#1 Kent Montana
The Book Cage: Episode 99 - Kent Montana and the Really Ugly Thing From Mars
You're enduring the Year of Pain. We are nearly at Episode 100 of The Book Cage. But to get to Heaven, you must first go through Hell. And Hell is pulp comedy. In this case, we have a book that gave me a headache is less than 8 pages. Join me, this Friday for Inanity and Insanity (alternate title for The Book Cage) provided by Lionel Fenn, book hack.
God I used to live for bad satire novels.
this is a hate crime
The book's premise sounds silly-but-fun. The character bio part and the title suggest this is going to struggle with the idea of comedy
Coming up on the top of the hour, it's Kent Montana and the Really Ugly Thing From Mars. Here is the preview. In summary: it.
I'm sure IT won't get annoying being formatted that way the entire book
hoo boy, this one's going to hurt, isn't IT
Hahaha IT's like if someone wrote a novel the way they imagine Marvel movies are scripted and then said "that's what you sound like, you stupid dicks"
Remember to do your eye warmups beforehand, eyestrain from rolling your eyes too hard is a serous injury.
Kent Montana? jesus they're barely even trying huh
He invented the Big Montana, the now defunct sandwich from Arby's.
@gellaho , what year was this published? I'm trying to tell if "Kent Montana" being descended from Scottish nobility is a tortured play on Sean Connery being Indiana Jones' dad in The Last Crusade
1990
Plausible
Yep, that tracks then
Last Crusade was 1989
Hahaha he didn't even wait for the celluloid to finish decaying
Also, hello, @gellaho ! Hello, @Badger, "Olllll' Skunkfoot" ! Hello, @Mind Melter Flippant Sausage ! Hello, @Ferrodaywatch NIGHTS !
Bout to get real bad in here
Really bad
OH GOD MY EYES! I SHOULD HAVE WARMED UP MORE!
Wow.
Not even page 1 yet and I'm already annoyed.
oh no
I already hate this more than any other book we've done.
Do you want to play a game?
Looks like the editor was more of a suggestion for this book
the author thinks himself a comedian
we're so fucked
Welcome to the first sentence
More of a victim than anything
Oh FUCK me.
Oh fuck you, book, its too late to have literary pretension by calling your characters "the players"
FIRST SENTENCE?!
periods are for women badger
This book would rule with one simple change
ahahahaha holy shit
Written by Garth Marenghi
That's what happens when you take your first creative writing workshop and they put a lot of emphasis on hooking them from your first sentence.
Oh god its like someone was trying to parody Buckaroo Banzai.
Hi, @dr !
Hi, @Mordred, Nuclear Werewoof ☢🐺 !
Hey Fancy!
"Lionel, when we said "hook" the readers we didnt mean every time they read something its like being stabbed with fishhooks."
Have two more sentences
I found out where Ben Shapiro got all the commas he uses in his books from.
We are on sentence fucking three.
oh jesus don't tell me our main character is a writer
Is this some kind of Dr Seuss-style challenge?
"as few sentences as possible"
This is what happens when someone has a manifesto in their brain but it won't come out
✅ Redhead
I flipped off the screen at squared jaw
Finally, this manuscript has heroes
Noel Cowards angry ghost shot out of its grave and went on a quest for vengeance.
Some authors never got the note heads should not be cuboids, Picasso notwithstanding.
This motherfucker is a tooth.
His perhaps decision to listen to people fuck
god it's like someone gave Max Landis a thesaurus
Hopes for a clue that perhaps decision
If this entire book ends on the line "Hi, I'm Todd Macfarlane, creator of Spawn" it will genuinely all have been worth it.
, perchance
He managed to sneak a stock sound effect into his novel
Is the railing going to give away and then he'll splatter to the pavement below?
With a Wilhelm scream, of course
"One or two slaps of flesh against slick flesh"
Purest poesy
A soap opera artiste
This isnt even the worst start to an isekai but its getting there.
Two-pump Chump, his best friend and upstairs neighbor
*pussy
Ffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuck me, use a fucking quotation mark.
hey fuck formatting am I right?
let's just not use italics or parentheses or anything to make this little thought bubble read as confusing as possible
"FORMATTING IS FOR CUUUUUUCKS!"- Lionel Fenn, 1990.
Well, so far it's just been annoying. Time for it to become nonsensical
This sounds like mad libs
He considered the star, ignored it then addressed the moon
This motherfucker is Daredevil.
The moon responded "Fuck you"
what
Naked beneath a bathrobe = not fucking naked, Fenn.
"naked beneath a bathrobe" I'm naked beneath my clothes too I guess
I hope that moving star is a meteor and it punches a speed hole thru his head.
Sudden cat, sure why not
what the fuck are we doing
or rather, what the fuck is actually happening
Suffering.
he's staring out his apartment balcony listening to people fuck to shitty beethoven salsa music and talking to the moon and a cat
Salsa turning to reggae means the neighbor has a shitty mix tape
Also making art, which we are suffering for.
Oh my god they're fucking to Steven Seagal's reggae album.
be honest, how many pages in are we
You know, 10pm August 5th? That time of year everyone has an association with
Steven Seagal singing about poonanny down there while that couple just fucks like two tigers in a vat of seed oil.
oh I get it, lionel thinks he's fucking Douglas Adams
this is his Arthur getting evicted scene
bathrobe and all
Douglas Adams angry ghost rockets out of its grave on a quest for vengeance.
He is semidisinterested in the dismemberment
Nothing is more insufferable than a writer too full of himself trying to write like Douglas Adams and/or Terry Pratchett.
Yeah now that ferroday's pointed it out this whole opener is like, aggressively stolen
"When your downstairs neighbor solves the Lament Configuration" by Lionel Fenn.
You know, words don't need to mean anything. Your satellite can suddenly be an electronic baseball
Hahaha this stupid dick thinks he's smart enough to reference Sputnik without sounding like an asshat.
at this point the book would be more interesting if our PoV character jumped off the fucking balcony, at least I wouldn't expect it
Hey this is exactly how I write when I'm six drinks in. Commas everywhere.
The best way to introduce your hero is to have him do boring things while pretending to be sophisticated in his New Jersey apartment
He got some of his commas left over from scrimping on the first couple passages.
This is going to be my comments by the end of this.
I don't know if you've caught this, but things aren't going well for Kent
you can tell a brit wrote this, no american would ever willingly go to Majorca
That's not how deportation works
Ohhhh noooo, he will have to go home to his estate and winery.
America has a lot of control over the Bastille, I don't know what you are talking about
Becalmed
if the point was to make your main character sound like an insufferable prick mission accomplished
We brought it over from France, got a sweet deal on it from Napoleon.
I fuckin hate this guy.
Yeah no this is painful
Reggae became Glenn Miller
"oh woe is me I'm rich as fuck but I'm not a successful american screenwriter"
This makes sense if he's supposed to be a British comedic character. The kind that is supposed to maintain an air of dignity even as everything goes to hell around him.
congrats on reggae's transition?
That said, not even Matt Berry could make this character pop
For a second I was like "Glenn Miller? The fat right wing guy who sells gold and looks like an underbaked baby?"
And then I remembered that was Glenn Beck.
That would be silly
ourple
This is, tonally, the wrong character to have in a wacky sci-fi adventure. Which might be the point
Not being subjected to jazz would refresh my love for life, too
It's just a really bad point
I know Cowards who use subtext but they're all writers.
Hi, @Brendan !
I really have got to stop confusing Glenn Miller with Glenn Beck.
It's all about the jazz you don't hear
You know, a little pornography for the hootenanny
Steven Seagal breaking the man's arm while he's unprepared for combat to prove Steven is the alpha dawg, then forcing himself on the woman.
So she was watching porn with a Glenn Miller soundtrack
He's here to snatch every muthafucka punani.
No American could knowingly locate Majorca.
What a wacky character. So crazy
ah yes, I frequently put on some porn when I'm entertaining guests
Hi, you perfect shark.
Oh good, his annoying pixie dream girl
What do you mean, he's in the mask the Skull Kid is wearing
I'm mostly just annoyed by hyphenating lifestyle
Chita Juarel is the Bobson Dugnutt of white guys coming up with latin names.
Purple prose
Calling it now: she's going to be the muscle of the group
All I know is this woman can see up his robe, where he is naked.
Purple means it's Rare but not Legendary
A plane can have a purple light it it wants
I already know which Suicide Girl she goes on to be.
"Do you think she would step on me?" - Lionel Fenn
is this where we discover lionel fenn is Bendis's old pen name?
Not enough realistic asides.
Genuine question: what page are we on
just the right amount of pointless, circuitous casual dialogue though
I need to know how carefully I need to ration my hate
There's no way we've cracked ten
We are on the page that gave me a headache
oooooooof
I think that was 8?
Depends how many single word back and forth conversations we've been spared
Porn party for one
Those aren't as fun as they sound.
FYI, wearing a party hat while looking at porn does not make it a porn party
she put some porn on he can hear from his balcony and now she's inviting him to her apartment where they're alone
wow, can't imagine what the motivation is
Yeah, she clearly wants to kill him
we can only aspire
Kent Montana fails the ice bucket challenge
Chekov's bucket!!
I have never rooted this hard for an ice bucket and the laws of physics before
And since earthquakes don't happen on the east coast, the building they're in is not built to handle the shocks and it collapses and they all die the end
Character names are hard
It's incredible to think that if this really were the end of the book I would be just as annoyed by these eight pages as by a full length bad novel.
Gander pond pfffff 🤣
When life is going at your ass, learn to enjoy being pegged.
looked up the author, apparently Lionel Fenn is one of like a dozen pen names for a guy named Charles L. Grant
Request for all of the authors here: please make a character named Place Holder and make them the most important support character in your story
The sad part is that we all have to fucking hear about it.
Hi, @LyraV !
Or name him something like Hiro Protagonist
But, you see, Lionel did it on purpose. Because you know how people make fun of John Smiths, right?
Right?
You know, that thing
Hello! I couldn't resist checking in on the fortress of three butt cheeks.
Well it's been about five long songs on Kent's radio watching planes, so...
The thing were you look down on John Smiths?
Everyone knows it
So change your fucking name, guy. This shouldn't even be a problem
Just tell people your name is Jack.
Because of the association with Pocahontas
In 1990
where's the picture of that reality show host whose thoughts are sounds of a potato rotating
That...what?
Five years before the cartoon came out
that's who I picture is John Smith
Getting goosed by the Gander, eh?
Has this author never been to an English-speaking country?
Change your name to something more appealing like Jack Hoff
apparently he's from Newark, NJ
Lance Thrustlaser at least.
So no, then
I think I've met like one John Smith in my life.
So no, then.
hey, one of this guy's other pen names is Simon Lake, didn't we do a Simon Lake book?
That's two more than I've met
Listen, he can't bring himself to. Because, uh, reasons
In Newark they speak a peculiar dialect of Methhead.
"Listen, his dad was really big, okay?"
John Smith: Suicidal Whiner. COMEDY!
Performances of Maternal Martyrdom is a dope band name.
That's going to be my new excuse for everything.
Sorry I'm late, my dad was really big.
Critical reception
Stephen King expressed admiration for Grant's work, stating that Grant was "One of the premier horror writers of his or any generation". This quote was usually placed on the front of Grant's books.[8] Discussing Grant's fiction, Jess Nevins said that "Grant excelled at building foreboding atmosphere and mounting dramatic tension, at characterization and pacing."
John you could at least adopt an alias or something.
I didn't get that thing done one time, my dad was really big.
Or just ask people to call you Johnny.
Sure has a Catholic mother for a guy with such a WASPy name.
Yeah but for the time period,Coke King read it in one hour so it didn't drag.
Oh well there's your problem. Grant's usual bag is horror. Bitch can't do comedy to save his life.
this author thought Kent Montana was a convincing alias for a Scottish immigrant
And that John Smith wasn't.
Succulent garbage
"Och aye here come tha lad oo e's a numpty down the stair, I'd cut 'is throoot an' he's me own bairn"
Sorry, Scotland! That's what you sound like!*
*in my head
who does drive by dumpster diving
It's always fun to imagine grown men scuttling.
**in the 1950s
Thatcher would be proud
"That's what you sound like, you stupid assholes!"
John scuttles on all fours like a cockroach.
I don't have to please them. They ruined Scotland..
You know all those pure American last names
I'm picturing scuttling like
GIF
Now ask me what Americans sound like
This is like written from a different universe
Howdy, you all! I'm Johnny Noo Yawk, and I'm like, totally down for a POP drink!
I'm sorry, I listened to BtB part two on Scott Adams today so I jumped right into this part like "oh this sounds familiar"
"It'sa me! Tony Americano! I likea da hamboiga!"
this is a horror comedy written from the G.I. Joe universe where Kent Montana is blase
Pure American names like James TheReservationIsOverThereChief
I'm going to hell for that one
Dude's lamenting his mom finds him unimpressive WHILE spurning a hot-to-trot logger bartender downstairs.
Don't they all have the same last name? What the fuck is happening
Ezekiel Thatwaterfountainisforyou
that was Kent, this is John, I think
We're gonna have to reference that episode twice a week every week.
Kent isn't John?
I thought that was his secret name.
Lucifer St. Evil, a pleasure to make your acquaintance.
No, we are being introduced to the players
Oh man. This book is taking us to some dark fucking places.
The only thing more insufferable would be calling it dramatis personae.
His brother isnt shorter than his dad and changed his name to Lance Babcock.
the idea is clearly to make him sound really down on his luck but instead makes him sound like America's Most Epic Fuck-up
I genuinely want you to try and figure out what is a bitch
Lamenting that your name is John Smith is First World Problems, A Template
What does it refer to in that sentence
The basement?
life, I'm pretty sure
I mean, what option a guy with a name like that have other than woods hermit?
The writing?
Cool, great job Lionel, I had this guy almost as much as the last one.
Tolerant of its bums
what kinda raccoons they breeding in Jersey?!
He lost an entire arm?!
You........got run off by a raccoon?!
Is he made out of bread?!
And who is scared of bobcats?!
Nutting over nuts
also let's all remember he apparently still owns a car, he mentioned driving into an alley to dumpster dive
GIF