively stop what you are reading, make a mental check mark as to if you know where the lyrics come from , then continue. The continuation is painful. You FEEL the interruption.

The lyrics were occasionally witty in their placement, but more often than not they appear to have been part of a list Penn was trying to get through. A prefabricated list that if he didnt find a way to use completely, he would have felt as if his “Magic Trick” had failed. In this case, the magic trick being that Penn actually got people to finish this poorly written novel of junk phrases and decent ideas.

To be honest, though i finished it and enjoyed the core story, it took until page 112 out of 228 for it to begin to become passable. HALF the book… It became passable when the monkey got cut out a bit and we started reading text written by the killer. THOSE were fantastic passages. Kill the monkey narration by the killer. This would have been incredible.

Up until page 112, there was only one memorable paragraph.. I marked it in my book.

My honest opinion, post rant… DO NOT READ THIS BOOK. If you do, ask me for the good paragraph and then pick up on page 112. If the text gets sloppy, skip it. The pain is not worth it. I rarely hate books, but the damn sock monkey ruined this one for me. I finished it for story alone and hated the experience. show less

This is a difficult novel to review, especially if you are a fan of Jillette not only in his roll as bullshit bashing magician, but as a social commentator. Penn tells it like it is-constantly. And that is the problem with Sock.

As a debut novel it is brave, clever, insightful and raw. Unfortunately,if you've read any of his other works as I had with God,No! http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8495145-god-no, read any of his work online, or seen Penn & Teller:Bullshit, it's all old and just comes across as preachy ranting.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the first 100 pages or so, and using 'The Little Fool's' childhood sock monkey as the central voice is an inspired move. After that, it does tend to become a chore, making the 'broken fourth show more wall' trick just tiresome and annoying; so much so, that in the end you're praying for another voice to come through. Annoyingly, when that 'voice' does come through, it's just and even louder, shoutier version of what's preceded it.
Like other reviewers, I'm split on the song lyrics gimmick. At times they're clever, but there are instances where it takes you out of the story while you sit there running said lyric through your head.

If you're new to Penn and his ways then go for it. If you're experienced, then don't get your expectations up. show less

The first chapter is five-star material, but the book loosened from there, and I missed Dickie's crazy-eyed Beat rhythm. Still, a sock monkey is a great vehicle for some id-powered stream-of-consciousness storytelling. A quick, addictive, fast-paced, pop culture-dotted, kind-hearted read.

Sock monkey is a bad wammerjammer. He has a deep soul. He will love the man forever.
Death is a part of life. Death is a virus that does not need email.
The man sees death. His job. He is police. A Diver. A wetsuit.
Retrieve the dead. Then he retrieves.
Her.

He sees her. The first time in years. Beaten. Soaked. Down by the river. Dead
Not as he remembered her. Smart girl. Fun girl. His love. His life.
His mission. His work. Search. Focus.
Hey ho let’s go.
Detective.

He is obsessed with finding her killer. He is the police. But the police are too slow.
The killing is stupid, but the killer is not so stupid.
Where he goes I’ll follow. I will follow him.
You never can win with.
Questions.

Tiny flaps of butterfly wings causing hurricanes of pain to show more rage through lives.
Sock by Penn Jillette is now available in print and as an e-book from independent bookstores, online booksellers, retail stores, public libraries and anywhere you get your books. show less

I alternately liked and disliked this book. Overall, the main plot is interesting and the p.o.v. is oftentimes brilliant. However, a lot of times the narration goes off a tangent that has nothing to do with anything other than background characterization. If only I could edit the thing down into a really long short story, I'd have been much happier.

The pop culture references thrown in at the end of certain sections are also alternatingly clever and capricious, and sometimes just plain annoying. They start out being most annoying and then the narrative settles down and they become more appropriate signals of the plot and mentality of the narrator. The reader needs to get 30 or 40 pages into the novel already before grasping what is show more going on. Not everyone will give a book that much leeway.

At the end, after the long read through all sorts of extraneous stuff, it's a great concept story. In the middle of it and toward the end, I got tired of the constant barrage of sex and foul language. The sex and foul language mostly had to do with point-of-view and the mental state of the narrator and was purposeful for benchmarking to the reader some of those things, but mostly it just got tiring to slog through it after a while.

The book was clever and amusing, although not usually laugh out loud funny, or snicker quietly to oneself funny. It ended up being quite heavy on some philosophical issues, especially as the reader discovers what the motive is by the end of the novel--which made some of the earlier tangents understandable but not very much tolerable--but then again, a whole lot of it was just pop psycho-babble that was entertaining to read, but leaves you dizzy from consuming too much all at once. show less

An interesting idea and narrative. If only Penn Jillette weren't so eager to fill the book with his my-way-is-the-only-right-way opinions, something that is offensive to me no matter what those opinions are.