The Most Precious Substance on Earth

Shashi Bhat's The Most Precious Substance on Earth (McClelland & Stewart, 2021) is a picaresque coming-of-age novel that starts strongly. It chronicles the youth of a South Asian high school student from Halifax named Nina after she experiences a sexual assault. It then jumps ahead to her experience of graduate school in creative writing at Johns Hopkins (Bhat's alma mater), a section that is particularly well-crafted.

Here, Bhat's descriptions are at their most acute. Describing a graduate of the program and published author who still shows up at events, Bhat's narrator offers the following: “In profile, his hair is a tilde” (90). Then, when this famous ex-student encounters lower-ranking staff members, the narrator offers: “his eyes flit past them for someone more important to talk to” (90). In this way, Bhat encapsulates the privileged graduate student, and how it can feel to be around these sorts of people when you are not so privileged and well-connected.

With the subsequent chapters, which are less plot-driven and read more like vignettes from the narrator's life, the observations continue, but they become less insightful and more embittered. While these sorts of observations are at first familiar in literary and Seinfeld-ian terms, as the book lurches along they feel like more of a crutch. Soon, it seems as if inadequacy is the narrator's singular approach to the world. Consider some of the following examples:

After graduate school, Nina gets a job teaching high school, and in order to develop professionally, she records herself teaching. She reacts as follows “...as soon as I saw my ogre face, and my Humpty Dumpty Body, and the stretch marks on my upper arms, and my shoulders rounded like those of a cartoon vulture, I turned the video off” (155-156). The level of self-loathing is almost parodic. Later, while giving an extemporaneous speech at a Toastmasters meeting, Nina verbalizes the following to the group: “'I'm trying to remember high school Physics. But all I remember is failing'” (158). By the later stages of the book, depressive sledgehammers like these swing freely on virtually every page—sometimes there are several in short succession. And so, as the book crawls on, this style of observation makes the experience seem like you are reading not so much a novel but rather a book-length defense mechanism. Bhat's narrator manages to become self-deprecating beyond tolerable literary levels, to the point of being self-eviscerating.

This is most salient in her explorations of relationships. Of a boyfriend Nina is seeing but apparently not really into, she notes that “He is frustratingly good at sex” (199). Later, with respect to dating, she claims that “coffee dates might as well be job interviews—except you must marry the interviewer and have sex with him for the rest of your life” (224). Your present reviewer will be the first to criticize the innumerable faults of marriage, but this quip makes for a depressingly narrow vision of that institution. These sorts of wisecracks become less witty and more depressing as the book continues. At one point, Nina goes on a date with a doctor who is somewhat eager to get physical down by Halifax's waterfront. In the aftermath, she says “For weeks after, I search The Coast for news of murders” (226).

At times, it seems like it's not all doom and gloom for Nina. Soon enough, she meets a guy she describes as “the kindest person I've ever met” (231). The guy wants to commit, so much so that he deactivates his online dating profile. This prompts the following response from Nina: “I deactivate my account, too. I picture marrying him under strands of twinkle lights and white mayflowers on the roof of the Seaport Market. I know my parents would like him. But I put off answering his latest message. It goes unanswered, and so goes the next. I ghost him. I'm a ghost” (232). By this point, the reader is left to wonder if this is not just the stream-of-consciousness of someone who is unhappy, but rather that of someone who cannot be happy. The Most Precious Substance on Earth is inadequacy porn.

But the book ends strongly. In the last vignette, the narrator starts a blog and soon finds that she has a troll. Rather than ignoring him, she actually tracks him down and schedules a meet-up. This may seem improbable and heretofore unforeseeable in the narrative, but it actually makes for a very fitting conclusion. After all, the narrator has effectively been trolling herself for the entirety of the book, and now she gets to meet a living, breathing (and rather pathetic) internet troll. Finally, Nina shows some nerve and stands up for herself like an adult. Still, it's not enough to convince this reader that Nina is anything approaching a well-adjusted grown-up. The Most Precious Substance on Earth is almost like a coming-of-age novel where the principal character doesn't actually come of age. Perhaps this marks the toll of Nina's sexual assault. The reader, sort of like the narrator, ends up waiting for something to happen to mark some kind of progress, but both end up just waiting.

A few memorable vignettes might not be enough for the majority of readers. All told, The Most Precious Substance on Earth seems to suggest that a life dedicated to language and storytelling is inherently depressing and unfulfilling and incomplete. But does it have to be? I'd recommend reading Bhat's novel to answer that question for yourself. The book serves as a great litmus test for your tolerance of how many maimed, melancholy thoughts you can stomach in one reading session.  

X-Ray (1982)

If you consult a typical reviewer's take on the 1982 film X-Ray (a.k.a. Hospital Massacre), you will inevitably get a negative diagnosis. What you need, however, is a second opinion, as these reviewers are quacks. X-Ray is a well-conceived, well-executed slasher that benefits on two fronts. First, it depicts the harrowing process of dealing with hospital staff and trying to get information therefrom in accurate and Kafkaesque fashion. Secondly, it benefits from a memorable and convincing villain, a masked surgeon who absolutely massacres his victims. With his heaving breaths and medical mask-and-hood combo, the killer is simultaneously reminiscent of Kane Hodder's Jason and Mortal Kombat's Sub-Zero. But he's also something quite unique unto himself, as he hacks people to death with an unbridled fury not often seen in conventional, non-exploitation slashers. In this way, he's in contradistinction to the stereotype of the surgeon as methodical, precise, and dexterous, proceeding with a reckless abandon that makes Jason and Sub-Zero look downright surgical by comparison. Moreover, some praise is due for the female lead, Barbi Benton (pictured), whose acting sometimes gets a bum rap because she's a former Playboy Playmate. In X-Ray, she's convincing in her frustration and exasperation as both the confused patient and then the killer's prime target. That said, the scene in which a male doctor examines her while she's in the nude goes on exploitatively long and ends up being more uncomfortable than alluring. Still, this isn't enough to pull the plug on X-Ray. My diagnosis: X-Ray is a salubrious slasher that's essential to a healthy horror-fan lifestyle.

The Cult of Trump

True to its title, Stephen Hassan's 2019 book The Cult of Trump attempts to establish that Donald Trump has effectively conducted himself like a cult leader, especially during his presidential campaign and reign. While the hallmarks of cult behavior can be identified in many of Trump's methods (repetitive speaking, good vs. evil narratives, malignant narcissism) and among his followers (lack of critical thinking, trance-like states at rallies, etc.), it's hard to be completely convinced that Trump's political movement was and is tantamount to a cult like that of Scientology or the Unification Church (the latter of which Hassan defected from). At most, Trump's movement is cultish. That said, this book should not be considered a failure. In fact, its perspective is prescient. In the later stages of the book, Hassan makes reference to Jim Jones and the mass suicide at Jonestown. Very judiciously, he writes that "[i]t may seem to be a leap to mention Jonestown when writing about the cult of Trump." Perhaps it did in 2019, but since the publication of this book, we have seen the January 6th riots and the assault on the Capitol. Hassan basically predicts the final months of the Trump presidency in the second-last paragraph of the book: "If Trump runs again and is not reelected in 2020, he might claim that the election was rigged. Who knows what he might call on his followers to do in that case?" (233-234). So while Hassan may not have been entirely convincing in his argument for there being a “Cult of Trump,” he can at least be praised for his foresight.

Sorority Party Massacre (2012)

Sorority Party Massacre (2012) starts off very promisingly. There is legitimate frisson in the opening sequence, where a woman en route to a sorority meeting pulls over to a roadside scrapyard only to find that she's being stalked via her cellphone by an unseen man. Sure, it's more than a little reminiscent of Scream, but the sequence presents a capable homage. At the conclusion of this opening sequence, we're introduced to an intimidating and visually compelling villain with a distinctive, foreboding laugh. A raspy click that sounds looped, this laugh could have been iconic.

Kevin Sorbo appears briefly in this movie.
I didn't want to post a photo of Ron Jeremy. 

To this point, the viewer is geared for a serviceable horror flick, but what follows after the opening credits is a faltering horror comedy that tries harder to be funny than horrific. What we get are fart jokes, consciously hammy acting, dialogue punctuated with sound effects, shameless over-reliance on montages, superfluous nudity, a “mongoloid” character, and Ron Jeremy cameos. In short, Sorority Party Massacre becomes that kind of movie. The titular sorority girls are little more than T&A, which in all fairness should have been obvious to this reviewer going in, given the title. The film is neither funny nor horrific, and it looks and feels amateur all throughout—a far cry from the intro. It's as if the opening sequence and the movie proper were directed by different people. We never do see that cool killer from the opening sequence again, at least not as he originally appears, sounds, and behaves. This viewer does not recall hearing that raspy, clicking laugh again.

But in the end, there is a half-decent denouement. Here we have the privilege of seeing Ron Jeremy brutalized by the main-character cop. This part has aged well, given Jeremy's recently litigated sex crimes. The Jeremy beat-down may even be enough to justify checking out the movie. But if you do seek out Sorority Party Massacre, just watch the opening sequence and then skip to the ending. The "movie" sandwiched in between is unwatchable.