Glenn Beck's novel "The Overton Window"

[joebuck20]

So far the reviews have not been kind.

Reviews of 'The Overton Window' by Glenn Beck

I especially liked this remark from the Washington Post book critic:

But enough seriousness – this is a thriller! Anyone who has tuned in to Beck’s show knows that he is sometimes joined on-screen by best-selling thriller writers such as Vince Flynn and James Rollins. In his foreword, Beck notes his love of the genre and acknowledges that “the goal of most thrillers is to entertain.” Sadly, he seems to have learned little from his thriller-writing friends.

Thrillers often are marred by laughable prose, but few have stumbled along with language as silly as this one. When Gardner’s son, Noah, meets patriot Molly Ross early in the novel, Beck writes: “Something about this woman defied a traditional chick-at-a-glance inventory.” It gets worse: When Noah notices that a few strands of Molly’s hair have fallen out of place, Beck tells us, “these liberated chestnut curls framed a handsome face made twice as radiant by the mysteries surely waiting just behind those light green eyes.”

Anyway I’m sure it’ll be a bestseller. As the CSM article pointed out Beck’s “Common Sense” was last year’s top selling book (which probably doesn’t speak well of the book buying public).
So does anyone here plan on reading it or know someone who plans on reading it.

[TWDuke]

Without knowing anything about the characters, I was almost ready to defend “a traditional chick-at-a-glance inventory” as representing the inner voice of an adolescent hipster-wannabe might think is cool, but I can’t do anything with “liberated chestnut curls framed a handsome face made twice as radiant…”

No, I don’t know anyone who plans on reading it. Do you?

Is their a precedent for pundits becoming successful novelists? I don’t mean successful in terms of getting people to publish their books, but making bestseller lists and/or getting generally good reviews.

Beck, who hired a team of writers to help him with “The Overton Window,” often – and very successfully – promotes books he likes on his show.

OK, if you hired a team of writers to help you with a novel, you didn’t really write a novel, did you?

[joebuck20]

@TWDuke

Is their a precedent for pundits becoming successful novelists?

I think Newt Gingrich has written a few novels, but I don’t know how successful they’ve been.
And of course how can one forget “Those Who Trespass” by Bill O’Reilly?

[Unauthorized_Cinnamon]

I really like this review(linked to in the link above). But someone please, please tell me that the Star Wars bit is just made up. Oh my lord that is indescribably awful.

[joebuck20]

@Unauthorized_Cinnamon

I really like this review(linked to in the link above). But someone please, please tell me that the Star Wars bit is just made up. Oh my lord that is indescribably awful.

Shit, he needed to a team of writers for that? Where did he recruit them from, a seventh grade English class?

[KneadToKnow]

This is the first time that I have been glad that budget cuts have forced my library to reduce the amount of money we can spend on buying books.

[Speak_to_me_Maddie]

@TWDuke

Is their a precedent for pundits becoming successful novelists? I don’t mean successful in terms of getting people to publish their books, but making bestseller lists and/or getting generally good reviews.OK, if you hired a team of writers to help you with a novel, you didn’t really write a novel, did you?

William F. Buckley had a successful career with his spy novels, many of which were highly acclaimed. Of course comparing Buckley to Beck, in terms of writing ability, mastry of language, and general intelligence is like comparing apples to, well, fucking morons.

[Bosstone]

I’m starting to realize that Glenn Beck really is a faux pundit like Stephen Colbert. He just doesn’t know how to telegraph that he’s joking and so everyone takes him seriously. That collection of quotes from Mediamatters are entirely too stupid to be meant earnestly. It’s entirely probable that this book is a joke like Colbert’s Tek Jansen adventures.

[TWDuke]

I don’t think you’ll find many of Beck’s critics here arguing that he’s sincere in his political statements. That doesn’t make those statements any less pernicious though. In fact, if he doesn’t believe what he’s saying, it’s downright evil to say it knowing the hatred and rage that it encourages. Yeah, it’s only an act. A disgusting, offensive act.

You may have a point about the book, though. It’s hard to imagine anyone not intending that passage as comedy. Unless, of course, he’s whack-a-doodle crazy.

[Bosstone]

@TWDuke

I don’t think you’ll find many of Beck’s critics here arguing that he’s sincere in his political statements. That doesn’t make those statements any less pernicious though. In fact, if he doesn’t believe what he’s saying, it’s downright evil to say it knowing the hatred and rage that it encourages. Yeah, it’s only an act. A disgusting, offensive act.

Oh, I don’t disagree. If he was intending to telegraph that he was only joking, he should have picked up early on that people weren’t getting the joke and refined his behavior accordingly. He’s knowingly messing with people now.

[BrainGlutton]

The best thing to be said for this book is that the title alone might educate some part of the public about the Overton Window, an important concept in practical politics as well as political theory.

[TWDuke]

Damn, all along I’ve been reading it as “The Overton Widow.” I really need glasses.

[joebuck20]

@TWDuke

I don’t think you’ll find many of Beck’s critics here arguing that he’s sincere in his political statements. That doesn’t make those statements any less pernicious though. In fact, if he doesn’t believe what he’s saying, it’s downright evil to say it knowing the hatred and rage that it encourages. Yeah, it’s only an act. A disgusting, offensive act.

You may have a point about the book, though. It’s hard to imagine anyone not intending that passage as comedy. Unless, of course, he’s whack-a-doodle crazy.

That’s the sad thing, that there are actually millions of people out there who consider this man a great thinker instead of seeing him for the overdramatic charlatan that he is. He’s basically just a shock jock who found his niche pandering to gullible right wingers.

[Skara_Brae]

@TWDuke

Damn, all along I’ve been reading it as “The Overton Widow.” I really need glasses.

I was reading it the same way. It almost sounds more interesting that way.

[The_Understander]

Book burning is wrong. Book burning is wrong. Book burning is wrong. Book burning …

[joebuck20]

@Enfant Terrible

Book burning is wrong. Book burning is wrong. Book burning is wrong. Book burning …

You can always set it on your toilet tank…and I don’t mean to use as reading material either.

[Clothahump]

@joebuck20

As the CSM article pointed out Beck’s “Common Sense” was last year’s top selling book (which probably doesn’t speak well of the book buying public).
So does anyone here plan on reading it or know someone who plans on reading it.

Have you read “Common Sense”? Reading that book is a sign of intelligence, not the other way around.

And yeah, I’ll give TOW a shot when we get a copy through Book of the Month.

[BrainGlutton]

@Clothahump

Have you read “Common Sense”? Reading that book is a sign of intelligence, not the other way around.

No, you are confusing Glenn Beck with Thomas Paine.

And probably not you alone.

[joebuck20]

@BrainGlutton

No, you are confusing Glenn Beck with Thomas Paine.

And probably not you alone.

Yep. Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,” a world changing work of political philosophy. Glenn Beck’s “Common Sense,” I wouldn’t wipe my ass with.

[BrainGlutton]

Ooh, this is priceless!

But mostly The Overton Window resembles a pretty feeble self-published 2005 techno-thriller called Circumference of Darkness.

Except for one thing: In Circumference of Darkness, the villains planning the next 9/11 are an ultra-right militia movement. In Overton Window, the right wing nuts are the heroes.

Here’s what happens in Circumference of Darkness. Our hero – “an overweight, pasty, plain, and unassuming non-presence” – figures out that 9/11 was an inside job carried out by an unsuccessful 1976 presidential candidate and a bunch of backwoods racist loons. A flabby arrogant shut-in, our author surrogate romances an impossibly beautiful blonde 22-year-old virgin he meets online, by beating her at chess. She turns out to be working for the government, and not, oddly “To Catch a Predator.” Naturally, she can’t stop thinking about him, so she takes off her “gray cotton shorts and her junior high Bon Jovi tank top,” gets in the shower and gently paws at herself while “the soap and warm water washed the long night from her body.” Meanwhile, Tubby gets drugged and kidnapped by the right wing nuts, who reveal they’ve got loose nukes and a plan to:

"Incite the Jew-puppets in Washington to panic and revoke the Constitution, cripple the economy and ignite a separatist-populist political uprising based on individual rights, and give the country back to its people."

They try to turn Tubby with torture, but he escapes the pain by going deep inside his own incomparable mind with a photographic memory “as deep and wide as the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian combined.”

Pretty soon the 22-year-old blonde virgin rescues him and they stop the nuts – pretending to be Arab terrorists – from setting off their nukes. To be continued.

Here’s what happens in The Overton Window. Our hero – “reasonably fit and trim for an office jockey” meets and romances an impossibly beautiful woman while he’s getting his daily Tootsie Rolls out of a vending machine. She’s all over him, but it turns out she’s working for a patriot militia lead by an unsuccessful 1976 presidential candidate. Before she and our author surrogate, an arrogant bore, an get it on, he’s drugged and kidnapped by a public relations firm full of rich, powerful, Saul Alinsky-reading elitists who work for the government. They reveal that they’ve got loose nukes and a plan to frame the patriot movement, repeal the Constitution, and create:

One world, one government -- not of the people this time, but of the *right* people: the competent, the wise, and the strong.

Oh, and 9/11 was a deliberate distraction, created by the elitists, to get the public’s mind off Donald Rumsfeld.

They try to turn Tootsie Roll with torture, but he escapes the pain by going deep inside his own incomparable mind and remembering one of Rudyard Kipling’s worst poems.

The loose nuke goes off but doesn’t do much damage so nobody really blames the Tea Baggers. The beautiful girl escapes. Our hero pretends he’s gone over to the evil public relations firm but really he hasn’t. To be continued.

<snip>

So why – except for the completely inverted politics – does The Overton Window read so much like Circumference of Darkness? Because they were written by the same guy, a 52-year-old computer programmer named Jack Henderson.