Every Savage, Ugly, Testosterone-Fueled, Shameful Thing: Sean Thor Conroe’s Fuccboi – Manuel Marrero
September 30, 2024
I inhaled this book like the fat reserve line of coke at the afterparty I arrived late to. I read it really fast in one sitting til my eyes hurt, ranting about it to anyone who would listen, usually my field agents who give me daily scene intel briefings as a recluse. Sometimes my mom. Like the fuck boy of novels, Fuccboi has caused thousands of hours of pain. You wouldn’t know it from reading it without any larger cultural context. It reads like the muted afterthought of a YA/speculative fiction workshop adapted to R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet the soundcloud version. Does anyone have a word count on this thing? So I snorted coke about it to find out, then, coked to the gills, I read memes. 335 pages later, I was overwhelmed. Fuccboi builds to build like, I can build a motherfucking sentence. Here you go. Here’s another one. Like alright. Carriage return. Gang. This goofy ass clownish facsimile is corny. He is like Kendrick in some ways, Kendrick who’s the third most featured rapper of all time at 37, in the sense he has “so many verses I never run out.” It deserves to be remembered in the larger context of a big astroturfed joke, comical in its cosmic proportions, of an obscene advance, hyperinflated advance praise, like how many of you were paid to shill this I wonder. It reminds me of how tacky people are with grief, have been and are about Elizabeth Victoria Aldrich, my friend, you people who can’t grieve solemnly and quietly, who showboat with your grief, parading Gian’s throwaway quotes like bumper stickers on your pimp wagon. Wasn’t ready to be published, but wears the endorsement. Literally wear it on your tee shirt, on your chest. Reminds me of vultures. So utterly dependent on contrived atmosphere it recalls the real thing, the purported athleticism of infinite carriage returns and breathy wigger ebonics only goes so far without a robust center of gravity. The most anodyne Künstlerroman struggles for its importance, Streisand effect working overtime, blurbs festooning the whitewashed pretender of aspirational, faux-sententious would-be renaissance manning.
I recall once reading it was funny, and it is. The way people talk about this book and cape for this guy is embarrassingly disingenuous. It feels like being emotionally blackmailed by a burn victim. It’s all ultrastylized importing and exporting. Nietzsche is rich. The best I can say about it is it’s an easy read. The reason it’s easy is that the book is unreadable, literally just him having basic ass thoughts, making and listening to podcasts, and quoting mostly mid ass books, occasionally pouting about Trump so that your eyes just glaze over and you slide into a trance. There are scenes in this where the enlightenment of the Sean character at the reading of Heidegger or something is supposed to say something or serve as a plot point, and its overreliance on other peoples’ work is grade-school tier lazy. The pedestrian, sophomoric concept of artistic catharsis as its thesis is surpassed only by the banality of its deliverables. But I’ve listened to his podcast and there’s a rage below the octave. We all know the elephant in the room, the author this shamelessly apes. Junot Diaz deserves better. No one seems capable of being honest about Fuccboi, not even me. This book is only ever so slightly edgy enough for having nothing to say. It is set in the first year of the Trump presidency and follows a meathead himbo urbanely cavorting around, reflecting on his past and arbitrary aphorisms from other literature, “toxic masculinity,” horticultural reproductive stats, with these italicized run-on paragraphs for no reason. It’s Postmates fan-fiction. Like a video game character, Sean’s self-insert writes cultural criticism essays, does roids and other drugs, treats with side bae and editor bae and various bros while missing ex bae. He’s working on getting his novel edited and acquired. He wants “people who don’t read. Who don’t give a shit about books.” He wants “to look at those impulses, to understand where they come from, that we all have em, so that they don’t manifest in real life.” Every sentiment expressed in this book rings hollow as a bell, as though written by a braggadocious low-IQ sociopath. At its very best, it successfully conjures a cloud rapper’s flow, it breathes itself into existence not asking much, kind of endearing in its innocent affectation to win your affection.