Keith Hates Us All

Read from Sunday, April 3rd to Monday, April 4th.

God Hates Us All, by Hank Moody.  I am a huge fan of the Showtime series Californication, starring David Duchovny.  He plays a tortured writer Hank Moody, who once became famous having written God Hates Us All, which was later adapted into a movie called "A Crazy Little Thing Called Love."  The series follows the exploits of Hank in LA as he tries to get his family life back in order.  So when I saw this book for sale on Amazon, I leaped at the chance to buy it.  It is obviously a tie-in novel ghost written by someone or a team and attributed to Hank Moody (a fictional character), but it was fun nonetheless.

 In New York City in the early 1990's, the narrator, a young college dropout, is stabbed by his girlfriend at the time Daphne.  He is lost, living in Long Island with his folks, and when he is offered a job as a weed dealer in Manhattan, he takes it.  The narrator meets many strange people, one of them a rock star named Nate living in the Chelsea hotel.  The narrator is enamored with the charming hotel, and most of all with Nate's girlfriend, a likable supermodel named K.  He moves into the hotel, woos K, and when her and Nate break up, he moves in for the kill and sweeps her away.  And when K has a fashion show in Korea, he scrounges up whatever money he can get to go and surprise her.

But Surprise! Nate got to Korea first and got K back.  The narrator was left heartbroken, and flat broke, and with his only friend Ray, a photographer, they went out and got drunk at a brothel, and nearly arrested before flying back to New York.  The narrator here had a change of heart, and resolved to spend more time with his dying mother, and he reconciled with his dad, who was cheating on his mom.  He ended up getting back together with Daphne, and they tracked down her long lost dad, a homeless man in a subway tunnel.  However, when Daphne tried to set him afire, she had to go back to the mental institution.

 It is a fucked-up, debaucherous story, similar to the Bukowski books I've been reading.  The narrator is a lost soul, and he does what he can for his own pleasure and self-interest.  At one point, he had sex with a client from behind while she nursed her baby.  It was very entertaining and comical, similar to the show in a lot of ways.  Of course it didn't live up to the expectations I had for the novel, but I'm sure nothing would have been able to, the way it is glorified in the show.  It was still enjoyable for a fan like me.  Three and a half out of five stars.