I don’t grok this book. I can’t remember the last time I did physical harm to a book, but once I finished the dogshit that is Stranger in a Strange Land, I punched this book down to my kitchen floor.
It started off alright, almost like an adventure novel, and it was built up like that — a completely naïve Adonis rescued by a promiscuous nurse. This ‘stranger’, Mike, is actually the only heir of Mars and as a man owns the entire planet. His pedigree is also A1, so that he is so wealthy in the first place that he should be using money as anything other than money itself. The premise was intriguing — a wealthy man who had no idea of his wealth, and having to relearn the culture of his birth.
That’s where it drew me in, because the Man from Mars forced me to also rethink the slippery concepts of language, how it can be used to good use or to deceive. For some, Mike is a political threat and sitting on a ridiculous amount of asset to extort. The time that Mike was in a hospital as a patient and barely understanding human nature were the best parts of the book. The book fast went downhill after his rescue, and we meet the obnoxious lawyer / physician Jubal Harshaw.
Smith becomes Harshaw’s client, and while I enjoyed Jubal’s monologue on whether to take on Mike as a client or to leave him to the dogs, his presence just became a constant annoyance after as he goes into full Karen mode. He also dubiously has three hot secretaries hanging by the pool all day, ready to take his words of inspirations so he can peddle them off to publishers. There’s something that rubs wrong with this closet pervert that’s too smart for his own good.
The plot take turns that you would never expect to — Mike got to keep his wealth, became a terrible magician, ended up eloping with the promiscuous nurse, learned to laugh because he finds out that human beings are no better than monkeys, and started taking over the world. In the meantime he can “discorporate” other people at will and is willing to teach others this knowledge in the process. He became a cult hero, starting his own religion with himself as the messiah where free love flows freer than Trump’s outbursts. Mike was in the quest for world domination.
So what is the charm here, that it became a bestseller in 1961, that this book is in most notable book lists? This is the most frustrating book this year that I “accidentally” abused my kitchen floor with it and if I would, make a bonfire out of it. The characters are unlikeable, most of them are obnoxious. Towards the middle of the book, everything weird happens, yet nothing really does. The intrigue dies somewhere in the middle, and the book just got boring.
There was a line here that really bothered me, which would bother any normal person as well. What’s worse, it is quoted by one of the female characters:
“Nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped, it’s at least partly her own fault.”
It turns out to be the most popular line in the book. The attitudes of the men here towards women are nothing short than misogynistic, especially when Mike started preaching free love. Jubal’s treatment of his assistants bother me endlessly, and the book lacks a strong female character despite their heavy presence in the book. It is also a racist book. Look at Heinlein’s demeaning portrayal of Dr Mahmoud, who Jubal calls “Stinky” while also belittling his Muslim beliefs.
And this book kept going for 500 off pages, taking turns here and there before the over-the-top conclusion. By that time, I didn’t react with a wtf moment because I no longer cared. The fact that I finished this book was a greater achievement than finishing Ulysses, because it was such a fucking drag.
