Photo Content from Sean Penn
Sean Penn won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performances in Mystic Riverand Milk, and received Academy Award nominations as Best Actor for Dead Man Walking, Sweet and Lowdown, and I Am Sam. He has worked as an actor, writer, producer and director on over one hundred theater and film productions. His journalism has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, and The Huffington Post.
Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff is his first novel.
"BOB HONEY WHO JUST DO STUFF": Sean "Penns" First Novel Everyone's Talking About
Most people know him as an Oscar-winning actor and filmmaker and one who isn't afraid to be vocal about uncomfortable social and political issues.
Sean Penn is also a writer and recently debuted his first published novel with the curious title of "Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff."
Penn isn't too worried about how his book is being received; he knows that some will enjoy its satirical edge and peculiarities, and others will blast him for something they just don't get.
Already, a few critics have some advice for Sean Penn after reading the novel:
"Don't give up your day job," as the old saying goes.
Sean Penn's fictional character Bob Honey is a divorced man who seems to have issues in making human connections. He works as a septic tank seller whose clients include Jehovah's Witnesses, and on the side, he is an assassin for the United State government.
The novel is heavy on alliteration and features a mix of poetry, a collection of stories and a stream of babbling. The book is 176 pages long.
Penn has been making the book tour rounds and talking with the media about Bob Honey. The actor spoke with Vogue.com about how writing a book is far different from the world of Hollywood and its frequent movie collaborations.
Penning "Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff" is all about the solo aspect. In other words, Sean Penn found it quite refreshing to make something that was completely his own. Writing a book was totally a personal affair, and he doesn't make apologies for the novel in any sense of the word.
When he's creating movies, it's mainly a team effort and one where responsibility for success or failure can be shared, he told Vogue.com. He has tired of the moviemaking industry where tons of money is at stake, creative disagreements arise with the huge weight upon one's shoulders about how the film might turn out, etc.
In fact, Sean Penn might have a few more books to write for the foreseeable future, he claims. He's not working on a movie at the moment and has no desire.
The famous star did not say that his character Bob Honey is actually Sean Penn, but those who have read the novel can find some similarities between both men and how they look at the absurdities of life.
TheBroTalk.com pointed to the mention of various social issues in the book that are near and dear to Sean Penn's heart. For example, in "Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff," he mentions a fictitious hurricane. Penn was active in humanitarian efforts with Hurricane Katrina in 2005 that caused severe damage along the Gulf Coast and claimed 1,800 lives.
Other references in the novel point to dark days in the country. One he pays mention to is the horrific mass shooting by gunman Stephen Paddock in October of 2017. He talks about Russian hacking, and even President Donald Trump becomes a figure in the plot.
Sean Penn writes a poem about the #MeToo movement in the novel as well.
In a recent Marc Maron podcast show, he suggested to listeners to read Sean Penn's novel but to do so slowly and a little at a time because it will confuse the reader.
Bob Honey has a hard time connecting with other people, especially since his divorce. He's tired of being marketed to every moment, sick of a world where even an orgasm isn't real until it is turned into a tweet. A paragon of old-fashioned American entrepreneurship, Bob sells septic tanks to Jehovah's Witnesses and arranges pyrotechnic displays for foreign dictators. He's also a contract killer for an off-the-books program run by a branch of US intelligence that targets the elderly, the infirm, and others who drain this consumption-driven society of its resources.
When a nosy journalist starts asking questions, Bob can't decide if it's a chance to form some sort of new friendship or the beginning of the end for him. With treason on everyone's lips, terrorism in everyone's sights, and American political life sinking to ever-lower standards, Bob decides it's time to make a change--if he doesn't get killed by his mysterious controllers or exposed in the rapacious media first.
A thunderbolt of provocative words and startling images, Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff marks the fiction debut of one of America's most acclaimed artists.
Praise for BOB HONEY WHO JUST DO STUFF
“Charmingly weird…Penn takes on an ambitious challenge here, and he succeeds spectacularly. Bob is a wonderful character, the kind of guy you can’t take your eyes off… that’s part of the book’s almost immeasurable charm.” ―Booklist (starred review)
“Penn paints with a broadly satirical, Vonnegut-ian brush. . . . he gives nods (by way of sly footnotes) to the likes of David Foster Wallace and Thomas Pynchon. . . . It’s good fun [and] a provocative debut.” ―Kirkus Reviews
“It seems wrong to say that so dystopian a novel is great fun to read, but it’s true. I suspect that Thomas Pynchon and Hunter S. Thompson would love this book." ―Salman Rushdie
“Before I started reading, I glanced over the table of contents. The first chapter is called ‘Seeking Homeostasis in Inherent Hypocrisy.’ I rolled my eyes and said aloud to no one, “fuuuck you.” Then, I read it, and it turns out it’s a goddamned novel for the ages. A straight-up masterwork, more relevant to this very moment than anything I’ve seen. Tom Robbins, Mark Twain, E.E. Cummings and Billy Bragg all just came in Chuck Bukowski’s pants. Whether it’s your cuppa tea is something I cannot know. But sweet Jesus it was mine.” ―Sarah Silverman
You can purchase Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff at the following Retailers:
By turns tender and terrifying, Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff captures America on the verge of political upheaval in 2016 and introduces us to a man who just might be able to save us from the oncoming horror. Yes, Bob Honey - carnival carny, sewage specialist, and government operative, among other occupations - has spent years in preparation, crisscrossing the world in the employ of a mysterious government program that pays in small bills. He stopped in New Orleans to help Katrina victims; traveled to Baghdad, Beirut, South Sudan, and elsewhere on sewage emergencies; and submerged himself in the Pacific Ocean in search of sea life - all while living out of a quiet house on a residential street in Woodview, California, where he sometimes disturbs the neighbors with the sound of his lawn mower.
Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff marks the debut of a dazzling literary talent. With comic bravado and an urgent agenda, Pappy Pariah has created a haunting, hilarious vision of an American middle-aged man with a mission - a loner struggling to find truth amid the chaos of a political campaign that threatens to destroy the values of the country he loves.
Bringing Pariah's revelatory prose to life is actor, director, and filmmaker Sean Penn (Mystic River, Milk, Dead Man Walking), whose knack for choosing nuanced roles and delivering emotionally rich character studies finds an apt bedfellow in Bob Honey. Penn's distinct voice - here, an expertly crafted tightrope walk between oddball jocularity and grave prophecy - perfectly captures the caustic truth telling of Pariah's message. With brazen and unabashed affection for Pariah's hero, Penn takes the story of Bob Honey to dizzying new heights.
About the author: Pappy Pariah was disputably born in Summerton Feathers, Iowa, in the year of our Lord 1960. He has written voluminous travelogues and articles under a pseudonym for many mainstream American press outlets. At the age of 13, his appendix exploded while he was playing flag football, and it was during treatment for extreme peritonitis that he was first driven to put pen to paper. This is his first work of fiction.
The thing that hit me about Penn is when he went to HAITI ...AND HELPED and basically helped and helped and helped.... what a guy
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