Book Club: "The Diceman" - Luke Rhinehart / "Fooled by Randomness" - Nicholas T

Lafortezza

El Stuntman wrote: »

read that on a plane last week, great book and highly original thinking but man, I'm guessing that you'd be desperately tempted to kick him in the head if you met him in person :pac:

God yeah, he came across as such a dickhead while I was reading that book. Interesting subject and pretty well explained I thought.

phantom_lord

phantom_lord wrote: »

i think your review is unduly harsh, this line in particular, both of the things you mentioned were pretty mild and were very tongue-in-cheek imo. i enjoyed the book, although the second half was significently weaker than the start.

Perhaps it is somewhat harsh, but I would argue it is harsh in tone rather than content. I do not think it is possible to be "tongue-in-cheek" about murder and rape, particularly when one is placing them in the context of a man who sees his actions as being beyond his control.

His continual assertion that the women he rapes, Arlene in particular, actually "wanted it" is totally abhorrent and disgusting. The inevitability with which he seems to see the murder of another human being is also quite disturbing but the detached manner in which he both speaks of it and ultimately commits the act is stomach turning.

From a more literary standpoint I agree with you that the book fades horribly in it's second half and suffers generally from being written by a pretty talentless writer. A novel concept thoroughly under-developed. I think this book, and more specifically the idea underlining it, would have been far more interesting if the narrative had placed the idea of his relationship with his wife and children at the centre rather than his own narcissistic pursuit of an indefinable goal. Oddly, the delusional character who portrays himself as Jesus could, and arguably should, have been used as a counter-point to Rheinhart's own Jesus complex (maybe Moses more so than Jesus, leading the Israelites out of the Egypt of conformity?) but instead he becomes nothing more than another bit player in a book where the greatest psychopath of them all is the psychotherapist.

YULETIRED

Well Kayroo your review of it whilst damning shows you were actually effected by the book. Isn't this was most authors aspire to. I'm not sure it was meant as a literary masterpiece, maybe it was intended to disturb appall etc. I didn't really like the book myself as it didn't take off as I'd hoped, I didn't find anyone that I could identify with or to emphatise with. (I expected to :-) ) I think it's main appeal is in it's concept, it's believable to me that someone with a high intellect can capitulate so easily to the most rediculous ideas and notions. The fact that this notion was to allow a dice dictate his actions was interesting, however his descent into extreme debauchery shows that once we change the moral rules we live by, our primal desires can take over, it wasn't the dice dictating it was him using it to justify him carrying out his up to now subconscious desires.

It is not the choices we make it's the choices we ask ourselves to make that shows how near or far away we are from insanity. Tonight my choices are, go to the pictures, go drinking , or rape some woman who lives downstairs, inserting the latter option makes me a madman, although at todays prices so do the 1st 2. So in short the book was about a madman and got very boring once you realise this fact.
My 2 cents.

YULETIRED

YULETIRED wrote: »

Well Kayroo your review of it whilst damning shows you were actually effected by the book. Isn't this was most authors aspire to.

Excellent point. Never considered that.