Don’t expect to see Sean Penn at a #MeToo rally.

The actor was in Cambridge Thursday night to promote his debut novel — yes, the Oscar winner is a novelist now — and he seemed to criticize, obliquely, the movement to raise awareness about sexual harassment and assault.

“We’ve seen some great movements — the civil rights movement, the anti-apartheid movement — that had real leadership and real agendas and real compromise, which is the demand of human nature,’’ Penn said in an hourlong sit-down with author Zia Haider Rahman at the Sheraton Commander Hotel. “What I worry about in the movements today are the blinders that are on. They become very myopic.’’

In the epilogue of his novel, titled “Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff,’’ Penn writes a poem likening the #MeToo movement to a “toddlers’ crusade,’’ and defending, it appears, comedian Louis C.K., who was brought down after women came forward with allegations of sexual harassment: “There are no men nor women/ only movements own the day/ until movements morph to mayhem/ and militaries chip away/ whether North Korean missiles/ or marching Tehran’s way/ Where did all the laughs go?/ Are you out there, Louis C.K.?’’

Predictably perhaps, Penn’s novel has been savaged by critics. The Huffington Post’s Claire Fallon called it a “garbage novel,’’ adding it’s “not often that you read a literary novel about which the most flattering adjective you might use is ‘derivative.’ ’’ (In case you’re wondering, the style of “Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff’’ owes a lot to Thomas Pynchon, William S. Burroughs, and Don DeLillo.)

Just as predictably, Penn said he doesn’t care what people think, calling the criticism “quite expected.’’

The 57-year-old actor, who won Academy Awards for his performances in “Mystic River’’ and “Milk,’’ said he decided to write the book because he lost interest in what Hollywood is doing these days.

“All thoughtful content, or most of it, is on the small screen or on the computer screen or on a telephone screen,’’ Penn said. “The rest is sort of Cirque du Soleil.’’

The topic of #MeToo arose when Rahman asked about challenges facing America, and Penn responded with a story from his childhood. The actor, wearing a quilted bomber jacket and black pants, said he’d grown up watching coverage of the Vietnam War, and it made him want to be a hippie or a Beatle.

“The hippie movement, the antiwar movement, these were the good guys,’’ Penn said. “Then these young men came back from Southeast Asia and the movement called them ‘baby killers’ . . . and I became almost anti-movement on that basis.’’

He then drew a bizarre comparison to the #MeToo movement.

“I wonder why the conversation in terms of the protection for women has not extended to the three 10-year-olds who were approved by a parent and a judge to be married,’’ Penn said, apparently referencing the current controversy over child brides in Tennessee. “If that isn’t an abuse that the spokesmen of this movement have a responsibility to embody, then I’m against them.’’

Thankfully, there wasn’t a lot of talk about President Trump, but Penn did say he thinks the US has a “mental health crisis,’’ not a political crisis, and he blamed the country’s “ill health’’ on “celebrity-ism’’ that prioritizes charisma over substance. (He directed the audience to go to YouTube and watch a talk by David Souter in which the retired Supreme Court justice warned that the greatest threat facing the United States isn’t foreign invasion or a military coup, but civic ignorance.)

Finally, Penn said he hasn’t officially retired from acting, but if he did, no one would notice.

“I’m a little more of out-of-sight-out-of-mind on this. I don’t know about being missed,’’ he said.

“Maybe Gene Hackman we miss. It’s a very rare breed we miss. At the moment, I’ve realized that acting is not something I enjoy.’’