Book Review: Jarett Kobek, Only Americans Burn In Hell

Following on from 2016’s I Hate The Internet, Kobek again slips between the real world – here he jumps from episodes of his own life to the “plot” which this time weaves tall tales of a race of Amazonian Fairy women coming to terms with the modern world, and there’s also a Saudi prince whose wealth allows him to choose his own reality. This kind of sub-superhero claptrap is what Kobek reckons people are after, “mindless tales about supra-natural creatures". Google what’s on at your local cinema, chances are somebody’s wearing a cape. He also uses this “magical bullshit” to solve narrative problems, which is at least convenient. He’s not taking his “poorly fleshed-out fictional pretence” seriously though, why would he in a “novel written in an era when the entire purpose of fiction has been outmoded and destroyed”.

Kobek gleefully mixes Baudrillard’s hyperreality, Windows 95’s ruination of the west coast, The Drudge Report, Alex Jones, Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Guns N’ Roses, the death of publishing, designer grocery stores, weird sex, Brexit and Trump as the revenge demanded by the crying out of a million dead Iraqis, Trump’s election the moment when “reality tumbled into fiction”, Fox News, a crazy Jesus, his own libel case and a myriad of other signposts to laugh in the face of the modern world and our inevitable doom.

It’s like this: “Your worst idea will be to keep your head down and try to make a reasonably decent life while buying more shit and imagining that you have a special relationship with sports teams, the celebrity branch of American governance and intellectual property in which you have no economic stake. None of this will save you.”
Great sport.