Humorous novels are very hard to come by in this age of anxiety, so I will seize one for review when I see it. Joe Taylor’s latest short novel certainly qualifies. It is a fantasy, a political satire, a send-up of the cultural moment and quite clever.
The novel opens just after the first COVID vaccinations had become available. Joe Smith, obviously a kind of American Everyman, was laid off from his advertising / PR job at the Toyota plant in Lexington, Kentucky.
His life seems aimless, pointless and he decides to take action, do something, be of use. He recalls the typing exercise, Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country, and decides he will be a modern-day Lone Ranger. He has a black eye mask made. Of course, this is absurd to begin with since he and everyone else is already wearing a mask.
Joe decides that, like a Boy Scout, he will do a good deed daily and sets about finding people to help: the proverbial old lady needing help crossing the street. While searching around Lexington Joe goes on campus at UK and comes upon a student protest. This section is a masterstroke on Taylor’s part. Will students, protest for or against anything? It seems yes.
The students, wearing what look like crowns, are carrying signs:
“End the Germ Hate Now!”
“Co-exist.”
“All life has rights…And this new COVID virus surely IS life. Living, newly-formed life, the same as you and me! ...It’s only trying to live, to grow, to co-exist, to provide for its progeny.”
There is more.
Of course this is preposterous. But it is fun to remember that when Jonathan Swift wrote “A Modest Proposal,” in which he suggested that the hunger problem in Ireland might be alleviated if the Irish ate their babies, a certain number of his readers took him seriously.
Smith assembles a little band of followers; first of course a Tonto figure, in this case a young woman named TaTa, her sister Margie and a dog named Homeless. They come upon another protest, over renaming the high school. It had been Henry Clay High, Clay being The Great Compromiser whose legislative efforts arguably postponed the Civil War. Compromise, in these times, is OUT.
The replacement names being shouted now are Johnny Depp High and George Clooney High. As he moves around searching for good deeds to do it seems to Joe that people finish his sentences for him. Can they read his mind? Did his first Covid shot contain microscopic electronic mics, put there by Bill Gates?
The little band have adventures: some bits are funnier than others. In satire, comedy of any kind, nobody hits a home run every time, but all in all, this is a clever piece of work.
