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.

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.  

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.

The Cover of the riveting Broken Under Interrogation.

Yo.  Here is the cover of Broken Under Interrogation, written by me, Jeffrey M. Hopkins and published independently (that means by me) using the company Booksurge LLC.

If you want to know what it is about, here it is in a nutshell.

A young man joins the army to run away from a situation in which he is going nowhere, he is well trained and heads off to Iraq to serve his country.  In Iraq, he lives with a group of Iraqi men performing an intelligence functionality.  They teach him much more about life and his job than he could ever teach them.  He loses his innocence in Iraq.  Upon returning from Iraq, and his dismissal from the Army for psychological reasons, he returns to his rust belt hometown to find it drowning in dope and hopelessness.  He takes it upon himself to use his training in the “Iraqi methods” to collect intelligence on, track, kidnap, and torture drug dealers.

Broken Under Interrogation could glorify war.  It does not.  It is a scream from hell.  The hell of the Global War on Terror.  The hell at the periphery of the American dream, that place of white picket fences, SUVs, megastores, peace, freedom, and security – and the American nightmare of prisons, security at any cost, and endless war.

I urge anyone with an inkling of curiosity to read the book for themselves.

Broken Under Interrogation is available at Amazon.com, and bookstores everywhere.