Well, no. The stories are so dull precisely because they are so utterly predictable. There is violence, stupidity, no introspection, and no real dialogue between characters - yes, even the working class debates real issues that affect them. They are not fascinating because the characters are not complex. Watching a retard suck his toe is not fascinating - gross; but dull, not fascinating.

And, in the eighteen tales that comprised the collection, I knew, with almost no    variance, how each and every tale would end. The reason? Because the stories are so cookie cutter formulaic. I have seen hundreds of bad tales like this on the Internet, dozens in writing workshops, and can say, without fear of contradiction, that there are likely fifty to a hundred thousand Donald Ray Pollocks enrolled in MFA writing programs across the country at any given moment. How this rube got the connections or luck to ‘make it’ in such a ‘competitive’ field is the real question.

A reviewer at The Oregonian writes (surprise, surprise):

Pollock's writing has been compared to that of Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver and Cormac McCarthy. He draws his readers in slowly, tangling them in the mundane toil of small-town life, before smacking them upside the head with something unexpected and primal. Small moments yield big surprises.

First, the book has eighteen stories in 203 pages, with plenty of white space. Thus, each tale, in larger than average font, in a smaller than average sized hardback book (8.5” x 5.5”), would be about six to seven single-spaced typewritten pages. There is no drawing of the reader in slowly, for that implies subtlety which, later on, I will show Pollock lacks. Second, there is little that is mundane about the toil of small town in this book- unless one considers public incest and rampant idiocy mundane. Third, there are no big surprises, whether propelled by small moments or not, for, as stated, every tale’s ending is telegraphed from within the first two pages. Predictability kills the ‘surprise factor,’ unless, of course, the reviewer is admitting her own lack or reading experience and/or acumen.

I could go on about the utter inanity of the book critics (how dare I append the term ‘literary’ to such swill?), but you get the point. Here is a brief list of other terms, modifiers, and ejaculations repeatedly used in this heavily reviewed debut defecation: raunchy, direct, intense, fascinating, grim, shocking, knockout, amazing, violent, raw, unforgettable, terrifying, astonishing, raunchy, dark, and on and on.

Yet, in Googling a few dozen reviews, here is something noticeable - not a single review used terms like well-written, excellent, good, well-drafted, well-wrought, great. You see, the unwritten rule in the blurb-filled fellatio that passes for literary criticism these days is that one never directly uses terms nor modifiers with an intellectual basis that can be directly refuted with ease when emotion-laden terms can suffice. Especially when writing about a bad writer who thinks that merely outraging someone emotionally is the equivalent of impressing someone intellectually, skillfully, and aesthetically. It is not.