October 2005

Wonderland of satire is amusing, alarming
By JOHN MARK EBERHART
The Kansas City Star

Recently I wrote of my disappointment with George Saunders’ latest book, a satire called The Brief and Terrible Reign of Phil.

I’m a Saunders fan, but as I stated, his latest fiction failed for me because, while the satire was as pointed as Saunders ever makes it, I didn’t care a whit for the characters.

David Allan Cates’ X Out of Wonderland is the satire Phil wanted to be. This short novel is at once a swipe at capitalism run amok, a brilliant narrative of one man’s optimism in the face of misfortune and an example of how a writer can take on big themes without overlooking fiction’s obligation to offer compelling characters. The lead character is X, host of a radio talk show in which he provides listeners with advice on home care and repair — until, that is, the fickle media gods declare a change that leaves him jobless.

About the same time, X’s home is wiped out by a tornado. And the company that insured his home goes belly up.

The result: X is transformed from a rooted, employed individual into a drifter. During his journey into downward mobility, he meets some strange characters. He endures various hardships, which Cates renders as both funny and disturbing. And, strangest of all, X strives to maintain his faith in the free market economy and in Wonderland, his vast homeland that is so suggestive of our own America.

Cates made me care about X even as I grew maddened by the hero’s chirpiness. Part of the reason is that the author has tapped into the deep anxieties that plague the American psyche. The world in the last few years, beset by terrorist threats and economic doldrums, has not seemed a safe place. Thus it’s easy to cheer X, to hope he finds a way home, even as we question his absurdly naïve views.

Cates also has peopled this novel with minor characters that engage. One of the people X meets on his wanderings is a woman in pink lamé, an amusing but pathetic creature who regales X with her “background in medieval history and retail sales.” She and X take part in one of the book’s most harrowing passages, a car ride with a couple of thugs that ends in grisly, random violence. Cates isn’t just sending up greed in this novel; he’s reminding us that misfortune often drives individuals into dangerous places.

In the final analysis, I don’t know whether to be chilled or charmed by this book — a predicament, I suspect, that the author intended to inflict. I do know one thing: I can think of many powerful people in American life who, in my opinion, need to read this book.