The Pickled Cucumber

Due to my professional obligations, I occasionally read self-help books. Recently, it was The 5am Club by Robin Sharma, a pretty awful book by almost every imaginable metric. 

Look, writing is tough. It’s easier to tear down than to build up. I get that. Far be it from me to critique another’s craft. Those who live in glass houses… Blah, blah, blah. Imma do it anyway. 

Come, observe as I take a massive shit all over this book.

What, Exactly, is This Thing?   

On the surface (that is, the cover), The 5am Club purports to be a book about the benefits of rising early, organizing your day, and caring for oneself through discipline and intentionality. Had this been what was actually contained in the book, I’d have no problem. Early mornings aren’t for me, but they are for some people, and I can appreciate that someone might benefit from this kind of advice. 

Dear reader, that’s not what we have on our hands here.

Instead, it is: 

• The first draft of a fictional novel that was so puerile and unfinished, it needed the scaffolding of a self-help premise to allow it to hobble to the press. 

• An inflamed narcissist’s vainglorious fantasy. 

• An exhibition of enthusiastic authorial masturbation. 

Allow me to elaborate. 

90% of this book is NOT the author telling you about the benefits of waking up early. Oh, no no no. It is the author telling you a fictional story by way of clunky, ill-formed allegory. 

In it, a self-help guru called “The Spellbinder” (neé Robin Sharma) and his disciple, a billionaire who cosplays as a homeless person to imagine what it’s like to be poor (also Robin Sharma), brainwash a suicidal entrepreneur who is being hunted by assassins hired by her company’s investors and an artist who responds to every piece of information and tepid plot development by robotically reciting clichés and repeating the word “def.” 

I’m not kidding. That’s literally the premise. 

In an early chapter The Spellbinder gives a speech reciting well-worn bromides of the self-improvement industry before an attentive conference crowd. Be your true heroic self. Don’t be distracted by social media. The only thing holding you back is your fear of your own success. Etc.  

Then? He keels over, dead on stage. 

Now, because this is supposed to be a book about improving one’s life, and because self-improvement author Robin Sharma has written it, and because Robin Sharma gives these kinds talks at these kinds of conferences all the time, it is not any sort of a leap to see The Spellbinder as a stand-in for the author himself. Which makes the next scene kind of wild. 

A series of fictional characters which the author created stand around and glowingly and reverently praise the fictionalized version of Robin Sharma for paragraphs at a time.

The entire book is this. Fictional people responding to the author’s avatars with gushing, zealous, extravagant praise. Every few pages. Every time the author speaks, his automatons must sing of his wondrous goodness. They have no choice. They are trapped in the pages. They must do as their creator demands. 

It is… weird at first. Then, it just keeps going so long that it feels just sort of… pitiful. Like, everyone can use a good wank once in a while. No shame in that. But, maybe not in public, ok, bud? 

But Wait… There’s More

It’s not only wading through the splatter of someone’s wet dream of self-praise that bogs the reader down. It is also the writing itself. 

 “Her red high heels made a ‘click clack, click clack’ sound as she raced toward her employer.”

Why all of these redundancies? Why two clicks and two clacks? Why use the word sound to describe what is already, obviously, an onomatopoeia? Why do we need to know what kind or color or sound of shoe she is wearing at all? 

It’s this kind of bullshit my writing students used when they were to get to their word count. It’s pointless. It drags behind the description, keeping us from building any forward momentum. It, like the rest of the book, is a waste of everyone’s time. 

Add to this, Sharma/Spellbinder’s inexplicable aversion to the word said as a dialogue tag. Every other character “voices” their dialogue as they constantly hemorrhage additional praise for the author. 

• “This is making me feel sad,” voiced the entrepreneur, sounding vulnerable.

(Sure she wasn’t just disappointed?)

• “Totally,” voiced the artist as he tugged on three dreadlocks, patted his stomach and then laced up a black combat boot. “Totally agree.”

(The choreography makes me chuckle)

• “That’s great to hear. Because we’re in midst of a ferocious global sleep recession,” vocalized The Spellbinder, clearly articulating the dramatic languaging he’d become internationally known for. 

(*slippery fart noise*)

If you are going to bloviate about being the best, and having an exceptional mindset, why can’t you manage to write any better than this? In my experience, most of the discussion about being world class almost inevitably flows from people who are mediocre at best. 

Look, again. My writing sucks sometimes too. I’m not approaching this from a position of superiority. But, c’mon man. You’re not even trying here. 

Despite All This, He’s Also Wrong

The central thesis and only offer of even limited substance is “all you have to do to get up at 5 AM and great things will follow.” Unfortunately for Sharma / Spellbinder / Homeless Billionaire, it is only in the wishy-washy guru space that this claim can be honestly entertained. 

The science is pretty clear that your chronotype—whether you are naturally a morning or evening person—is largely genetically predetermined. Sure, you can wrench and strain and flail to change what time you naturally wake up, but why? Any of the benefits of early rising can also be found later in the evening after everyone else has gone to bed. 

While Sharma does list a few successful early-risers, a list just as long including Gustave Flaubert, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Jackson Pollock, Cynthia Ozick, Pharrell Williams, et al. get up plenty late too. 

In Conclusion

I could go on, but I’m getting tired. 

The 5am Club is an example of vapid allegorical twaddle in the vein of The Alchemist (also spectacularly bad, but not nearly so unabashedly self-indulgent) the author of which blurbed Sharma’s front cover. I therefore wholeheartedly nominate The 5am Club as a strong contender for the worst book ever written, doing exceptional work to stand out in such a robust field of contestants. 

It’s bad, folks. So, so bad. 

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About Joshua Rigsby

Joshua Rigsby runs an independent bookstore in a small southern town. His writing has been featured on Thrillist, Atlas Obscura, Southern California Public Radio, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Atlantic.

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