“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.” – Aldous Huxley, “Brave New World.” It could be argued that works of dystopia serve as a bellwether during trying times of technological growth. While certain facets of the story, typically pertaining to the future, can often seem far-fetched, at the underlying core of any successful work maintains a direct sense of urgency and a dissolution of thought and freedom in some way. Sean Penn has amassed an impressive body of work as an actor, winning Academy Awards for Best Actor in both “Milk (2009)” and “Mystic River (2004).” He is also a talented director, dedicated activist and humanitarian, journalist and, recently, author. Penn has penned his first novel, “Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff,” from which he will be reading at DG Wills Books on Saturday, April 7 at 2 p.m.
“Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff” is at once an homage to characters typical of Pynchon and Vonnegut, with sensibilities, pertinent skills and temperament (for good or ill) to match, as well as a joltingly original work for these tense political times. Set to “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” fixed on repeat, that is. The book permeates through the hyper-detailed, yet condensed fog of the titular character, Bob Honey’s, life experiences. Bob always, whether knowingly or unwittingly, seems to be where the action is. Is Bob simply an entrepreneur in the most capitalistic sense of the term, a contract killer, or just… different?
Bob lives on 1528 Sweet Dog Lane in Woodview, Calif., though his neighbors rarely see him around. When they do, it typically involves catching a glimpse of a maladjusted middle-aged man. One neighbor, in particular, a bouffanted busybody by the name of Helen Mayo, frequently calls in Bob’s anti-climactic antics into the sheriff’s office. Since (and even prior) to his divorce, Bob has maintained little faith or trust in other human beings. A bit of a firebug in his youth (like most American boys), it only seemed natural for Bob to enter into the realm of large-scale pyrotechnic displays later on in adulthood. And, it was during his Schwinn Stingray-riding, commie-hating childhood that he learned how to do just so. Coming into his own as a man, during one of his major entrepreneurial shifts, Bob figured it out that the disposal of human effluents would always be a marketable job, especially to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Eventually, this found him in Afghanistan in 2003, shortly after Saddam Hussein’s regime was overthrown. Here, he was lending his expertise, particularly in leeching fields. “Yes, Bob is God’s squared-away individual,” Penn writes. “He knows how to get up in the morning… and just do stuff.” Stuff, in all its nonspecifics, is Bob’s specialty. In particular, Bob seems to have some extra-insight as to the inner-workings of the CIA. In his travels, he has surely come across his fair share of spooks or “knife collectors,” due to their affinity for exotic knives. Suffice it to say, he has spent some time picking up their habits. Once a nosy investigative reporter named Spurley Cultier begins digging into Bob’s misfit lifestyle for a “feature article,” Bob cannot tell whether he should form a connection with another human, or if his demise is at hand. Major themes of advertising as a means of social control, Jung’s duality of man, covert government operations and our utter impermanence drive the work. “I am neither provision or material, Bob thinks…” during an existential realization in “Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff.” Penn’s first published foray into fiction is also rife with alliteration. “Bob felt from feline millennials the transmissions of Instagrams blitzingly blazing from all directions,” he writes. And “Scottsdale’s dry climate contradicts the clammy calescent of New Guinean condensation.”
San Diego also serves as a brief backdrop for an absurdist scene involving Bob, a custom’s agent, a pyrotechnic barge, a few models and drug dealers escaping on semi-submersibles. While there are many scenes of that nature, they only serve as an aperitif to Penn’s widely known distaste for the way his country often handles stuff. For more information, visit simonandschuster.com/books/Bob-Honey-Who-Just-Do-Stuff/Sean-Penn/9781501189043.