The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil
George Saunders's new book, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil (Riverhead, 2005), is a parable, but a parable about what? In the Book Review a few Sundays back, Eric Weinberger took it to be a no-longer-necessary warning against Hitler types. Sometimes, you'd think that Hitler invented genocide!
The genocide in Reign of Phil doesn't get very far, because there aren't very many people to work with. But let's not be silly. The tenor of this parable is every good writer's Topic A: language.
Did I say something about "people"? There aren't any people in Reign of Phil. There are creatures, sort of - amalgams of organic tissue and machinery. The author does not begin to describe them coherently, and that's part of the fun. (I do wonder about the sinister illustrations that don't appear to be credited to any artist. Does this mean that Mr Saunders has a sideline?) Phil, the bad guy, has a problem with his brain: it slides, from time to time, off of its "tremendous sliding rack." And when it does, Phil's manner of speech changes from bullying but understated sarcasm to blaring Victorian oratory. Here's Phil with his brain in place:
"You know what?" said Phil. "After spending some time with you folks, I am tempted, in terms of our most important National Virtue, to replace 'Generosity' with 'Remarkable Intelligence'."
This self-congratulatory nonsense is amusing because even ordinary intelligence is barely in evidence. Here's Phil with his brain in a ditch:
"I'll tell you something else about which I've been lately thinking!" he bellowed in a suddenly stentorian voice. "I've been thinking about our beautiful country! Who gave it to us? I've been thinking about how God the Almighty gave us this beautiful sprawling land as a reward for how wonderful we are. We're big, we're energetic, we're generous, which is reflected in all our myths, which are so very populated with large high-energy folks who give away all they have! If we have a National Virtue, it is that we are generous, if we have a National Defect, it is that we are too generous! Is it our fault that these little jerks have such a small crappy land? I think not! God Almighty gave them that small crappy land for reasons of His own. It is not my place to start cross-examining God the Almighty, asking why He gave them such a small crappy land, my place is to simply enjoy and protect the big beautiful land God the Almighty gave us!"
Suddenly Phil didn't seem like quite so much of a nobody to the other Outer Hornerites. What kind of nobody was so vehement, and used so many confusing phrases with such certainty, and was so completely accurate about how wonderful and generous and under-appreciated they were?
Note "under-appreciated." Phil's political advance in the notional land of Outer Horner owes almost entirely to his willingness to appreciate the dickens out of his compatriots. Reign of Phil is at the same time a hornbook of demagogic language and a critique of it. Mr Saunders's ear for the unconsidered language of ordinary people is equally pitch-perfect.
Not too long ago, I wrote about Harry Frankfurt's little treatise, On Bullshit. I admired Professor Frankfurt's argument that the liar is more interested in the truth than the bullshitter is. The bullshitter speaks...
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