"Our Gang" - A Review

From George Orwell's ''Politics and the English Language'' (quoted in the epigraph):

...one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.

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My fellow Vocalists…

I have, once again, found it impossible to read a book and not review it.

This was an odd companion for me this summer. I bought it from the $1.00 book pile at one of my favourite secondhand bookstores in Montreal because I was baffled by it being available on that particular shelf. This is Philip Roth, the man who gave the world “Portnoy’s Complaint” (another late reading choice for me) and had such an incredible run late in life with such books as “American Pastoral”, “The Human Stain” and “Everyman” that I thought time would not touch him. Of course, he did pass away a few years back, leaving me with plenty of questions and books by and about him that I needed to read (there is one recent autobiography that I should recommend here). And I returned to his work with this one.

I have questions…

This is not really a novel. It is a satire of the speeches, backroom dealings, and the underhandedness of another particular politician by the name of Tricky Dickson (for you students of American political history, you should be able to fill in that particular blank without my help). There are also mentions of an alliteration-addicted Vice President (say that three times fast), Erect Severehead (Eric Sevareid, look him up, folks), John D. and Robert F. Charisma (guess!), Martin Luther King (nothing satirical done to his name and memory), My Lai, Cambodia, the Vietnam War, The Boy Scouts, the baseball-football great Curt Flood, and of course, the country of Denmark:

I am certain...that the great majority of the American people will agree that the actions I have taken in the confrontation between the United States of America and the sovereign state of Denmark are indispensable to our dignity, our honor, our moral and spiritual idealism, our credibility around the world, the soundness of the economy, our greatness, our dedication to the vision of our forefathers, the human spirit, the divinely inspired dignity of man, our treaty commitments, the principles of the United Nations, and progress and peace for all people.

That's right...Denmark.

Yes, it is a bit dated – I could not always guess who or what was being lampooned here – and Roth wrote this in what I can only guess was a fit of real anger. The book was published in 1971, deep into Dixon’s first term as President of the United States, and many who thought that the country would not recover were given plenty of evidence that this was absolutely the case. In six chapters, we have campaign speeches (the last one a complete fantasy that would win him a chuckle from Dante), an address to the nation, a one-on-one with a “Troubled Citizen”, a one-on-many with his staff labeled a “Skull Section” in the chapter heading (I wondered about CTE, since the people mentioned in this scene are called “spiritual”, “legal”, and “political” coaches and they conduct their discussions dressed as football players, a game Dixon loved that failed to love him; it also happens to be the longest chapter of the book), and his eventual assassination in such a bizarre way that I cannot spoil this section for anyone except to say that since this whole text got its start discussing abortion, the method of death is rather apropos (and it is not even the final chapter).

From Jonathan Swift's ''Gulliver's Travels'' (quoted in the epigraph):

...the Use of Speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive Information of Facts; now if anyone said the Thing which was not, these ends were defeated; because I cannot properly be said to understand him; and I am so far from receiving Information, that he leaves me worse than in Ignorance.

You may have probably guessed by now who that particular politician is, and why Roth was so boiling with rage in this book that one reviewer said was “The funniest and most complex exercise in sustained political satire since ‘Animal Farm’” (again, back to Orwell), and the author Anthony Burgess called “Brilliant satire in the real Swift tradition, very funny, and about as acerbic as you can get” (Swift, once more). I think that they are both exaggerating a bit. Orwell and Swift wrote satire, but their satire did not automatically date once the decades in which “Animal Farm” and say “A Modest Proposal” were written. Roth’s book feels dated because it is dated. There was probably no real way for him to make a book that could shake us out of our complacency like those other authors, unless he followed a different format. And I am actually glad that he did not follow any of the conventions of the common novel.

It is a burlesque, a farce, a satire, and a telling reminder that the ugliness of our present political life is nothing new. It can be hard to turn on the news, look at the screens that surround us, and doomscroll our time away and not think that the world as we know it is about to end. This is a fault in ourselves that the best writers understood and exploited (read Mark Twain’s comments on the Gilded Age or any of the Romantic-Era poets during the Industrial Revolution, and you will understand what I mean). This is not say that worrying is a waste of time. You would not be human if you had no concerns at all. But it is a comfort to see that history not only repeats itself in the dumbest ways, but also provides its own comic relief. Our age is no worse than the era in American history that Roth points a finger at here and I am grateful for the reminder.

From Hunter S. Thompson's ''Fear and Loathing in Limbo: The Scum Also Rises'':

Gone but not forgotten, missed but not mourned; we will not see another one like him for quite a while. He was dishonest to a fault, the truth was not in him, and if it can be said that he resembled any living animal in this world, it could only have been the hyena.

Four quotes from four writers in different eras...and Roth's work continues the good fight...

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You can find more poems, stories, and articles by Kendall Defoe on my Vocal profile. I complain, argue, provoke and create...just like everybody else.

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