Sun, 17 Aug 2003

Novel takes aim at society's superficialities

------------------------------- Jennifer Government Max Barry, Abacus, 2003 335 pp ------------------------------

Michel Alexandre Salim Contributor Jakarta

In his second novel to be published (his debut novel Syrup was only published in the States), Max Barry has taken current societal trends -- consumerism, brand worship and labor market flexibility -- and combined it with the Jeffersonian laissez- faire philosophy of minimal government involvement in the socio- economic sphere to produce a hilarious satirical dystopia.

It is the near future, and in the USA countries -- an agglomeration of most of the non-EU developed world -- a blend of American consumerism and Japanese salary men working conditions applies.

People adopt their employer's name, there are annual wage negotiations, and the current trend of corporate sponsorship of schools have reached a peak with schools being run by the likes of Mattel and McDonald's, with kids adopting their school's name rather than that of their parents.

The plot itself seems simple at the beginning. Nike is launching a new product, the Mercury line, and in an effort to gain street cred, John Nike, VP of Marketing, and John Nike, Marketing Operative, decided to order the murder of 10 teenagers (readers of Naomi Klein's No Logo should feel a sense of deja vu here). Lowly Merchandising Officer Hack Nike got the job, the contract for which he made the mistake of signing before reading it in detail.

Hack, feeling unable to carry out the contract yet afraid of reneging on it, seeks help from the Police, which in this version of the future has also gone private. And here the readers get a taste of how mercenary this dystopia can be: the Police offers to subcontract for Hack!

Unfortunately for Hack, whose misery seems never-ending, the Police is part of a different customer loyalty program from Nike's, and with a trade war about to broil this displeased John (VP), especially since Hack was meant to be the fall guy. John himself is starting to feel the heat, with a government agent, Jennifer Government, hot on his trails.

A lot of parallels can be drawn between the novel and the real world: the Government agents would be the FBI, while the NRA has taken on the job of today's armed forces. The shamefulness of unemployment and identification of one's life with one's job reminds one of salary men of the past, while the tendency to stereotype foreign cultures is parodied in a scene where Hayley McDonald's does a school project on "capitalizm", claiming that in Europe the emphasis on equality means that were one's brother born blind, one would have to be blinded as well.

Antiglobalization protesters do not escape Barry's satirical touch either, with one of the protesters, Thomas, shouting exaggerated slogans demonizing corporations as long as there is no risk of being caught.

Make no mistake -- while topically it might be compared to George Orwell's 1984 or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, in character this novel is a complete departure, resembling the works of Voltaire and Balzac more.

Gone is the Big Brother government so familiar to fans of utopian science fictions -- in fact, this different nature of the novel itself is parodied within it, with John (VP) reading a sci- fi novel to while away time and finding himself being disgusted by the unrealistic portrayal of the government as uber-powerful. One finds oneself turning page after page, gripped by the plot development and finding it harder and harder to suppress laughter.

If you have time to read only one novel this month, pick this up -- you won't be disappointed. For as is proclaimed on the back cover, in the hilarious hyperbole of advertising lingo the novel itself parodies, "Jennifer Government is the best novel in the world ever".