Ants! Ants! Metafictional narratives!
When I was reading this book, the quote that was bouncing around in my mind, over and over again, was something attributed to Dolly Parton:
“It costs a lot to look this cheap.”
Parton was talking about fashion, but it applies, in a somewhat meandering sense, to literature, and particularly to Look Out for the Little Guy, the alleged autobiography of Scott Lang, alias Ant-Man, the size-changing, ant-commanding hero from the Marvel Cinematic Universe played by Paul Rudd. I will dispense with the mouse-enforced kayfabe on this book and refer to this book by its actual author, Rob Kutner, who wrote two books with Jon Stewart (America: the Book and Earth: the Book) which had amused me greatly when I was younger. There’s something unbecoming about the whole charade of pretending this book was written by a fictional superhero; Kutner’s name is absent from the cover and can only be divined by opening a few pages (admittedly, it does lead to a very funny joke in the acknowledgements section at the end), the kind of elevation of fantasy over reality that companies like Disney impose to both keep the magic alive no matter the cost and obscure the effort of workers who make the magic possible. I don’t know how Kutner felt about this, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Throughout this book, I kept thinking about how people tolerate in fiction what they’d never tolerate in reality. The most striking and obvious example of this is violence, even horrific violence, of the horror movie or war movie variety. In comedies, we tolerate obnoxious people because they are funny, but we’d seldom ever actually want to actually be around such people. This book manages such an effect on a structural level, or a genre level, as it is written in the style of one of those inoffensively droll celebrity memoirs that were concocted by publishers and written under contract, possibly by ghostwriters (as Kutner is acknowledged to be in-universe), and most obnoxiously feel the need to dispense inane, banal life advice as if it were holy writ. But this time, you see, it’s coming from a superhero.
One particular memoir came back to me as I read this book: An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. Both books, accepting the conceit of the novel under review for a moment, are about interesting people with interesting experiences recounting them for the benefit and interest of the masses who will never experience such things—let’s be honest, for most people being an astronaut is as fantastical as being a superhero, as we will experience neither over the course of our mundane existences. Each is a capable raconteur of rare anecdotes, with a sense of humor, a sense of place, and a sense of wonder. Each, also, feels the need to end many of those interesting anecdotes with a hackneyed life lesson, like “never give up” or other such platitudes delivered with the weight of gospel at the end of children’s cartoon episodes. Each book succeeds, mostly, as a platter of sweets, each dazzlingly unique, each coalescing into a delicious range of flavors, and then periodically devolves into something very, very bland, the potential of the presentation being squandered for a brief moment. I wanted Hadfield to just be the space nerd he was born to be, and I wanted Scott Lang to be the superhero he had thrust upon him by Hank Pym.
But one of those books is memoir, and one of them is fiction masquerading as memoir. The latter wears the costume well, but the fictionality of the enterprise leads to a markedly different effect. The knowledge that Scott Lang’s experiences are fictional draws the reader’s attention to the psychological realism underpinning Kutner’s writing. Yes, the flashiest parts of the chronological narrative are summaries of Marvel movies with Lang’s characteristic wisecracking, but it is in the parts between the big fights where the writing really shines. Kutner-as-Lang talks a lot about his relationships—with his ex-wife, with his daughter, with his ex-wife’s new boyfriend, with his coworkers in the Avengers. In doing so, the narrative has this profound levelling effect—you see that his daughter Maggie and Steve Rogers are cut from the same human stuff. You are pulled into the Marvel universe because Steve Rogers is treated, ultimately, as some guy in a suit.
Kutner’s writing really shines in segments discussing a time between films, when there were no villains to fight: the period after the battle at the airport in Germany, when he is sentenced to house arrest for a period of years. His experience is almost monastic, a situation where he has no choice but to probe the depths of his own thoughts. He can get deliveries, of course, and that includes a gaming console, but even so he has to confront himself. He gets new hobbies. He finds ever more ways to occupy his time, in a way that has to have been informed by the real-world experience of the COVID pandemic (I had several little twitches as I could see myself and my family in these anecdotes).
What I ultimately think made this book so readable is that it was written by a professional writer interpreting the work of professional writers (among other film professionals, of course) rather than a professional writer interpreting the recollections of a non-writer, or a non-writer trying their hand at creating a narrative out of the chaos and randomness of everyday experience. Everything feels very coherent in this book; stories and opinions and, dare I say, life advice are all selected in such a way that they create a single whole artistic unit. As Mark Twain wrote:
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”
As such, the fiction holds together while drawing attention to its own fictionality; you understand that the people Scott talks about are all nonexistent, but they feel consciously and deliberately well drawn in a way most great characters don’t. Most characters don’t need to do that in the first place, as the narrative structure around them is not aping reality so bluntly, and as such they are not “colliding” with reality in your mind, creating sparks of differentiation. If we read a bad celebrity memoir, we roll our eyes because they have not managed to craft a narrative out of reality. In this book, we are engaged because Rob Kutner has assembled a compelling narrative out of unreality, and that is what good fiction does.
I’m afraid I’ve alienated some potential readers because I’ve made it sound like a bizarre postmodern novel that is skeptical towards many metanarratives. The actual experience of reading this book on a purely surface level is breezy, fun, and amusing. Disney’s stunt of presenting this book as the creation of a fictional character obscures the fundamentally created aspect of the narrative, and as such the result of a human creator, Rob Kutner. Mr. Kutner has left you in good hands, and it is good fun for any Marvel fan. It just has some layers, if you’re inclined to peel the onion a bit.
Reference: Kutner, Rob. Look Out for the Little Guy [Hyperion Avenue, 2023].
POSTED BY: Alex Wallace, alternate history buff who reads more than is healthy.
