MiSaNtHrOpE
10-29-2005, 01:33 PM
For a 1.5 credit course, I had to read a book called The Pact, about three poor African-American kids who beat the odds and become doctors. My assignment was to write a response to it, and this is what I wrote. I hope you find it amusing and dont waste $14.
I have read many books over the summer, from Brave New World to Sybil, and The Pact by Drs. Davis, Jenkins, and Hunt, ranks as the worst book I have read over the summer. Of the 6 books I’ve read between June and September, The Pact ranks as #36. There is no other book so filled from cover to cover with clichés and the authors made poor use of their education.
I read the book from cover to cover, understood everything, and found no relationship between the lives of the authors and mine. Of course I feel sorry that their childhoods were so awful, but the book presents nothing new to the from-rags-to-riches story.
The mother figure, in the poverty-stricken environment, is usually the most supportive, and teachers never want to see their students fail. They are lucky, however, that they found friendships that are so supportive, but then, they wouldn’t write a book if they failed, would they?
On the NY Times Bestseller list, The Pact does not belong. One could, if he decided to venture into the book, ignoring the warnings on the back cover, read perhaps the first three or four chapters, and immediately realize the middle and end of the book quite accurately. Every rags-to-riches story, every competition / heart-lifting book or movie has exactly the same formula, complete with the poverty-stricken hopeless character who discovers he has some talent at something, and realizes his dream to use that talent to get ahead. Throughout the story, the character meets other characters and figures that wish to see him succeed at his goal, and he goes through each obstacle with a victory or perhaps loses one or two before the final showdown. The Pact, obviously, is no different: even before one opens the book, he or she knows what to expect. And yet, we accept this literary garbage as something substantial.
Aside from the cliché-ridden story, what also significantly contributes to my unwavering hatred of The Pact is the poor use of the doctors’ education. Surely in the course of their studies, they must have been taught how to construct intelligent and interesting sentences, sentences that are absent from their 250-page publication. Instead of interesting sentences, the reader must wade through sections such as “Alone in my room, I listened to Tupac. He rapped about the struggle between his old life as a thug and his new one as a rich rapper. I related to his isolation. (210).” Clearly, judging from the amount of education and schooling a doctor must go through for his degree, these three doctors must have been taught how to at least make their book sound good.
This book, The Pact, has no value, literary or otherwise. The story is formulaic and the sentence construction is strikingly dull. I would not recommend this book to any intelligent person, and assigning it to students in an institution of higher learning should be a prosecutable crime.
I have read many books over the summer, from Brave New World to Sybil, and The Pact by Drs. Davis, Jenkins, and Hunt, ranks as the worst book I have read over the summer. Of the 6 books I’ve read between June and September, The Pact ranks as #36. There is no other book so filled from cover to cover with clichés and the authors made poor use of their education.
I read the book from cover to cover, understood everything, and found no relationship between the lives of the authors and mine. Of course I feel sorry that their childhoods were so awful, but the book presents nothing new to the from-rags-to-riches story.
The mother figure, in the poverty-stricken environment, is usually the most supportive, and teachers never want to see their students fail. They are lucky, however, that they found friendships that are so supportive, but then, they wouldn’t write a book if they failed, would they?
On the NY Times Bestseller list, The Pact does not belong. One could, if he decided to venture into the book, ignoring the warnings on the back cover, read perhaps the first three or four chapters, and immediately realize the middle and end of the book quite accurately. Every rags-to-riches story, every competition / heart-lifting book or movie has exactly the same formula, complete with the poverty-stricken hopeless character who discovers he has some talent at something, and realizes his dream to use that talent to get ahead. Throughout the story, the character meets other characters and figures that wish to see him succeed at his goal, and he goes through each obstacle with a victory or perhaps loses one or two before the final showdown. The Pact, obviously, is no different: even before one opens the book, he or she knows what to expect. And yet, we accept this literary garbage as something substantial.
Aside from the cliché-ridden story, what also significantly contributes to my unwavering hatred of The Pact is the poor use of the doctors’ education. Surely in the course of their studies, they must have been taught how to construct intelligent and interesting sentences, sentences that are absent from their 250-page publication. Instead of interesting sentences, the reader must wade through sections such as “Alone in my room, I listened to Tupac. He rapped about the struggle between his old life as a thug and his new one as a rich rapper. I related to his isolation. (210).” Clearly, judging from the amount of education and schooling a doctor must go through for his degree, these three doctors must have been taught how to at least make their book sound good.
This book, The Pact, has no value, literary or otherwise. The story is formulaic and the sentence construction is strikingly dull. I would not recommend this book to any intelligent person, and assigning it to students in an institution of higher learning should be a prosecutable crime.