I recently picked up Chad Kultgen’s sophomore novel, The Lie: A Novel because I had enjoyed his first novel, The Average American Male: A Novel and had hoped that he had grown as a novelist. Unfortunately, for me and Mr. Kultgen it appears that his understanding of the human psyche and overall grasp of the English language has degraded to such a point that I nearly threw his book out the window multiple times and considered contacting his publisher to perhaps understand how, in good conscience, they allowed this book to make it to print.The characters in the book are obsessed with sex, money, and a multitude of depraved acts. Chad Kultgen has always been focused on his male characters over the females but he takes it too far here. The female in this book,Heather, along with many other females, is called a “faceless whore.” Additionally, she has three abortions, gets date raped, contracts herpes, accuses a boy of date rape (wrongfully) and manipulates the men around her in order to get engaged to the wealthiest person in the the novel. Obviously, Chad has a lot of respect and understanding for the female gender as he manages to lump all these blown-out stereotypes into one main sorority robot. Oh, did I forget to mention that she is also blonde and stupid?
The other main character, Kyle, is supposed to be the good boy who chooses love over sex with random women. That is, until he gets his heart broken by Heather because she finds out that his engagement ring is fake. Chad Kultgen is very subtle here and only mentions this point 200 times through the novel: women will not marry you if you are broke. This is a major turning point for Kyle who begins to binge drink and have sex with as many women as possible, sometimes even more than one at a time! He also masterminds the final plan to get back at Heather and get her infected with herpes. Whatever “normal” characteristics were within Kyle’s soul is thrown at the window when he makes the 180 to use and abuse women.
The final narrator in the novel is a wealthy socialite named Brett. Brett is the most one-dimensional and disgusting characters I have ever had the displeasure to read. His horrific and degrading sex acts would tip off any psychologist that there are deep rooted sex issues and may be an early indicator of a person who could grow up to be a serial killer. His hatred for women comes from the belief that he thinks that all women will just have sex with him because he is wealthy, as his father owns a large shipping company in Texas. While I do believe that a small population of women may be interested in men based solely on wealth, it seems that every woman in this fictional world will do anything to be closer to him. The horrible sex acts range from putting Listerine in vaginas to Brett inserting large rubber fists into many different holes of different girls. Almost all the girls did these things without complaint and had zero self-respect. Kultgen was able to create a world where men like Brett are to be idolized and reign supreme.
I worry about people like Chad Kultgen. I know that this is a fictional world but these characters are supposed to be rooted in a realistic context. This isn’t Mars or the year 1932. Characters make popular culture references and supposedly attend a typical American university. The characters he creates and their actions create a world where women are dirty, sex objects and men are emotionally unattached money-earning machines. Chad Kultgen has got it all wrong and I think that his writing should only be read as an example of what has gone wrong in the wiring of some men’s brains. He clearly thinks that shock value sells and I don’t think he is wrong. It just makes me sad that he had to take it to this level.
After reading the book, I decided to do a little research about Kultgen. I knew he was a USC alum and that he graduated with a degree in film. I found this interview. I can now see that there is something seriously wrong with Kultgen and his views on women. Let me just leave you with this little gem from this interview.
Jason Rice: On the eve of the publication of your second book, The Lie, do you think the world is ready for a book like this… will basically turn off fifty percent (women) of the people who might read this book?
Chad Kultgen: I hadn’t really thought about if anyone was ready for it or not. I don’t think it’s nearly as potentially offensive as my first book and I don’t think it’s really saying anything that shocking about college students….And, of course, I’m hoping that for every hundred or so women who are turned off by the really filthy stuff in the book there are at least one or two who are really turned on.
Chad Kultgen, you have written the worst book I have ever read in my entire life. If only there was an award for that?
