Yes Daddy by Jonathan Parks-Ramage
Jan. 4th, 2024 08:23 amI finished this book yesterday and I want to rant about it!
First of all, on reading this book, I got the impression that there was a TON of hype about it. If so, I totally missed it. I found it slotted into a B&N bookcase (not even on display), the only copy available, and thought, "Well, it's obviously gay so let's give it a try." I liked the dark plot description on the back: Jonah, a broke aspiring playwright in NYC, becomes involved with Richard, a celebrated gay writer who's old enough to be Jonah's dad. Obvious set-up for a sticky, abusive situation. The cover and title suggested a cheeky, campy treatment and I was all-aboard.
(Dude, this book is stuffed with evidence that it was highly-promoted. There's a reader discussion guide in the back! An interview with the author! A little blurb saying that upon publication it had ALREADY been optioned for an Amazon TV show! And to top it all off, it was Parks-Ramage's debut.)
Well, okay, here's a quick plot description.
It starts with a prologue. Our main character sits on a witness stand. He's supposed to testify about the rape and abuse he suffered at Richard's hands. He's doing this to help an unnamed young man who is suing Richard for similar rape and abuse, but on the stand, Jonah changes his mind last-minute and instead testifies that Richard was a loving boyfriend who never hurt anybody.
Cut to 2008.
( Read more... )
(deep breath)
This book was like, 200 pages long, guys. It was NOT long enough to show a happy relationship delve into an abusive one while ALSO tackling Richard's incest trauma, Jonah's kinship with Mace Miller, Jonah's fucked-up relationships with his mom and dad. It DEFINITELY wasn't long enough to tackle all of the above while also introducing a nefarious ring of gay rapists with a secret torture dungeon in the Hamptons, and also a rapey Christian cult, and also a healing strawberry farm and pro-gay church. Even a skilled writer would struggle to juggle those elements and do them all justice (if you accept the premise that these are good ideas and SHOULD be juggled at all).
Parks-Ramage, as a writer... he's not bad. Honestly. He's competent. He's had a lot of writing gigs in his life and it shows. He knows how to string a sentence together. But he's by no means an interesting writer. This plot is stuffed full of potentially interesting ideas, and Parks-Ramage isn't equipped to handle them. Each new element is delivered in the form of flat exposition. Dialogue is bland, immemorable, with zero surprises. No character ever surprises me, actually; nor do I ever get that pleasantly-surprised "wow!" moment while reading a particularly beautiful sentence or impactful snippet of dialogue. Also, I can't help but pick this bone: why do we need to constantly devote entire pages to the most dull subjects in this book?? Paragraph after paragraph describes Jonah's budget during his escape from the Hamptons. "I had $200 from Mace and I spent $100 on a train ticket to NYC and then the hostel was $40 a night and I spent $10 on food each day at the bodega--" LOOK, I JUST SUMMED IT UP INTO ONE SENTENCE, and even THAT sentence is so long and boring that it ought to be cut!
The characters really seem like cardboard cut-outs -- broad strokes of common stereotypes. Richard's most interesting trait is that he was apparently molested by his mom, but outside of the Mace rape scene, it's never explored. And that one scene is not enough to justify including incest as a plot point, imo. Not saying that you have to justify incest specifically, but that you have to justify EVERY plot point -- you have to treat your plot points with respect, think about them seriously, explore them to the full extent. If you fail to do that with ANY plot point then your book immediately becomes shakier.
Jonah, unlike Richard, is stuffed with potentially interesting traits. He falsely accused his dad of molestation. He only just recently went to conversion therapy. He's manipulative, selfish, vain, a little cutthroat. But all these things are written, somehow, so blandly, that Jonah is immensely boring to read. In the back of the book, Parks-Ramage talks about Jonah. He admits that many early readers considered Jonah to be too unsympathetic. Parks-Ramage contends that Jonah is MEANT to be unsympathetic. He wanted to explore unsympathetic, imperfect victims.
Reading this made it all click for me about why Jonah doesn't work. Parks-Ramage really didn't set out to write a person; he set out to write an unsympathetic victim specifically so he could make an Important Point. This is why it seems like all of Jonah's actions Just Happen, coincidentally, without any impact on him -- because Parks-Ramage isn't interested in the bare-minimum work of exploring Jonah's personality. Those things are PURELY there to establish that not all victims are angels, And They Deserve Justice Anyway.
Me, to a friend: "[explains the plot]"
My friend: "Why can't people just write good books"
My friend: "pro gay churches are such copouts. I think i could write a book better than this."
My friend: "Me too movement was a cancer on literature"
First of all, on reading this book, I got the impression that there was a TON of hype about it. If so, I totally missed it. I found it slotted into a B&N bookcase (not even on display), the only copy available, and thought, "Well, it's obviously gay so let's give it a try." I liked the dark plot description on the back: Jonah, a broke aspiring playwright in NYC, becomes involved with Richard, a celebrated gay writer who's old enough to be Jonah's dad. Obvious set-up for a sticky, abusive situation. The cover and title suggested a cheeky, campy treatment and I was all-aboard.
(Dude, this book is stuffed with evidence that it was highly-promoted. There's a reader discussion guide in the back! An interview with the author! A little blurb saying that upon publication it had ALREADY been optioned for an Amazon TV show! And to top it all off, it was Parks-Ramage's debut.)
Well, okay, here's a quick plot description.
It starts with a prologue. Our main character sits on a witness stand. He's supposed to testify about the rape and abuse he suffered at Richard's hands. He's doing this to help an unnamed young man who is suing Richard for similar rape and abuse, but on the stand, Jonah changes his mind last-minute and instead testifies that Richard was a loving boyfriend who never hurt anybody.
Cut to 2008.
( Read more... )
(deep breath)
This book was like, 200 pages long, guys. It was NOT long enough to show a happy relationship delve into an abusive one while ALSO tackling Richard's incest trauma, Jonah's kinship with Mace Miller, Jonah's fucked-up relationships with his mom and dad. It DEFINITELY wasn't long enough to tackle all of the above while also introducing a nefarious ring of gay rapists with a secret torture dungeon in the Hamptons, and also a rapey Christian cult, and also a healing strawberry farm and pro-gay church. Even a skilled writer would struggle to juggle those elements and do them all justice (if you accept the premise that these are good ideas and SHOULD be juggled at all).
Parks-Ramage, as a writer... he's not bad. Honestly. He's competent. He's had a lot of writing gigs in his life and it shows. He knows how to string a sentence together. But he's by no means an interesting writer. This plot is stuffed full of potentially interesting ideas, and Parks-Ramage isn't equipped to handle them. Each new element is delivered in the form of flat exposition. Dialogue is bland, immemorable, with zero surprises. No character ever surprises me, actually; nor do I ever get that pleasantly-surprised "wow!" moment while reading a particularly beautiful sentence or impactful snippet of dialogue. Also, I can't help but pick this bone: why do we need to constantly devote entire pages to the most dull subjects in this book?? Paragraph after paragraph describes Jonah's budget during his escape from the Hamptons. "I had $200 from Mace and I spent $100 on a train ticket to NYC and then the hostel was $40 a night and I spent $10 on food each day at the bodega--" LOOK, I JUST SUMMED IT UP INTO ONE SENTENCE, and even THAT sentence is so long and boring that it ought to be cut!
The characters really seem like cardboard cut-outs -- broad strokes of common stereotypes. Richard's most interesting trait is that he was apparently molested by his mom, but outside of the Mace rape scene, it's never explored. And that one scene is not enough to justify including incest as a plot point, imo. Not saying that you have to justify incest specifically, but that you have to justify EVERY plot point -- you have to treat your plot points with respect, think about them seriously, explore them to the full extent. If you fail to do that with ANY plot point then your book immediately becomes shakier.
Jonah, unlike Richard, is stuffed with potentially interesting traits. He falsely accused his dad of molestation. He only just recently went to conversion therapy. He's manipulative, selfish, vain, a little cutthroat. But all these things are written, somehow, so blandly, that Jonah is immensely boring to read. In the back of the book, Parks-Ramage talks about Jonah. He admits that many early readers considered Jonah to be too unsympathetic. Parks-Ramage contends that Jonah is MEANT to be unsympathetic. He wanted to explore unsympathetic, imperfect victims.
Reading this made it all click for me about why Jonah doesn't work. Parks-Ramage really didn't set out to write a person; he set out to write an unsympathetic victim specifically so he could make an Important Point. This is why it seems like all of Jonah's actions Just Happen, coincidentally, without any impact on him -- because Parks-Ramage isn't interested in the bare-minimum work of exploring Jonah's personality. Those things are PURELY there to establish that not all victims are angels, And They Deserve Justice Anyway.
Me, to a friend: "[explains the plot]"
My friend: "Why can't people just write good books"
My friend: "pro gay churches are such copouts. I think i could write a book better than this."
My friend: "Me too movement was a cancer on literature"