Discussing the Killing of a President Was Never so Funny

I read it yesterday afternoon and thought it was great. Writing a book in which a character is seriously contemplating killing the President is controversial, and to pull it off without getting Ashcrofted, Nicholson Baker sets the tone at a precise level of cranky goofiness, but somehow without blunting some serious political criticisms. Baker energetically re-creates the level of political dis (cord) course in 21st century America; his obsessive lone-nut would-be W. whacker is mostly harmless and yet passionately disturbed by recent events. Named "Jay," he discusses his plans and his reasons with "Ben," and we get only their dialogue in a sort of primitive script format. I would call this a parody if it weren't actually a work of pure elegant mimesis. Post-modern America is self-parodic, art doesn't need to do the legwork anymore. Jay's descriptions of Administration figures are hilarious and I laughed out loud at several points, and the depth of his horror at Administration bungling and epic stupidity and treacherous killing is poignant and moving. At points I was taken back to bookstore discussions with Conniption or the Earl of Pembroke. The book doesn't spare lefties and liberals and Clintonites; it focuses primarily on W. as the summit of bureacratic evil and corrupt malfeasance, but situates him in a long line of distasteful imperialists. If you have an hour to kill pick it up--hell, lounge around at B&N or Borders and read it in the store, occasionally looking up at the yahoos around you and saying "Christ, I'm reading these people's thoughts here." Baker has had some success with this format before, notably in



which is less serious than Checkpoint.

Another master of the bitter, short, potent narrative rant is John Hawkes--though you won't find so much humor here:



dramatizes an unimaginably fierce situation: the driver of a car going extremely fast is telling his passenger exactly why he's going to crash the car, killing them both.

And



is one of the greatest short books I've read. Very vivid language, very funny and mysterious all at once.