Bucky F*cking Dent - An Atypical Review

I just finished a book by Hank Moody - nee David Duchovny - clickbaitly titled Bucky F*cking Dent. I say clickbait without the usual stigma.  The inner 12-year-old can't resist a book with some variation of F*ck in the title. That 12-year-old snickering miscreant in me has served me quite well thus far in the literary realm.  Bucky F*cking Dent did not disappoint.

I know what you're thinking.  The X-Files/Californication/Evolution (in the running for most underrated comedy in years, in my opinion) wrote a book?  Hollywood privilege rears its ugly face yet again.  I love David Duchovny, and I'll be honest, I had the same thought. Who does this Actor think he is?  Stay on the TV, thespian.  Dance for me little clown, dance.

I know.  Actors are people, too.  Truth be told, I love actors and respect the shit out of their craft.  I've worked with them and I couldn't do what they do.  So maybe the collective "ugh" we all say when an actor decides to branch out from the visual medium into a different milieu is a bit more tied to talent envy than legitimate skepticism.  Then again, it could just be a natural reaction to presumed self-importance (looking at you Gwyneth Paltrow).

So it was with a fair bit of skepticism intermingled with hope that I picked up a copy of David Duchovny's Bucky F*cking Dent.  It's Duchovny's second book, so I tempered my expectations against the relative newness of his literary agenda.

I didn't need to.  The book was f*cking great.

I don't want to provide spoilers to the plot details, but it deals with a father and son coming to terms as the father faces that hooded figure draped in black.  Set in the late-70's, in an era defined by backsliding into shitty impulses and general uneasiness, the story uses Baseball to connect this very personal story to the outside world and history.  Life, love, sex, mild drug use, and snappy dialogue.  I dig it.

David Duchovny's writing never feels laborious.  The words strung together, sometimes drifting with the waft of smoke from a freshly lit joint, seem to echo the voice of the author and character.  In your head you feel David Duchovny reading you this heart-felt lullaby through the eyes of what could have been a different form of himself had life take a few different turns.  Like the best writers you can feel the author's voice taking the form of the character he's birthed into the world.  A father raising a child.  What starts in a Duchovnian voice, the character grows until all you hear is Lord Fenway, El Spleenter, - Ted.  He wasn't discovering his voice, he was birthing it.

Duchovny sardonically and sarcastically connects you to a story that, by the end, is full of so much heart you can't help but get a bit misty-eyed. He strips away the jadedness in such a smooth way that you feel yourself getting lighter by the end.  He teaches you about morality, humanity, sexuality, and mortality without sounding preachy.

So put on some Grateful Dead, light up a joint and sink your teeth into Bucky F*cking Dent. I was always a fan of David Duchovny, whether in the form of Mulder or Moody.  Hell, I wanted this book to be Hank Moody.  But I found something I wasn't expecting:

David F*cking Duchovny.