Empress Theresa: Chapter One Analysis · 5:23pm Mar 31st, 2023

Just a quick explanation of the situation, our intrepid director, Blue EM2, is currently swamped with other projects, so the reins of analyzing the literary travesty known as Empress Theresa have been handed over to me. I know that my analysis style is quite different from our favorite locomotive, but I promise to make it a comprehensive read with updates on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

For anybody who is not yet familiar with Empress Theresa, and you should count yourself lucky. It’s regarded as the worst independently made novel of all time. In fact, it had to be independently made because no self-respecting publisher would accept it. I’m not sure even a publisher that didn’t respect itself would accept it either. It’s the story of Theresa Sullivan, a teenage girl who obtains superpowers from an alien being and uses them irresponsibly to become loved by everyone in the whole, wide world.

The author is something else entirely. A man by the name of Norman Boutin, who is a complete dud of an author. Throughout his book, he demonstrates his ineptitude at his desired craft, with no sense of pacing, information that is repeated to the point of being propagandistic, dialogue that is treated more like an obstacle between praises for our ‘heroine,’ no character development, and plot progression that is disjointed and schizophrenic so that you have no idea why something happened when it did. And it all culminates into being just another wish-fulfillment/power fantasy from a pathetic little man who can’t appreciate the things he has in his life. Yet he claims that this, the only book he has ever written, to be the greatest novel ever written.

One might wonder if Mr. Boutin had ever read a single book in his life, let alone a book in the genre that he’s trying to craft. Which makes us wonder just what genre this book is supposed to be? Young adult? Sci-fi? Thriller? Drama? It’s a wonder if this man is even able to read and simply dictated the script to somebody else who just boredly pecked away at a typewriter while Mr. Boutin pissed out every thought that entered his head at the moment as he blankly stared out a window. Don’t believe me? Read the book for yourself.

If you do start to read the actual book, I should warn you that doing so is like passing a kidney stone. It’s probably the most painful thing that you’ll ever do in your life, and you’ll get no enjoyment from it. But if you stop halfway through, you could very well die from shock. You’ll just have to keep it up to the end until sweet relief finds you and you can put it all behind you. Much like a kidney stone teaches you for having a poor diet, reading Empress Theresa will teach you how not to write a book. You may look at your own work and shudder once you realize you sound as stupid and inept as Norman Boutin does. If you do, buckle down and revise your drafts as quick as you can. For everyone else, buckle up and hold onto something. This is gonna be rough…

Chapter 1

Like any professionally made adult-oriented novel, the chapters are simply numbered. I myself am a fan of titled chapters, but that’s besides the point. However, it may indicate that I was wrong, and Mr. Boutin has read a book before. Or he’s just not imaginative enough to come up with a more interesting title.

Speaking of bland introductions, we are treated to a first person narrative–which is almost certainly a sign that the lead character is a self-insert in stories like this one–wherein we are greeted by Theresa Sullivan, the younger daughter of Edward and Elizabeth. Remember that, because they’re barely ever mentioned by name ever since. She describes herself as ‘cute as heck at the age of ten.’ She’s also the self-described princess of the Sullivan clan of Framingham, Massachusetts, and makes it a point to emphasize how cute she is and what a whiz she is in school. She also brags about how a few years later, Prime Minister Blair says she would be remembered in a million years. How Churchill, Hitler and Lincoln would all be footnotes compared to her. She talks about how he has more responsibilities and power than anyone in the world. This is all the first page and a half of the story, all of which exists just to tell you how amazing Theresa is.

If you’re not sure by now, she’s supposed to be some kind of Messiah figure. Just without any of the study, hard work, discipline and character development it would have taken somebody like Jesus to learn from ages twelve to thirty. In trying to create a role model for school kids, Boutin, who describes himself as a, ‘Catholic loyal to the Pope,’ breaks two commandments by creating a graven image to put before the one true God.

After several paragraphs of self-aggrandizing, the book finally begins. Not the story. That doesn’t start until chapter four. Just the book begins. Meaningless information is shared about Theresa’s big sister, Catherine's, age. Oh, and Theresa’s mom saw a fox one time eighteen years ago. A few sentences later, Theresa sees presumably the same fox, and it shoots a white ball into her stomach (isn’t this supposed to be for kids?). So, some strange fox shoots a rasengan at her, and this incident is brushed off with almost disturbing casualness.

She decides not to tell anyone about it, since her cousin was diagnosed schizophrenic and she’s afraid her family will think the same of herself. Later, there are fire truck sirens heard in the distance. Theresa concludes that it has something to do with the white thing that was shot at her from the fox. Clearly, Theresa has read the script of this story, because that is the only way she would logically reach this conclusion.

There is no fire. At all. Not even smoke. Just heat. Boutin makes it very clear through his narration that he was too lazy to research anything to do with fire protocols, equipment, use of equipment, or even terminology the way that he has the fire crew ambling around sluggishly like they were called away from a very engaging game of cards that they’d rather be playing instead. All they can detect is heat up to one hundred-seventy degrees. You’d think the neighborhood would be evacuated with heat like that, but there is no such drama because that would be exciting.

Days pass and the audience is treated to a slog of events where Theresa is being shadowed by mysterious men, who pose no threat or consequence. In a display of technological ineptitude that would impress even Tommy Wiseau, Theresa conducts an experiment to see if her phone is being tapped by asking the operator for a phone number to a pizzeria. We don’t know how she would know how to do such a thing or how it would tip her off, but she knows anyway. This can only be because she is awesome and better than all of your characters combined.

At a video rental store, Theresa rents 2001: A Space Odyssey, just so that Boutin can let people know that he watched it at some point in his life, even if it doesn’t seem like he watched it recently. Theresa accepts a phone number from a strange woman she meets in the grocery store, despite conventional wisdom telling us not to do such things. Theresa calls. The woman is Jan Struthers. She saw Theresa rent that movie from before and that’s how she knew something was going on. How she came to this conclusion is beyond rational thought, because the logic is never conveyed to the audience. Jan knows that the white ball came to Earth from outer space seven years ago, and she and the rest of the government have been tracking it ever since.

If my explanation sounds bland, this is because it is conveyed to us, the readers, in the most bland and boring way possible. It reads a little something like this:

“I saw a fox walking near the water. It came up close to me and a white thing jumped out of it. That's all.”
“Where did the white thing go?”
“In me.”
“How big was this white thing?”
“Like a softball.”
“Did it come from the fox?”
“Yup. Came right out.”
“What part of the fox?”
“The stomach.”
“How did it jump out at you?”
“It moved in my stomach.”

That is the conversation verbatim.

This should be a very interesting part of the story where the mystery of what has been happening begins to unravel. Instead, we’re treated to a mind-numbing exchange that sounds like a teacher trying to get a kindergartener to explain how they lost a ball and where it went. At some point that was never conveyed to the reader, Theresa reveals that she had named the white ball HAL, after the evil A.I. program from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Utterly meaningless banter is then exchanged about the film.

The only important thing that we learn in this entire drag of a conversation is that Jan and her team are separate from the goons who have been tailing Theresa before. We then return to banter about why Theresa gives off heat, but there is no explanation. Not even for why people aren’t running the hell away from the temperatures in excess of one hundred-twenty degrees fahrenheit (roughly forty-nine celsius to non-Americans).

Theresa wakes up the next day and finds that her life has become much like a first person shooter, complete with an orange aiming reticle in the middle of her vision. Much like the protagonist of a Korean comic book whose life has become just like the video games they play, Theresa is suddenly good at aiming by having a HUD in her line of sight. There is also a blunder with paragraph alignment here, as it is all suddenly aligned to the right instead of the left, before it’s corrected. We also see two characters speaking within the same paragraph a few sentences later. These mistakes will be repeated frequently throughout the novel, so pointing them out as they come would be like documenting every usage of the word ‘the.’

When she first discovers this orange reticle, she demonstrates her ability to aim and throw quite nicely by hitting a watering can from several feet away several times. However, the author feels the need to expound upon this further by having Theresa play catch with some people just so they can praise her pitching ability. She later discovers she is superhumanly strong when she breaks a bottle of steak sauce. I myself once shattered a jar of mustard. I always knew I was different too. However, Theresa bending a horseshoe lends a little more credence to her strength being unnatural.

Boutin also seems to think that old ladies live off of steak sauce, stating that it’s no wonder so many old ladies are found starved to death because steak sauce bottles are so hard to open. I’ve personally seen inside my mother’s and my grandmother’s refrigerators. They have lots of different kinds of food in there. Sometimes even steak sauce, but it’s usually open and partially empty.

Instead of keeping her super strength a secret, Theresa tells her pastor, Father Richard Donoughty, about it. No rational person, no matter how religious or faithful, would want to share this information with anyone without personal gain. Rod Serling’s ‘Mr. Dingle, the Strong,’ is much more accurate in this depiction. Jan Struthers makes an unceremonious reappearance to expound the situation to the pastor, and nothing of consequence happens.

We are then mercifully told about Theresa’s school years in summary, because those can’t possibly be any more interesting than the rest of this chapter. One would assume a book that seems to be trying for the ‘young adult’ genre would make it take place mainly during those years, but that would be the decision of a competent author. Going more into the realm of incompetence is how the plot zigzags between different points, and makes careful note of how many men are watching Theresa at any given time. Not for any reason. Just so we know. Oh, and her hair becomes unusually wet and heavy later in her life. Why that’s important to know at this point is beyond any of us.

If that chapter sounded like it would be incredibly boring to read, it’s because it is. Mr. Boutin had explicitly stated that in an effort to subvert expectations and cliches, he would deliberately have nothing happen until the fourth chapter of this story. Can any of you tell me the quickest way to lose the audience’s interest? If you answered, ‘Make nothing happen for a good chunk of the first act,’ you’re a normal person in the audience.

Chapter two’s coming next. It’s not much better, but I’ll be here to guide you through it.

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