The Hike by Drew Magary
279 pages
Published 2016
Read from October 8 to October 11
Rating: ★★½ out of 5
One of my default rhetorical tricks (and one of the easiest ways to manufacture a review in general, whether in music, film, literature, whatever) is to categorize a book as a hybrid between two given styles, authors, subgenres, formulas, etc. Another one of my favorite openings lately has been to respond to the claims of the blurb copy, either in slack-jawed agreement or in snide counterpoint. Today I'll use both methods!
"The Hike is Cormac McCarthy's Alice in Wonderland," asserts one Jeffrey Cranor. (I don't have the time or patience to listen to a recording of some people talking, so I just don't do podcasts; I understand Welcome to Night Vale is a big thing in geek circles, but I have never heard even a snippet of it.) I'll give him his Alice in Wonderland -- The Hike is pretty much a textbook wonderland/portal fantasy, with our hapless hero encountering a series of obstacles drawn from pop culture and hoary fantasy fiction cliches -- but Cormac McCarthy Drew Magary is not. Magary's writing is fast-moving, but has that currently-hip irreverent tone that makes for forgettable, disposable, junk food reading. The brilliance and horror of McCarthy is nowhere evident here.
If I had to reformulate Cranor's statement to my own liking, I'd say The Hike is like one of Catherynne M. Valente's weaker Fairyland books, cramming together old fantasy tropes at breakneck pace, with little time to pause for character or meaning, but starring a white suburban dad and exploring the doubts of mortality and the regrets of workaday middle age rather than the vertigo of adolescence. Speaking as a white suburban dad, I just didn't connect with the existential crises of our basic-as-fuck hero Ben. The temptations the path offers him -- hooking up with that cute girl in college; releasing the guilt he carries over not loving his abusive, absentee dad -- felt as authentic and real as a Hungry Man microwave dinner. The only moments of emotional punch involved Ben's kids (an obvious button to push, but one I can't help but respond to) and the revelation on the very last page, which of course I won't spoil here. Suffice it to say that the psychological toil Ben puts in on the path is not commensurate with the suburban psychological wounds he bears, making the entire exercise feel at times like an indulgent power fantasy: Average white dude breaking the chains of his past traumas to realize his true potential, to become more wise and more powerful than you could imagine, a veritable god forged through his own sheer willpower!
The very ending, as I said, somewhat redeems the book in my eyes, and to be fair, despite the emotional disconnect I felt, I can't say that the book is bad. It just felt rather flimsy to me.
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