Boomsday by Christopher Buckley

The story is seductively clever. Once the reader moves past the die-cut hardback outer shell they depart on a wild ride through a sarcastic near-future DC media scape filled with characters as humorously flawed as they are familiar: a pro-life lobbyist suspected of killing his own mother; a senator with presidential aspirations inspired by an acid trip in his youth; a billionaire yachting enthusiast who’s fortunes were made by coaxing search engines into not indexing unpleasant facts about his clients.

Mix these characters into a volatile mediascape in which a disturbingly trendy reinvented piece of satire disguised as a Senate Bill goes head to head with a Papal Bull issued by the French Pope excommunicating anyone who’d vote in favor of the Senators who support it, and hints of “A Modest Proposal” for post-modern times begins to take shape. This is a book that aims high and pulls few punches. Voluntary euthanasia that allows one to bypass the death tax? Seems almost viable nowadays, which is part of the reason this book is so entertaining.

Christopher Buckley wrote Thank You For Smoking, which spawned the movie of the same name, another amusing portrayal of media spin in action. (Thank You For Smoking has a nice glimpse into a working mastermind group too, for people who want to understand that shit.) Buckley certainly should know politics, and the lifestyle of the wealthy as the son of William F. Buckley, and both he and his father graduated from Yale. So he knows his shit, and this book is hot. I would be amazed if Boomsday doesn’t end up as a film soon as well. It’s certainly topical, if not disturbingly entertaining. And truth to tell, what blogger out there doesn’t harbor fantasies about driving massive social change through the power of a single post to livejournal?

The story itself centers on one Cassandra, who has blogged her way into national recognition as the voice decrying a generation’s frustration with a failed Social Security system. Advocating direct action online against the vast numbers of retiring baby boomers, she initiates a frenzy of civil disobedience among the young, directed at the ballooning retirement pressure brought on by “Boomsday”. Her answer, brought onto the floor of the Senate (“S.322 the Voluntary Transitioning bill”) launches a presidential candidacy that violates all rules of spin.

To quote:

INVOICE

TO: AMERICANS UNDER 30

FROM: BABY BOOM GENERATION

FOR: OUR RETIREMENT BENEFITS

AMOUNT: $77 TRILLION



PAYABLE ON DEMAND

– U.S. Government

Shifting party politics, strange alliances, even stranger sexual dysfunctions, russian pimps, and a fugitive blogger create a piercing glance into the mechanics of spin while remaining light enough to read on the subway or leave in the shitter. Janeane Garofalo reads the audio book, if zoning out rather than reading is more your thing, but seriously, check this out. I can’t imagine a better voice to narrate Cassandra and her fucked up inner world as she struggles with both maintaining a career spinning PR while blogging honestly about the crisis she foresees. Yes, that’s probably heavy-handed Greek myth overtones, and to make matters worse the cover art really turns me off. Actually getting the book open to binary black on white is a relief after prolonged exposure to the cover art. In fact, I never actually intended to read Boomsday. That I’m writing a review of it should be enough of a testament to how much I dug this novel. I didn’t figure it would grab me in the way that it did, nor did I expect to find myself unable to stop reading. Although… perhaps it was a subconscious desire to not be exposed to the cover that kept me engaged with the narrative so intensely.

Whatever it was, I finished it in one day, mostly because it was really fucking funny. Trust me, this book delivers.

-Wes Unruh