Unintentional Literature for Psych Majors: A Review of Arms from the Sea

+1 star for filling an underappreciated niche

Some people react to bad writing with this idea that it never should have been published in the first place. It’s perfectly valid to wish you’d never read something, but the world still needs weird, uncomfortable art. If we insist that bad art doesn’t deserve to exist, then we open the door for someone to enforce a definition of ‘good’. Sometimes a reminder of what art can be feels like discovering a new face to beauty itself. More often, that reminder is Arms from the Sea. Both of these can be positive outcomes.

+5 stars for determination

The idea that no-one chose to read this book is appealing to the part of me that still believes in fairy tales. The book chose them—a magical artifact from a dying world, perhaps?

No, better. To distribute his 10 novels, Rich (aptly and/or prophetically named) founded his own vanity press business, paid to have thousands of each book printed in hardcover, and then distributed them all over the country to be handed out for free. He’s donated hundreds of copies to book clubs, and his most popular target is university grounds. The evaluation of potential audience is absolutely on point, which leads me to believe that any idea of profit was thrown entirely out the window. He wanted people to read his book, he had the means, and he ensured it. It’s baffling, yet respectable. It’s one of the best weird things you could do with your riches that I’ve ever heard of, and certainly much safer than building a submarine to tour the Titanic.

-2 stars for the writing itself

Rich Shapero likes to try and write elevated, award-winning poetry at all times. Every character speaks with the same voice, so the only thing that defines them is importance to the main character. Lyle has the best characterization, but his character is a talented yet uncharismatic loner who goes on long, tiring rants about his society. Then, of course, there’s the matter of nouns getting bonus adjectives when they really shouldn’t; I refer you to my above heart’s desire. Worst of all, the giant jellyfish (named the Polyp) constantly narrates what he’s doing to Lyle, to Lyle. The Polyp is extraordinarily chatty for an eldritch horror, especially during pseudo-sex.

That being said,

+1 for just telling and not also showing

The Polyp’s dialogue is so descriptive that both would be redundant, so one must be grateful for the hidden blessings of life. However, sensory descriptions of Lyle trying to comprehend what Polly was doing to him would have been preferable. It still would have made room for Rich’s unique taste in eroticism while creating emotionally impactful scenes in the way that the author intended.

For example, a scene where Polly fuses with Lyle in mind and body. Perhaps he describes a feeling of unbearable pressure within the skull, but it’s followed by a cool, sweeping calm. Comfort, a feeling of becoming one, and finally of Polly speaking to him mind-to-mind as their nervous systems become one.

Instead, I have this phrase burned into my brain until the day I die:

-5 stars for “I’m mounting your brain”

I looked up from the book and saw my train pulling away from the station, not 10 feet in front of me.

+4 for holding my attention

Take a wild guess how I spent 20 minutes waiting for the next train.

Arms from the Sea is wildly captivating, like if you saw a clown walk into the DMV. And then another. And another. It goes on and on, until you get out of line to see they were all registering the same car. The story generates morbid curiosity to see where exactly Shapero is going with this, but you’ll be astonished to find that the sea-monster-pseudo-sex is the boring part.

+5 for small pockets of bafflingly excellent storytelling

Lyle has intermittent flashbacks to his old life: how he began sculpting, joined a rebellion, and gained a patron for his arts. The sudden emergence of another three-dimensional character had me absolutely enraptured, and their budding homoerotic subtext kept me glued to the page. Shapero pulls off beautifully crafted descriptions of Lyle’s sculptures with the allowance of time, space, and materials to improve. Best of all, dramatic irony colors every interaction with tragedy.

-2 for every time Lyle wakes up and hangs with his chatty jellyfish boyfriend

 Rich, why must you wound me so?

The main plot is long-winded, complicated, and not well-explained. With the benefit of hindsight, I’ve gathered the linear story events here for your benefit:

-          All the interesting story is told via flashback: Lyle is a talented sculptor who lives in a dystopian desert society. His medium of choice is rock salt left behind from the dried ocean they live in. The average citizen is addicted to drugs and VR, so history and the physical arts aren't very popular or well-funded. Lyle is hired by a bourgeois man to remedy this, but at the same time he's enlisted in a rebellion against the totalitarian government. Lyle is torn between revolution and the budding loyalty he feels towards his sponsor; the only man who truly understands and appreciates him.

-          Lyle is arrested for defacing a statue of their leader. He witnesses, or possibly hallucinates, the entire city flooding. The government begins brain surgery on him.

-          He dreams of the future and meets the Polyp. (Note: in reality, a polyp is either a tiny sea creature or a kind of tumor.)

-          The Polyp shows Lyle the ocean utopia he’s created and how to enforce it, such as exterminating any carnivorous or omnivorous species that happen to evolve.

-          The Polyp fuses with Lyle’s nervous system. Together forever.

-          Lyle wakes up mid-surgery, has a quick chat with the Polyp to confirm that he’s real, and then murders every person who isn’t suitable for the new society he wants to make.

-          Lyle presumably goes on to travel the cosmos, enforcing the Polyp’s version of utopia on every world he can find, eventually dying in battle thousands of years later.

-5 stars for that ending

         It’s difficult to pinpoint what the worst thing about it is. The condemnation of violence via violence, perhaps? Maybe the implication that Lyle has been flirting with his own brain tumor? If the Polyp is just a tumor, then all of the story was for nothing. If it isn’t, then Lyle is destined to commit genocide on a cosmic scale, and it’s framed as a good thing. 

Let’s tally!

1+5-2+1-5+4+5-2-5=2

Arms from the Sea gets a final score of 2/5! Turns out this was an exercise in futility, since Goodreads was right all along. So, to recap, this is the weirdest book I’ve ever read. It’s unquestionably bad. So bad in fact, it loops right back around to entertaining. Do I regret reading this? No. Do I recommend that you read it? Also no. It’s up to you if you want to experience Rich Shapero’s inner world for yourself, but I hope this review imparted at least a little vicarious fun.