Early reviewers of “The Unfolding” expressed their divided feelings about the novel. NOT whether it is first rate or not--everyone admires Homes’ work and especially this novel--but rather how we are to respond to this comic and frightening novel emotionally. Reviewers called it “hilarious and chilling at the same time,” “devastatingly funny” and “sharply funny, wickedly observed.”
These evaluations are unimpeachably correct and put me in mind of the most famous example of this kind of humor: Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay “A Modest Proposal.” In this bizarre satirical piece Swift, seemingly serious, suggests that the poor of Ireland sell their babies to be eaten by the rich landlords. This would increase the food supply in Ireland and give the peasants, especially the more prolific of them, a regular source of income. Readers were amused and aghast.
“The Unfolding” begins on election day, November 5, 2008. The protagonist, called throughout, The Big Guy, a multi-millionaire Republican donor, and his wife and daughter vote for John McCain. When the election results come in, The Big Guy and his comrades are horrified. For them it is the apocalypse. “The American dream on the pyre.” Like “The Hindenburg in flames.” Obama won. How is that possible? Was Sarah Palin to blame?
One says, “It’s her. He never should have picked her. She’s an idiot.” Another says, “ I can hear my parents rolling in their graves.” The Big Guy says “ I can’t live like this, watching everything I worked for come undone and this country turn into some kind of socialist experiment…” Their panicked rhetoric runs from the ludicrous to the racist. It is funny and then it isn’t. These men are serious. The Big Guy vows to set things right.
The very next day he begins by assembling the group that will, over time, he hopes, take control of the United States government. The men are connected by the elite schools they attended, which country clubs they belong to, the ways in which their businesses are intertwined. They constitute a kind of “Dirty Dozen.” One is an expert in finance and tax management, another at law. There is a general who can put together an army of mercenaries if that is called for. The communications expert can arrange for perpetual spin. People can be persuaded to believe anything, and these men can see the internet and social media as the powerful manipulative tools they will soon be in the post-truth era.
Although most of these men have been divorced, or have miserably unhappy wives, several of them alcoholic, all profess to be appalled by America’s turn away from “family values.” Their laments are absurd. Surely they can’t be planning a takeover of the U.S. government. But then the reader sees that however bumbling they seem, they’re serious. This group of rich, powerful men meet on Obama’s Inauguration Day, 2009, to set in motion a plan that will unfold in approximately 15 years, that is, in 2024. This year.
