OPEN LINE

A talk-show host throws out a conspiracy theory and finds herself riding a tiger in this loopy second novel from Hawley (Trip Sheets, 1998).

Annette Majoris, with no training but a great voice, has been hired to host a late-night radio show in Minneapolis. The station needs a shock jock, so right off the bat Annette declares: “There was no Vietnam War. It never happened.” The fighting between Uncle Sam and his ostensible enemy was faked while the U.S. conducted mind-control experiments on its own troops. The calls flood in. Some vets, tearful and confused, bolster Annette’s theory, talking about secret tunnels; others are belligerent. Stan Marlin, a libertarian, anti-government activist, meets Annette and gives her ammunition. A more important ally is wealthy businessman and upper-echelon Republican Walter Bishop, with ties to the Governor: “He radiated sex at her.” The sex is not good, but lonely Annette is still happy to have a well-heeled guy in her corner as her career takes off. She moves to a Chicago station; there are tense moments with angry vets, but all along Annette feels their pain. What the reader feels is mystification at Hawley’s choice of Vietnam as a rabble-rouser in this post-9/11 period. Annette herself is a puzzle. She is shockingly ill-informed, but is her heart in the right place or is she a brash careerist? And why, with her evident sex appeal, must she settle for a lousy lover like Walt? Both she and Walt are synthetic creations, as unconvincing as the politics. When everything falls apart, as it inevitably does, Annette admits that “she didn’t know if the war was real or not real, and she didn’t care.”

Hawley is attempting a fun-house distortion of the politics/entertainment nexus, but it’s too clumsy to work.