When I saw this picture online, I merely said that he didn't look patriotic to me. When Carl Hiaasen saw it, he created a character who's likely to stay in your mind...you've been warned!
The character Jonas Onus is described as looking just like that.
Some Republicans are going to call this book a hatespew. If the antagonist whose viewpoint opens and dominatthis book had been anything but a blue-collar White man, left-wing bigots would call it a hatespew. Hiaasen certainly doesn't mind letting left-wingers enjoy the fictive facts that Dale Figgo and his one friend, who becomes his mortal enemy, Jonas Onus, are right-wingers, hate-spewers, and also too stupid to have survived forty years in the real world. But Republicans do not, by and large, feel a need to howl about how badly their feelings are hurt by any disagreement with their opinions. Many Rs have as sharp a sense of humor as Independents have. Though there's never a moment of doubt that Figgo and Onus are the kind of fools who tend to self-destruct in picturesque, ironically appropriate, ways in Hiaasen novels, the satire here is a higher grade than a mere hatespew. A right-wing group that shares the name of one in the real world has rejected Figgo; a believable Republican confronts Figgo at the beginning of the story and sabotages his group later; and though the ecological "monkey wrench" activist, Twilly Spree, and his current girlfriend are clearly not right-wing, it's also clear that their rejection of right-wing strategy is working against them and their cause.
At the beginning of the story Figgo is forcing an unwary hitchhiker to help him dump hate sheets and other garbage on the well-kept lawns of a gated neighborhood. The first resident who looks at one of the hate sheets is the sold-out but well-intentioned Republican who confronts Figgo. They get into a fight; both are hurt, and in the hospital the Republican hatches a plot to destroy Figgo's organization from within. He becomes the only person who's ever been recruited into the group by Figgo's hatespews.
The group meet at a place called Fever Beach. They call themselves the Strokers for Liberty. Until this story gets rolling, their activity has been yet another form of self-gratification. Attracted to Figgo's group because, unlike some real right-wing groups, it does not demand that members adhere to old church rules about things like direct physical self-pleasuring, the group consists mostly of lonely, underpaid working- to welfare-class White men who get together to blame other people, preferably leftists and/or ethnic minority types, for their general lack of success in life.
But things are about to pick up. Figgo rents his attic to a young woman who works for one of those charitable foundations that exist mainly to sound a trumpet before every unselfish act their profoundly selfish founders ever do. The philanthropists, an old married couple, seem smarmy to their office assistant, Viva, but are actually much nastier. They give some money to Congressman Clure Boyette, the most corrupt ever. Maintaining his usual focus on giving the minimum of "donations" to people who claim to be doing something and spending the maximum on his wife and other women to keep them from becoming discontented enough to meet each other, Clure gives some to the Strokers. And then the group is joined, first by a well-off retiree, and then by a man who seems to have some chance of success in life! Woo-hoo! Figgo cooks up a secret plan for a demonstration that will make them look really bad and also get several of them beaten up.
The fellow who seems a few IQ points ahead of the other Strokers--like fifty, maybe sixty points--is Twilly Spree, the close-as-it-gets-to-a-hero of several previous Hiaasen novels. Twilly is smart, tough, bold, educated, and the heir of enough money to pay most of the fines he's incurred through "monkey wrench" activism. He loves unspoiled Florida landscape so much that he's contemplating leaving it forever; he really hates to see another swamp, grove, beach, or field "developed" into a shopping plaza or housing project. He usually wins a small temporary victory at the end of each novel in which he appears. Maybe that's why it never occurs to him that, for less money than he's spending to get into and out of trouble, he could buy a few thousand acres of land and surround himself with unspoiled landscape for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, everyone who shares one of Twilly's adventures loves him. Viva, too.
Rounding out the cast are Clure's soon-to-be-ex-wife and his current "honey," whose working name is Galaxy; her ID shows her name as Janice Eileen Smith and her age as seventeen. Viva and Galaxy become friends. Either one might be called the heroine of the story. Both are the sort of gals all guys fantasize about having as summer friends, but not so many people, male or female, would want to try to keep up with on a regular basis.
Corruption will be exposed, and the hopeless right-wingnuts will stop throwing hate sheets onto people's property forever, by the end of the book. This is one of Hiaasen's "adult" novels, at which aunts aren't supposed to laugh as freely as we do at this novels for younger readers. The only other "person" who was in the office when I was reading this book was my cat. She'll never tell.
No comments:
Post a Comment