Customer Reviews

Little Green Men: A Novel

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(23)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Wow! I can't recall the last time I actually laughed out loud while reading a book. My contagious giggling actually caused my wife to suggest I read it only while alone and in an enclosed room.

Satire is best when nobody is safe and Buckley spares no one. Everyone from white trash, "X Files" buffs, politicians to the sexually dysfunctional are lampooned with utter hilarity. I dare you to read this without cracking a smile! I'll bet UFO conspiracy theorists are forming up as we speak to lynch Buckley. Always worth a smile or two, I'll never be able to look at one again without bursting out in laughter.

In an age where government scandals and cover-ups have been decidedly un-funny, this book is a welcome change. In this era in which people think that poking fun is offensive, I love the fact that Buckley pulls no punches and really goes out of his way to offend everybody! Forget politically correct, leave your cares at the door and lose yourself in a wild ride full of hilarious characters and dead pan humor.

The conspiracy theorists are right: the government is hiding something from us. According to Christopher Buckley, the big secret is this: the government is responsible for the reports of alien activity. The super-secret organisation known as MJ-12 flattens fields and abducts lonely housewives.

One night, Nathan gets fed up with his lack of advancement. Drunk, he decides to abduct John Oliver Banion, a successful political talk-show host. After the second abduction, Banion goes public with his experiences, resulting in the loss of his entire life. Banion is approached by other UFO abductees, all of whom he vaguely feels as if they're just lonely people who need some excitement in their lives. However, he can't deny his own experiences, and continues to attempt to force Congress into conducting hearings. Finally, he organises a march on Washington.

Watching the monster he has created, and disgraced from MJ-12, Nathan tries to fix the situation. He and Banion team up and take on the government's only secret.

In this book, Buckley skewers everyone from the government to UFO fanatics. Although his targets are relatively easy to take to task, his deft handling of the story has laugh-out-loud results. I devoured this book overnight. When I was finished, a friend immediately borrowed it after noticing how hard I was laughing. It is a great light-hearted read.

Reading this book is literally stunning. If there were any justice, the hacks ought to abandon their work (or at least rewrite it through a few times) before they sling it out the door- looking at James Patterson and Dan Brown.

The prose on every page is so carefully wrought it is amazing. He captures characters, organizations and Washington dynamics with such economy, with such perfect on-the-nose phrasing it, it really is amazing. Put your finger down on any page and you will find excellence. This is the league of Wodehouse and Waugh.

The book is both amusing and enteraining and worth the purchase because the reread value will be high, but I'll be damned if you dont come away with the feeling of resentment at other popular authors who's poor craftsmanship is so clearly shown up by Buckley.

"Banion took the call.

'Jack!' Bill Stimple was the Ur-corporate relations man. Each greeting began with an exclaimation mark. When the Grim Reeper came for Bill he'd probably bray, 'Death!', and ask how his golf game was coming."

As a devoted fan of the 'Aliens Are Among Us' literary theme, I always make a special effort to read any example of the genre, no matter how good or bad the writing. Buckley's latest work, however, truly surprised me with its quality writing, side-splitting humor and dead-on-target sarcastic commentary about aliens and alien abductions, a much maligned subject that quite frankly deserves to be much maligned.

Little Green takes the reader into the life of one John Oliver Bannion (whose initials have some disturbing Biblical connotations), a staunch Guardian of the Establisment and deeply entrenched member of the Beltway Elite. Bannion is something of a political gadfly, and delights in skewering uppity politicians with smug intellectualism on his highly rated political news hour. As such, although he is the last person any one would point to as being an 'alien abductee', we can rest assured that once Bannion uses his nationwide popularity and broadcast TV to tell his unbelievable story, every single one of the numerous enemies he's made will be giddy with glee.

Well, you can guess quite accurately the rest. Of course, his life is turned upside down, his marriage falls apart, his Beltway 'friends' fall by the wayside, and our hero eventually runs happily into the smothering embrace of the lunatic fringe. But then, something strange happens. It would seem that an alien abductee of such high political and social standing gives a new luster to the charges made by kooks of all stripes about UFOS and government involvement. And as luck would have it, this former political icon and total blowhard is transformed, and ultimately becomes the Messiah of a Movement, a counter-cultural icon whose mission is to get the government to tell THE TRUTH about aliens.

In short, all your standard props about aliens, alien abductions, and UFOs are here, and they are all spoofed in top form. I especially liked the part involving the intervention set up by his friends, and Bannion's wry comment that the good thing about an intervention is that you learn from it which of your friends you really don't like. On the whole, the book is very well plotted, chock full of solidly motivated characters, and overflowing with hilarious scenes.

This is definitely one of those books that you will enjoy reading while sitting in your favorite chair, in your favorite place, sipping away at your favorite drink. Savor this literary treat, and sneak away to a quite place, where you can let the chuckles linger for a while.

I read LGM after being introduced to Buckley in Thank You For Smoking. In comparison, TYFS is a better book; the writing is tighter, and the plot feels more completed. However, LGM is still worth reading, if only for Buckley's take on the millennial madness of our times.

The American obsession with the question of aliens and government involvement therein is a timely topic, and Buckley's treatment of it, ranging from the pyscho-sexual, to the pseudo-scientific, to the international political ramifications, is comprehensive and biting. His characterization of the believing mob (the Millenium Man marchers and their subset, the MM Militia) does not seem farfetched at all, if you've ever seen a UFO or X-File convention. And our hero is by far more sympathetic and likable than the characters in TYFS, with clearer motives and more upright actions.

But ultimately, the grand scope of the book hurts it -- in trying to take on all aspects of the UFO question, publishing, TV talk shows, government conspiracies, Cold-War politics, and the nihilism of bureaucrats, something is lost -- I walked away feeling like I wasn't sure what thet point of it all was.

As far as the writing, Buckley is great, as always, except for one thing: those damnable asterisked footnotes that were EVERYWHERE in this book. I found them distracting and condescending; I hope he leaves that conceit behind in future novels.

This is the first book I have read by Christopher Buckley and I am pretty happy with it. At first I wasn't sure how I would like it when it started with the talk show and the Washington political scene. I am definitely not savy when it comes to politics. I thought I would not understand the plot, the theme, the characters, etc. But that's what made Buckley such a great writer for me. He write so well that I could both understand and enjoy this political satire.

Another aspect of this book I enjoyed was how both sides: government and UFO enthusiasts received comical attention. On the UFO side we had the UFO convention stories, how the "probing" started, Banion's groupies, Tall Nordiac singers, etc... On the political side readers saw how the government concocted this alien cultural belief in order to achieve their objective: funding to beat the Russians. The back and forth (most of the time silly )behind the scenes debates politicians go through during an election year, i.e. the President's and his staff's dilemna on if he should attend the shuttle lauch and it's final manipulative conclusion.

My favorite line "He noticed a smell, acrid and overwhelming at first, like ammonia, with a sweetish aftertaste, like...cinnamon? Was this alien BO?" I have to admit this little insigificant line made me laugh out loud. This book is full of Buckley's wry sense of humor.

I recently read Buckley's "Thank you for Smoking" and loved it. So, I was predisposed to liking "Little Green Men." Unfortunately, the book, and especially the main character, never grabbed me. Buckley re-uses many of the same puns (lobby group names) and characters (undercover women). If you want to read a Buckley book, try "Thank you for Smoking." It was captivating and hilarious.

Wow! I laughed, I screamed, I loved it. The characters are real, I swear that I know these people. I haven't read a book this well written in a very long time. I highly recommend this book.

Buckley The Younger is one of the best results of Guttenberg's invention

Unlike Christopher Buckley's "The White House Mess" and "Thank You for Smoking", "Little Green Men" is a book that goes beyond Washington into the world of paranoia that is the modern-day UFO/abductee movement.

Much has already been written about the transparent nature of the Will/Banion character, but there are other Washington heavies being satirized here, particularly Vernon Jordan as a fixer more concerned with protecting his long-term power base than any short-term friends. Not to mention Pamela Harriman, Strom Thurmond, and a few others (such as a few shots at Buckley's arch-nemesis Tom Clancy, both under Clancy's real name and at a Clancy-like character with a quite off-color name).

Buckley's work is clearly the product of a lot of in-depth research. Those familiar with UFO lore will recognize the Stanton Friedman (the goateed nuclear physicist), Budd Hopkins, Shirley MacLaine, and Colonel Phillip Corso characters, though Friedman is portrayed as much more diabolical (plus Buckley mixes in a bit of Jim "face on Mars" Hoagland).

He understands the fringe of the UFO movement quite well (Linda Howe, under her real name, and her obsession with supposedly alien-caused cattle mutilations provide numerous comic moments).

I found myself laughing quite frequently throughout this book, because Buckley knows his both his central topic as well as the power game that is played in Washington.

Without spoiling the plot, I can say that Buckley posits a comically realistic (if untrue) scenario where the abductees aren't all crazy and there aren't any greys or Nordics running around grabbing people off the road and invading their nether regions. The book climaxes with an OJ-style trial, with a Gerry Spence character representing the defense.

Among the highlights are the explanatory footnotes, some of which are useful, others of which are comic. For instance, recounting an attempt to smear a witness by implying that a murder victim had a copy of a porno mag called "Juggs", Buckley adds the following footnote: "* A glossy magazine devoted to large-breasted women, begun as a color insert in the Atlantic Monthly".

For those liberals out there, relax, none of Buckley's novels push any sort of conservative agenda and all three may be read by those across the spectrum without any concern about the politics inherent in the book.

Read this book. You won't go wrong. Then go to your library and find "The White House Mess", a strangely prescient set of White House memoirs written 6 years before anybody ever heard of George Stephanopoulos.