{"id":1291,"date":"2025-07-10T11:51:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T11:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aerowalsh.com\/mountaindevil\/?p=1291"},"modified":"2025-07-10T12:00:55","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T12:00:55","slug":"just-by-looking-at-him-ryan-oconnell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/?p=1291","title":{"rendered":"Just By Looking at Him – Ryan O’Connell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recommend: No<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the same weekend as I read Just By Looking at Him<\/em>, I went to Olympic Meats with the GBs. Olympic Meats in Marrickville is Instagram famous and Google Review infamous for their beef tallow triple cooked chips. We knew these chips were not really food, not in the usual nutritional sense of the word. Still, scratching the timeless itch for junk is delicious. And fleeting. The joy is so ephemeral you\u2019d take two chomps and completely forget it was ever in your mouth. Onto the next chip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just By Looking at Him <\/em>was no different to having chips for dinner. It\u2019s a pleasure so empty that it\u2019s spectacular we bother indulging in it at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are three spurs to the plot, rinse and repeat, chapter after chapter:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. The main character, Elliot, is gay.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. The main character, Elliot, is disabled (cerebral palsy).<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. The main character, Elliot, works as a writer on a sitcom.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    My interactions with BookTok are minimal but I am confident Just By Looking at Him <\/em>is the archetype. It\u2019s a technically entertaining \u201cof it\u2019s time\u201d commercial enterprise. It is more pithy  pop-culture references than it is art. It\u2019s a book that doesn\u2019t expect to be relevant in a year\u2019s time, let alone ten years. The medium of a book is incidental – this could be a podcast or a tv show or a series of YouTube Shorts or a blog (!) – and only got chosen as it\u2019s got the highest chance of extracting your $23. At no point can you shy away from the fact this is a product being marketed to a specific target market. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    How did I, lover of obscure 1970s fiction, end up here, a sucker for mass entertainment just like the worst of them? It\u2019s partially Bert C.\u2019s fault (Town Hall Dymocks Flash Card Recommendations wall). It\u2019s partially blamed on the yearning for a purchase after a late night at work. It\u2019s mostly just that I\u2019d had carrots for lunch (Kairos <\/em>by Jenny Erpenbeck).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Just By Looking at Him<\/em> has two things going for it, meaning in the universe of shit things it\u2019s more Gossip Girl than Vampire Diaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Firstly, the writing\u2019s no good but the pop-culture references are perfectly suited to my demographic. The first page references a specific episode of Girls (Season Three, Episode Seven: Beach House https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=5_fgIwiCqfU<\/a>). Every few pages there\u2019s another callback to media of a more iconic status than this book:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    Ethan was being so real. It was like seeing Vanessa Hugens try to act: alarming and sort of cringeworthy, but you can\u2019t take your eyes off it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    Secondly, the writing\u2019s no good but it can be funny. Elliot works as an exorbitantly paid writer on a Neighbour\u2019s-like drama and is in constant conflict with his boorish boss, Ethan. I liked Ethan\u2019s scenes. Ethan was designed with just enough detail and edge to be his very own sitcom character. He\u2019s this old, wrinkled, dried out Californian queer who is more successful than his underlings but not successful enough to be respected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    \u201cOh, and tell my shaman I have three words for him: fuck off!\u201d he screamed at his assistant, Gail, a woman in her mid-fifties who had to have endured some childhood trauma to be able to put up with Ethan\u2019s bullshit.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    There are so many smirk-worthy moments crafted by O\u2019Connell but the issue is that he can\u2019t take the humour past one-liners. The jokes aren\u2019t developed gradually. There\u2019s not much nuance. So the payoff in the humour is brief and disconnected: punchlines stitched together. It\u2019s nothing like the subtle, character driven scenes of complete comedic genius in The Dud Avocado.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Chips are tasty. Chips will always be on the menu and chips will always be ordered. You eat too many, you get sick, you swear you\u2019ll never eat them again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    You\u2019ll be back. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    BookTok will endure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The house always wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I woke up to a headache that was rapidly finding its voice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews_books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1291"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1301,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1291\/revisions\/1301"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}