Friday Night Novels: Life Imitates Art

Those who teach literature have more than enough ammunition these days to make the classics “relevant.” The other night when discussing Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience,” I didn’t have to alert anyone to the contemporary application of Henry’s words when we came to this early passage:

The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure.

Of course the rest of that essay rings alarmingly true today, and other literary references abound in daily conversation. Critics often speak of the Orwellian nature of BushCo’s language, whether it’s the “Healthy Forests” initiative or the way Iraqi deaths are counted (or not counted). Huxley’s Brave New World and Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale are invoked to described NSA scandals and other Big Brother abuses. Stories that seemed outrageous during our college years have become reality. A few on the flip, please add others:

Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here has often popped up in discussions on this site, but it seems even more relevant now, given the Blackwater investigations. Lewis published his novel in 1935, well before fascism gripped most of western Europe. I recall growing up in the 1950s that we’d often see those grainy, black-and-white movies of Nazi death camps, and the question that always came up was, “How did people allow this to happen?” Same with McCarthy here. How could we allow this? Well, Lewis knew how, and his book is a wake-up call to those who think it can’t happen here, because we’re a democracy or we’ve got this thing called the Constitution. Check out the novel: Control the media, get rid of academics, rewrite history, strangle dissent of any kind, “reform” the Constitution, give ownership of everything to corporations, and build your own private military. President Windrip’s strategies could be the playbook for current administration tactics.

Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There used to be funny. Today, it’s too sadly accurate. I watch Bush blabber away at some town hall, where he is never challenged, and the words sound as if it they’re spilling out of the mouth of Chance, the gardener—inanities, empty phrases, circular logic (if at all), surface not substance, and hollow repetitions like "support the troops." Like Chance, Bush’s career has been prodded along by his connections, accidents, and misinterpretations, not for anything he’s actually done. The next-to-last line of Kosinski’s novel sums up the reality we call George Bush: “Not a thought lifted itself from Chance’s brain.”

Joseph Heller was the master of the paradox, of course, and his most famous book, Catch-22, is built on inside-out logic. Less well known is Good as Gold, his novel about Beltway politics that includes this gem: “We have no ideas, and they’re pretty firm.” Is there a better description for Bush’s plan for Iraq? Or for any Bush program, for that matter? When I listen to Dana Perino’s “news” conferences, I hear Heller’s politicos all over again, as in this line from the same book: “The President doesn’t want yes men. What we want are independent men of integrity who will agree with all our decisions after we make them.”

And don't even get me started on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest! Others for Friday night reading?