Compositions of Light and Literature – JMH

I publish them all here folks, the good with the bad.  I really don’t think this one is all “bad” though.  I have highlighted what I believe to be telling in what this gentleman from Palestine, TX said about Broken Under Interrogation.  He gave the book 2 out of 5 stars.   

Let’s start by saying it’s not impossible to actually take a very depressing subject on its face and provide social comment, satire, truths, or philosophy while never losing sight of the depressing reality. “Hogan’s Heroes” was an entertaining comedy about life in a German WWII POW camp. “Catch 22″ and “MASH” both found irony and humor among the destruction and meaninglessness of war, and used them to illustrate “greater truths” about humanity.

This plot has its roots in the Iraq Wars and the military, but focuses on all the shattered dreams and disturbing trends of American cultural life to create one of the most depressing books I’ve ever read. There is no joy. There is no hope. There is no humor. There is no point. There is only the abyss and the apocalypse.

The narrative, considering the subject, is emotionally flat, because none of these people have anything worthwhile to live for except the glimmer of surviving another day. I have read authentic stories of the Holocaust that were far more uplifting and inspiring.

Posted by an Amazon.com Vine Program member who gave Broken Under Interrogation 4 out of 5 stars:

I am normally not a big fan of fiction books but must say that this one managed to keep me glued to it. The main character in the story is a young man named John Powers who returns from a tour in Iraq. He gets out of the service and returns to the US only to find trouble on the streets fighting drug lords. I feel the author did a pretty good job in plot construction and writes in a manner that never bores.

Originally posted on Amazon.com Broken Under Interrogation page.

This is posted by an individual from New York City on Amazon.com.  They gave the book 5 out of 5 Stars.  

Hopkins clearly took a lot of inspiration from George Orwell to produce this genuinely frightening book. “Broken Under Interrogation” is the story of an Iraq veteran who gets his hands on information that may be a potential threat to the U.S. Government and pays a dear price. A good read.

Broken Under Interrogation is the story of John Powers, an intelligence professional who takes to robbing and murdering drug dealers in his rust belt hometown upon redeployment from Operation Iraqi Freedom.  It is a novel that is set in the periphery between the American Dream, and an American Nightmare.  

As posted on Amazon.com:

This is from a person in Tulsa, Oklahoma who gave it four out of five stars.

Like most of the others who have reviewed the book, I found most of the subject matter to be dark and disturbing. 

The topics are timely and although harsh, they deserve some thought. 
I enjoyed the book, but don’t think it would have universal appeal.

Jeffrey M. Hopkins writes:

Timeliness.  Dark.  Disturbing.  Harsh.  Could it be that we are living in Dark, Disturbing, and Harsh times?  As for universal appeal, what book has universal appeal?

Broken Under Interrogation, the realest piece of grease fiction to be released yet on the War in Iraq, the War on the Streets, the prision industrial complex, and the battle for hearts and minds at the rotten guts of mass consumerism has recieved this stellar review from this gentleman.  I think the review is rather positive, but he gave the book one star.  His name has been withheld.

The original review is posted on Amazon.com, where Broken Under Interrogation is available.

“I didn’t like this book. The product description and the other ratings here describe it well enough, so I won’t repeat the description. The book is full of action and never gets boring, but it just isn’t my type of book. If I am going to read a book of fiction, I want a book that has at least one character whom I can admire. There weren’t any here. I also like more uplifting books. This isn’t that type of book–overall, it is kind of depressing. And really, I don’t think the writing was all that great either.

However, I can see why others like the book. It is similar to music. Some people like rock; some like classical, some like country. Most don’t understand why others like the type of music they themselves don’t like. This book is like a type of music I don’t like. Nothing terribly wrong with it; it just isn’t the type of book I like. So my rating of 1 star might not be fair to the author, but I just didn’t like the book.

This is a genuinely nice guy.  I will however comment on “uplifting” and “depressing” fiction in the next couple of posts, with my analysis of the two, because what I feel passes for “uplifting” fiction nowadays (i.e. Tuesdays with Morrie, Five People You Meet in Heaven) is really just a narcotic, and the upliftng nature of the work is similar to smoking a crack rock or banging a pill of smack into your arm – the feeling is nice and warm and pleasant, but wholly unsatisfying.  Not all works characterized as “uplifting” fall into the escapist fare though.  Some grind you through the mud, and build you back up, reaffirming humanity.  A “depressing” work has a grain of reality to it, that if nurtured sprouts a tree of doubt within a person – doubt which overwhelms commonplace notions and allows someone to do what many cannot, that is “think” for themselves.  I would say what we need more of in the modern age is fiction that strips our humanity of all its trappings, and builds back something natural, something which slashes the fear of death and annihilation in the jugular, rather than stupify the brain with joy joy feelings of infinite bliss, that runs on empty in a few short days, until the next fix.

By increasing your capacity to suffer, we are teaching you to experience the profoundest joy at being alive.  I hope you feel it once in your short, mortal life.

Jeffrey M. Hopkins is the author of Broken Under Interrogation, which deciphers the lubrication that the gears intermesh upon.  The grease in the spaces between wrong and right, the good and the bad.  The living and the dead.  The confrontation of nihilism.  Trappings of mass consumerism.  It is the first work of grease fiction.

Jeffrey Hopkins says:  I would say that this lady has come the closest to anyone of understanding the premise behind Broken Under Interrogation.  Thank you.  There are millions of people in the United States of America who suffer under the conditions described in my Novel Broken Under Interrogation.  Millions of human talents, wasted.  Millions of children who go undernourished, both nutritionally and educationally.  Millions of young men who choose the easy wrong of gang banging and drug dealing over the much harder right.  But they are only buying into their own version of the American Dream.  It is high time we started questioning just what that dream is.  By questioning what has gone unquestioned, we can start to repair the foundations of our vibrant democracy.  We can create a true land of the free, and home of the brave.

Jeffrey Hopkins presents his version of the American Dream under guise of his novel, “Broken Under Interrogation,” and it is not pretty. It is ugly and grotesque and obscene and happens every day in every town and city of America. This book is not an indictment of torture or of the military or war. It is a indictment against lost opportunities, against an America that promises what it cannot fulfill. It is an indictment against drugs and the terrorism that propels drug trafficking. It is the story of the voiceless, the powerless. It is the story of Have-Nots.

Hopkins tells his story in segments through the voice of John Powers, a lethargic, but intelligent youth, who gets lost in himself and under the spell of a domineering father. He joins the military, hoping for Intelligence but not Iraq. He gets both. His job is to scope out spies against the US military and arrange their demise. He is returned to the States during his third tour of duty under questionable circumstances.

Through John’s voice, the reader learns about military basic training and the war in Iraq. Both are important background to the last segment of John’s life in the States when he trains “useless” war veterans into an army of heroes who fight the war on drugs incognito. There are no rules, no laws, just justice for wasted human lives.

John conceives the idea of such an army as he sits on a bench, observing the devastation of his drug-infested neighborhood. What caused this underworld of Have-Nots? Military life, even war, gives them purpose until they return home. Those born into poverty can see no way out except through drug-induced stupor or the temporary high of riches through the drug business. John takes the powerless, those who tried to grab a piece of the Dream, and creates an army. He is John Powers.

Things go awry, as they always do when violence, guns, torture, and amoral humans are put into the same chaotic, lawless void. Things go very wrong.
A significant point John tells the reader early on is that during a torture session, either party can be broken. There’s a moment of incandescence during torture when John realizes how the story will end. He could have said what another character in another time and place said: “The horror! the horror!”

This is not a book for the squeamish.