Exaggeration and absurdity are useful tools of humor but not when deployed with a bludgeon.
The political satirist frets about America’s state of “angry perplexity,” but he would be well advised to heed his own advice: Calm down.
In his latest broadside, O’Rourke decries the excesses of left and right with (almost) equal disdain. At 72, he remains a libertarian conservative, and he has no use for the mindless populism or rabid partisanship that has Americans baring their fangs at each other. The author fairly wonders when—or if—America will “emerge from its grievous health crisis, lock-down isolation, economic collapse, and material depravation with a newly calm, pragmatic, and reasonable attitude toward our political system.” Even as he sounds the death knell for classical liberalism—free enterprise, the rule of law, civil liberties, free speech, etc.—O’Rourke also hopes, with scant confidence, that we will dispense with our hysterias in favor of competence and a civil tongue. He proceeds to skewer America’s cultural and political ills in broad, superficial detail while championing a form of “extreme moderation” as the only means of addressing them. Occasionally, as the voice of common sense, he does this with sobriety; the most reasonable part of the book is the “Pre-Preface,” written on June 8, 2020. “[George Floyd] was accused of spending twenty dollars in the form of a banknote that had no actual value,” he writes. “The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives are currently spending billions of dollars in the form of banknotes that have no actual value.” More often, O’Rourke employs sweeping generalizations, over-the-top screeds, unconvincing self-deprecation, and, above all, gale-force sarcasm. His meld of serious comment and attempted humor is an unhappy marriage, and even longtime O’Rourke devotees may not be sure where one ends and the other begins. The author has become a more jocular, less verbose version of William F. Buckley.
Exaggeration and absurdity are useful tools of humor but not when deployed with a bludgeon.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8021-5773-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
IN THE NEWS
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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