Book Review: It Ain’t Just The Size

MG Hardie’s recent book, It Ain’t Just The Size, had sat on my desk a full week after I’d retrieved it from the post office.  (I decided to read IAJTS before my hedonistic trip to San Diego, just after I’d completed Svetlana Lavochkina’s interesting short story, Like a Real Man.) Hardie’s book will be the last review read for a long time.

Hardie begins his book on an elegiac note of memorial and testimony to his deceased grandfather. The “dedication” serves as a symbolic gesture where the old guard bequeaths the struggle to the new guard. In this moving passage, Hardie mourns: “You were a hard man, a strong man, a brilliant man…. I remember the wisdom you had…but most of all I will miss your stories…. No one tells children stories anymore.”

The book has some awkward transitions and sometimes it is difficult to keep up with the multifarious social issues that Hardie attempts to discuss. From prurient discussions of women, to violent men, violent women, sex, greed, conspiracy theories, injustice, hermaphrodites, the pharmaceutical industry, hip hop, the LGBT community, we are given a front row seat to the theatre of the insane, a Cosby-esque cast of garrulous characters with self-indulgent motives.

Structurally, the book moves from one topic to the next (like a crammed syllabus). And, although Hardie’s deftly constructed characters are not one-dimensional, it seems as though his real intent is to give us his own opinion rather than provide a creative narrative from which to give critical reflection and prescient insight. Yet, Hardie is all over the place and nowhere at all. The main point of any novel is in how an author deals with various social-cultural issues, context of which the novel enters into, and whether or not the novel is even relevant. Certainly, Hardie’s humorous observations are interesting and entertaining (as though we are standing in the middle of a quadraphonic zoo), but sometimes those episodic slices of philosophical inquiry are lost on puerile moments and unpolished dialogues.

At times – even at the book’s most pensive point – Hardie’s eclectic bunch of mix-matched characters are too crass and anecdotal – which renders them intellectually paralytic. As a result, Hardies tragedians are lost in a Shakespearean dilemma where (like Hamlet) they are unable to act, unable to think, and unable to move beyond the frivolous banter and mediocre rhetoric. We see no intellectual deep-sea diving expectant of someone otherwise considered to be a premier “philosopher, pop-culture expert”. Hardie’s loquacious characters overshadow the intent and purpose of the book, and the comical flare ultimately works against Hardie’s genuine effort to seriously tackle issues. In his brilliant rumination titled Sam Lipsyte The Ask, Zachary Lazar lingers on the matter in depth:

The problem with many funny novels is that they are only funny – they skimp on psychology and nuance, which is difficult to render, and instead invest all their energy in out-absurding the already absurd. This can be a joyful relief at times, but it can also begin to yield diminishing returns, perhaps because of comedy’s inherent view that people are slightly ridiculous (if not outright buffoons) and our unfortunate knowledge that this is not really the case – people in real life are complicated, and those who are buffoons are frequently dangerous.

Then there is the matter of IAJTS-as-stageplay. IJATS certainly does not follow the format and style of a typical 20^th century American play. Within the frenzy of Hardie’s struggling book, we see no real indication that the book is a bona fide play. According to the experts, “plays are made up of two things: dialogue and stage directions, and they both have different formats on the page.” From the published book format plays of James Baldwin’s Blues for Mister Charlie, Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun, to Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, a play must be presented in proper structure and format. Hardie loses cool points for such an unnecessary neglect.

In the end, as with his first novel, Hardie is cynical, analytical, witty, and humorous. His antics are critical but his motives are genuine and humanitarian: “We all deserve to be treated equally, black, white, gay, poor, Latino, rich, whatever. We need to strive for a society that acknowledges our differences and rewards our contributions.” And, even though IAJTS is not perfect, Hardie’s unflinching courage to open up and sustain dialogues on multicultural issues, as well as his persistent engagement with everything that is wrong with American society, certainly makes a lasting contribution to the struggle. On that note, while I am critical of IAJTS, I am Hardie’s biggest fan.

4⅓ out of 5

MG Hardie Website

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