Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff is the latest creative endeavor of Oscar-winning actor, sometimes activist, and journalist, Sean Penn. Creatively speaking, this is arguably Penn’s most experimental work, garnering a reception that has been polarizing.
A satirical take on the current political landscape of America, Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff follows the life of Bob Honey, via Pappy Pariah, a fictional ghostwriter slash narrator to the story.
Segments of the story originated in a short story version released on Audible in 2016 that was narrated by Penn and ghostwritten by Pariah. At the time of its release, Penn denied any involvement beyond performing the audible reading. There was even a mysterious backstory for the ghostwriter, Pappy Pariah, described as a rising new talent, furthering the mystery.
It’s unclear why Penn chose to expand the story and dive deeper into Bob Honey’s world, but readers delighted by the short version are in for more of the same treat. Penn takes us deeper into Bob Honey’s worldview, his political musings, and his life stories. These moments are all infused with surreal detail and darkly comedic insight.
Bob Honey is a former sewage specialist and septic tank salesman who has traveled the world from Baghdad to the South Sudan collecting anecdotal experiences such as selling fireworks to dictators, and futile attempts to save sea life.
Bob’s home base is Woodview, California. He’s newly divorced and bitter about his ice cream truck driving ex-wife who has married her divorce lawyer. Working for a secret government project has allowed Bob to crisscross the world on assignment. The latest involves assassin work offing the elderly by way of a mallet. His targets are deemed to be a drain on resources of a consumption-driven society.
Honey antagonizes his nosy neighbors by mowing his lawn at random early hours, (to which they are quick and eager to report to local authorities) and then decides to play at socializing and invites them all to an awkward barbecue at his house.
Meanwhile, he pines for Annie, his girlfriend (or is she a figment of his imagination?) who provides both a sexual and emotional outlet.
There is no formal plot although a sequence toward the end of the book takes Bob on a journey through Florida landing him in more existential angst triggered by the peak of the election drama. This sends Bob ranting in ways that one can only imagine the author, outwardly outspoken against the Trump administration, would love to do in a more public forum.
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It’s impossible to not make correlations to the actual 2016 election. The not so subtle nods to both candidates are delightfully on the nose.
While the presidential candidates are mostly nameless, Penn refers to the male candidate as “Mr. Landlord,” and describes him as, “the violently immature seventy-year-old-boy-man with money and French vanilla cotton candy hair.” Later Bob rants further, challenging, “ You are not simply a president in need of impeachment, you are a man in need of an intervention. We are not simply a people in need of an intervention, we are a nation in need of an assassin.”
Regarding Mr. Landlord’s female opponent, Bob ponders, “Not charismatic enough for your folks? Too shrill? Too hawkish? Isn’t it true you never wanted qualifications? You wanted a star, you wanted to be charmed, seduced, and entertained. Was she the worst possible candidate or are you the most arrogant, ill, and unqualified electorate in the history of the Western world.”
Here are some more memorable moments that explore additional themes of political upheaval and social commentary:.
- On the rise of new political turmoil: “This, new American dream, where arrogance is charisma, character is complaint, and gray, a color of tolerance no longer tolerated.”
- On discovering his ex-wife has had recent plastic surgery: “Getting older in America is tough on a woman, seeing what she’ll do to avoid it is tough on a man.”
- Discussing the surreality of a recent assignment with his government boss, “Bobs irrational passion for dispassionate reality is, for him, irreconcilable.”
- On the prevalence of culture wars in America: “While the privileged patronize this pickle as epithet to the epigenetic inequality of equals, Bob smells a cyber-assisted assault emboldened by right-brain Hollywood narcissists.
Capping it all off is a dramatic epilogue featuring a poem highlighting some of the more notable current events of the past few years ranging from the rise of the #metoo movement to the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, to the shooting in Las Vegas.
Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff is darkly funny with rolling alliterative sentences that are equal parts entertaining and challenging in their sentence structure. As an artist familiar with a visual medium, Penn weaves a loose plot that takes on a cinematic quality. He emulates some of the structure and form similar to that of a screenplay, complete with flashback sequences, and dreamlike surrealism.
Penn said in a recent interview with Time Magazine, Penn spoke about the difference between film and books. “ Film has often been called the director’s medium. And a writer kind of gets lost in that, often. With a book, you’ve got a writer and a director — and the director is the reader.”
And as a reader/director, it’s wholly entertaining to immerse oneself into Bob’s worldview, and his particularly unique challenges. Although it is a wild ride to thread the line between what is real life, what is Bob’s imagination, and what is Pappy’s projection of the story, or even, perhaps, where all three of these versions intersect.
Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff is a uniquely trippy ride although it’s difficult not to compare it to the writings of authors such as Kurt Vonnegut, particularly as a political satire. Penn also seems to channel the surreal mind trippiness of Chuck Palahniuk and Hunter S. Thompson.
Poetry fans will delight in the alliterative quality of the narration which is equal parts maddening and fascinating.
Bob Honey Who Do Stuff was published via Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, in March of 2018. Read more about the book here:
