Character Actor: Peter Vack’s Sillyboy – Manuel Marrero
July 29, 2024
Peter Vack is a chameleon. Actor, director, now debut novelist. I first heard about him through a Crumpstack called “fascist humiliation ritual” or something which had something of situationism in it. His reputation precedes him. You could confuse him for an e-celeb, “famous for being famous,” a so-called socialite etc. I’ve watched his movies and talked to his friends, not lost on me how pretty much unambiguously well-liked he is, no easy feat with any semblance of fame, despite yelling at a heckler on camera at a recent reading and being known to arouse controversy. The novel shares aesthetic and thematic continuity with his films. It features multiple stylized sex scenes and is stylistically like digital film; disposable, self-negating. It has lines rumored to be written by ChatGPT: “But, from the moment Sillyboi and Celeste Scott appeared on Instagram together, a malignancy began to grow in the spine of their relationship and Chloe’s thoughts were once again perforated by constant incisions into the foundation of her trust.” It has a bathetic conclusion. It refuses to be taken seriously. If Hollywood could capture literacy they would do it, they would become self-sufficient, no longer dependent on inherently suspicious images. In which this becomes a teachable moment, what we must do now is terrible. We must collectively discourage people from reading this. And by that I mean, God knows what everyone is thinking and knows nobody who claimed to enjoy this book actually did. He’s offended by the level of self-delusion. People photographing themselves listlessly reading it in the middle of the street. To offend God like this is a crime against humanity, civility, taste, and sensibility. Everyone involved should be ashamed. Alt lit is dead and autofiction is over, you should be doing the impossible with your literature, decentering Instagram and returning to the land, and you can imagine better for yourself than being neurotic, sweaty and eccentric. Even Vack knows it, choosing to associate more closely with David Foster Wallace, Woody Allen and Kanye West. It’s unearned privileged to write and publish about being a dandy womanizer from a magisterium of good-good and hard dick. It’s entitled of the readers’ screen-sick attention spans. What actors don’t get is letters is serious business. Dilettantes and tourists are unbecoming and barely welcome. Sure, anyone can write a book, but no one can make movies like Peter. I commend Vack for the sex scenes not being uptight (our repressive, sexless era could use it, needs to be violently throttled by erotica), albeit hypersexualized and ultimately very stilted and gay. At first I was second guessing myself, like how harsh I was. I picked up the book and started flipping through it trying to remember any merit but it’s just horny vacuous trash. Laughably insubstantial, historically bad 230+ page slog.