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John Carroll Dolan
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Pleasant Hell Paperback – November 29, 2004

by John Dolan (Author)
3.5 3.5 out of 5 stars 30 ratings
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You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll feel angry, ecstatic, scared, sad. enlightened. You will feel the disturbingly-awesome, terrible glory of. life. There is nothing more fascinating than a desperate, yearning, misanthropic. humanist. For when he's done with you in the purgatory of Pleasant Hell you'll feel braver, wiser more alive and cleaner than you've ever been. None of which, of course, he intended. Just make sure you ask him not to take his shoes off.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    264 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Capicorn Pub Inc
  4. Publication date
    November 29, 2004
  5. Dimensions
    5.25 x 0.5 x 8.25 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0975397044
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0975397046
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Capicorn Pub Inc (November 29, 2004)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 264 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0975397044
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0975397046
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.5 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.5 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.5 3.5 out of 5 stars 30 ratings

About the author

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John Carroll Dolan

John Carroll Dolan

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John Dolan is the co-host with Mark Ames of the weekly podcast Radio War Nerd. He has published a comic memoir, an adaptation of The Iliad, three volumes of poetry, a monograph, and hundreds of articles, essays and reviews. He is currently working on a new novel. You can find more information about his work at johndolanwrites dot com

Customer reviews

3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5 out of 5
30 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Jack McLoughlin
5.0 out of 5 stars Glory to John Dolan!
Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2014
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A great read. He's definitely not for everyone (see the negative reviews from people who don't get it) but I personally am a huge fan of Dolan's work, whether he's writing under his own name or as The War Nerd. There aren't many books like this out there and, like all Dolan writing, it is regularly funny and/or thought-provoking.
6 people found this helpful
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Scott Shorey
4.0 out of 5 stars Good And Bad In Equal Measures Because It's True
Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2006
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I started reading John Dolan after I moved to Moscow, Russia more than two years ago. I really admire his prose style and insightful writing in book reviews and feature articles. However, his fatal flaw is that he is still an angry young man of the kind that most people outgrow in their 20s. Much of the cruelty and perceived wrongs he write about in "Pleasant Hell" were experienced by most people since almost everyone is outside the exclusive group Dolan alternately hates and admires. Most people would grow out of this phase and anyone as educated and intelligent as Doaln should realize that most of the people he vents his spite on don't have his education and accomplishments to look back on a little bit later in life.

On the other hand, his decriptions of the everyday life of a loser is dead on. It's a disturbing book, but one that people should read.
8 people found this helpful
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Declan Trott
3.0 out of 5 stars A great short story spoiled
Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2009
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I bought this book because I am a fan of the War Nerd. I was disappointed.

The basic idea of a Californian nerd's autobiography is promising enough, and Dolan has plenty of horribly embarrassing material (girls, personal hygiene, and work). Unfortunately, without the discipline of a word limit, or a decent editor, it degenerates into pure introspective self indulgence. Six pages on a fantasy, not even about the girl of his desire, but about his attempts to summon magical help to take the girl of his desire.

There are still some jewels amid the dross, but be prepared to skim.

[Edit - I have to give this a more favourable review after rereading. Everything above still holds, but the good bits - helicoper downdraft injuries at the BART opening ceremony, Dolan's moldy karate gi, and late nights working as a security guard - are really good.]
6 people found this helpful
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librosaur
1.0 out of 5 stars Boring, unsympathetic, baby boomer whining
Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2012
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As a white male from a privileged background myself, I found this book to be especially tiresome and pointless, and stopped reading about 20 pages in. I get that us white males can still be fascinating subjects of TV shows and movies, even if we're unsympathetic jerks, but that only works if we're mildly interesting. That's not the case here. Also, this is not a book about "growing up in the 70s". The protagonist is a freshman in college by the time 1975 rolls around.
3 people found this helpful
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Blary Fnorgin
5.0 out of 5 stars Thank You
Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2010
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Amazing. I'll have to read it again before I can really wrap my head around it. That means I'll keep my copy, and buy another to send to a friend who needs to read it...needs to read it as soon as possible. Thank you, John. It means a lot to us.
8 people found this helpful
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William Echols
2.0 out of 5 stars Time capsule from a dark, delusional place
Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2020
I think this book can best be described as a time capsule of white male grievance from a specific era. As a baby boomer, Dolan embodies the idea that he is owed the world at all costs, regardless of how he treats others or how he positions himself in the world.

What's interesting in this is that you will never again have a generation of people who are so lacking in the requisite self-awareness that you will get this sort of confessional. Apart from self-publishing, this type of work is over. It is married to a very particular punk rock and patho-adolescent aesthetic born out of The Century of the Self, as outlined by Adam Curtis. It's hyper-narcissism with utopian ideals clashing in a less than ideal world, as expressed by society's most privileged.

So in that sense, it does have some anthropological interest. There once was a time when white guys who got to go to schools like Berkley really put a lot of stock in their own alienation. The 90s and early to mid aughts were filled with Boomer/Gen X stories about upper-middle class white guys who return to their college towns, played at Bukowski via narcissistic but ultimately tame expressions of self-destruction, are reminded of how smart they are, and then ostensibly go back off to some big city to write a novel, as is their birth right. Twenty years later and those guys are all working in insurance. And the sub-genre of this narrowly focused bildungsroman died out. It was the last gasp of that sort of aspirational thinking that lead people to think their unearned material circumstances and high self-regard should pan out into something more. When it didn’t, disappointment followed. This work fits into that niche.

What one quickly realizes in reading Pleasant Hell is that Dolan brought his alienation on himself. He is taciturn, incapable of vulnerability, and exhibits poor hygiene to the point where he allows mold to grow on his martial arts gi, which he continues wearing to practice despite disgusting others. He treats his parents with spiteful content. He feels burdened by their existence, despite relying on them. He lives with murderous thoughts, and yet does not make a connection between a sullen, rage-filled disposition and a lack of genuine social contact.

In short: He wants that which he does not give. He views others as objects to fulfill his desires, but does not consider the need to reciprocate and fulfill their own desires. He demands beauty but gives ugliness. That sort of thinking has increasingly been weaponized on forums like 4chan. Dolan is very much a proto-incel, but without the social movement the internet provided. As evidenced in his later writing with the Moscow-based tabloid The Exile, he never entirely grew out of that. He seems dead set on carrying that chip to his grave.

So what’s good? For starters, how men like Dolan became men like Dolan. There are a lot of them out there, and they have caused some damage to the world. Knowing not what happened to them, but what they think happened to them, is of value.

For me, there is also the nostalgia factor. I lived in Moscow during the time of the Exile and it brings me back, not necessarily to something good, but something gone. I likewise have a soft-spot in my heart for this sort of alienated middle-to-upper-middle white guy story of old, even if it is mostly BS. The best section of this book is his brief stint at the warehouse, and his wholly depressing relationship with the emaciated guard dog. One its own, that vignette was evocative enough to stand on its legs as a strong essay.

What’s bad? Apart from all of the above? The desire to turn an essay into a novel, particularly one without a sense of plotting (even if it is autobiographical), solely on the premise that one should be a novelist. The writing is decent at times but not great. Dolan is very impressed with himself, though his output leaves much to be desired.

The lack of editing is a perfect example of how a green writer becomes too married to how smart they think they are, letting every last digression stand. The end result is six page rants that go nowhere, nor really start from anywhere. The reader finds himself trudging through lots of exposition without any reward. There are no arcs, no sense of character development, no sense that any of this is going anywhere. It's stream of consciousness playing its odds at finding some profound terminus and often petering out instead.

One could argue this is an exponent of the novel’s nihilism. Such a person would likely be in a sophomore lit class. Bad writing is bad writing. A lack of editing is a lack of editing. Sometimes people fake it until they make it, and then simply never make it.


And yet, it did evoke some feeling in me, for all of the above reasons, and made me write this review, for the same reasons. So what does that say? Should you read it too? I just don’t know. You’ll have to figure that one out on your own.
2 people found this helpful
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John Gorenfeld
4.0 out of 5 stars The California loser as Cúchulainn
Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2005
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Be warned: Wound a nerd and you create a monster. Poet Dolan's glorious meditation on the inner life of the outcast manages to make misanthropy feel fresh. No compromises or happy lessons here -- just dreams of Tolkien elf girls lost to a world whose pain is recorded in the stigmata of moldy karate uniforms, runny foot scabs and dog bites. An unconscionable perspective on the value of human life. I loved it.
24 people found this helpful
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A.
5.0 out of 5 stars Nerds hate other nerds because its like being reminded of all the parts your hate and are self-conscious about.
Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2013
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But I love this book, John Dolan is probably the funniest writer I have ever read, whether here, the eXile, NSFWCorp. or Pandodaily.
7 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

mintymoor
3.0 out of 5 stars bit disappointed
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 20, 2014
Verified Purchase
I bought this on the strength of Dolan's article on Andrea Dworkin, which was so good that it almost literally blew my mind, one of the best pieces of journalism I have ever come across, full of insight and some humour too. However, Pleasant Hell, whilst it had a few great passages, wasn't anything like as good for me and I struggled to the end.
One person found this helpful
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