My goal is to read a novel a week in 2015. I’ve made it to 12.

-Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

Look in my eyes. What do you see? The cult of personality.

From a suicide cult, to the cult of celebrity, to the cult of personality. An ironic and fitting book for someone whose unofficial website is called The Cult.

This book will remain special to me for at least one reason. My wife got an autographed first-edition for me as a birthday present.

For me, it’s a book that will take time to appreciate. I didn’t enjoy it so much in the process of reading it. But, as I take time to reflect, I realize that it’s a very clever story with some interesting pictures of the world we live in.

The plot surrounds one of, if not the only, remaining member of a religious cult that committed mass suicide. We follow him on his journey from cult member, to housekeeper for the stars, to suicide hotline proprietor (who encourages people to commit suicide), to unwitting follower of a young woman with some sort of prophetic gift, to plane hijacker.

Some of the more interesting scenes, for me, involved the main Character (Tender Branson) receiving psychological counseling. Along the way, we learn quite a bit about the DSM (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). I studied the DSM a bit in college (I took 15 hours of psychology), which made it easy to giggle a bit while reading the book. Tender figures out that he can just study the manual and pretend to have the disorders it describes. As long as he does this his therapist will never actually ask him any really significant questions (since she’s obsessed with DSM diagnoses). I suppose that’s the big ’emotional scam’ of the book – Tender acts like everything in the world is wrong with him so that he won’t have to deal with what’s actually wrong with him. In the end it bites him. He’s escaped the life of the suicide cult, but he can’t escape the cult of personality.

He becomes one himself. As the last surviving member of the suicide cult, he becomes a spiritual celebrity and guru – even though he has nothing to teach, or even say. What really happens is that he becomes the puppet of a big corporation who is in the business of making celebrities. He just reads the script and plays the part. (Playing the part, by the way, includes taking steroids, amphetamines, and all sorts of other things).

Finally, as his celebrity is waning, he falls victim to a prophetic crush. The girl he desires turns out to be a dreamer of prophetic dreams. One of those dreams spells his doom, though he doesn’t realize it until it’s too late. Cue Living Colour.