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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Art meets Politics: Both win., June 18, 2006
This review is from: U.S.!: Songs and Stories (Paperback)
In one chapter of this brilliantly satiric novel, Upton Sinclair has lunch with a favorite novelist, E.L. Doctorow, -- and upbraids him for letting art get in the way of politics in his novels. This encounter captures a key theme in the novel: the role of the artist in society. And since the real Sinclair had little or no literary talent himself, as Bachelder makes comically clear throughout the novel,the famous muckraker's position might seem more than a little self-serving, but the beauty of this book lies in the complex manner in which Bachelder refuses to set up Sinclair as an easy target -- no pun intended, for the fictional Sinclair is assassinated repeatedly by anti-Socialist "patriots," only to be resurrected each time to carry on with his quixotic attempt to foment revolution against capitalism -- instead Bachelder portrays both the virtues and the flaws of a talentless and exasperating but committed ideologue who believes in the power of words to promote reform. In the hands of a lesser writer, this zany plot -- complete with outlandish complications like publishing agents recruiting Sinclair assassins and 4th of July book burnings -- would quickly turn into one-dimensional entertainment, but Bachelder raises the stakes by constantly shifting the tone from near burlesque to moments of quiet poignancy, while exploring the dark underside of our American notions of fame, political faith and family loyalty. Equally adept at portraying the adolescent boy who wants to please his father by lighting the annual book burning bonfire, the rising assassin looking to make a name for himself, and the weary secretary trying to save his writer-hero from yet another shooting, Bachelder never fails to capture the humanity in this large cast of misfits, zealots, sellouts, blind optimists and failures. But unlike the sometimes cold cynicism of other writers who address similar themes, Don DeLillo, for example (a writer whose work I greatly admire nonetheless), Bachelder offers us a most sympathetic understanding of the all too human forces that keep hope for change alive while parading it through the streets with a target on its back. This book deserves more attention; Bachelder is the real thing. He can sling the politics in ways so entertaining, artistic and provocative that Upton Sinclair and E.L. Doctorow would be honored to make a space for him at the same table. He's that good.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thank God Political Satire Isn't Completely Dead, August 7, 2006
This review is from: U.S.!: Songs and Stories (Paperback)
U.S. is a refreshing and original political satire. It could have taken its subject, the undead Upton Sinclair, seriously. It could have simply used him as an obvious stand-in for the moribund American left. But instead Chris Batchelder makes him a complex character who appears to be based largely on the facts and writings of the real life Upton Sinclair. That person was a likeable but flawed, ridiculous, puritanical yet courageous and compassionate man; part crackpot and part saint but all American. The larger function of this character is to point out the current bankrutpcy of American politics. How it has no ideas, no passion, no commitment just plenty of hype, gloss and spin. But if someone like Upton Sinclair can keep his hope alive that idealism matters, that all people have dignity and deserve respect and a decent wage for their labor, then maybe all is not lost. The book is divided into two distinct sections. The first is a series of rifts on how popular culture would respond to the idea of Upton Sinclear existing as an eternal target for the American Right. There are several inventive and hilarious setpieces; a series of haikus, an interview with a photographer of a naked Upton Sinclair, a transcript of a phone call by a would-be assassin. The second half is pure narrative driven by a malevolent prank and the Upton Sinclair's naivete. The conclusion is funny, sad and terrifically satirical. If you need a therapeutic tonic to cope with the absymal state of idealism and the American left, this should do the trick.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Upton Sinclair rises from the dead, April 12, 2010
This review is from: U.S.!: Songs and Stories (Paperback)
Chris Bachelder is a lovable prankster who likes to turn the nicely fitting glove of literature inside out. while the rest of us are looking for meanings and various forms of significance in the interior decorating of conventional fictional devices--to this day, we all yearn to have poets and novelists to tell us The Truth-- Bachelder prefers to spray paint on the props and show us the cluttered backstage of these settings. And better yet, he rather likes in tying the shoelaces together of the pompous, the serious, the bizarrely sanctimonious. "U.S.!" has him imagining a world where the true believers in an American Socialist Revolution manage, through some vaguely revealed ritual of magic realism, to bring the dead activist novelist Upton Sinclair back to life; back to life the poor, steadfast, solemn socialist does, looking increasingly awful and putrid at the edges, going on the lecture trail, writing and publishing more of his cardboard narratives, trying to convince an amazingly uninterested citizenry the exact nature of what's killing them. Nothing comes of this, as expected, and the intrepid Lewis finds himself talking himself hoarse , only to find himself being killed violently and then ingloriously resurrected yet again. A surreal fish-out-of-water story, Bachelder has a perfect ear for duplicating the static prose of the late novelists, and excels at demonstrating the striking contrasts between those who think that literature can make populations shed their entrenched and deeply rooted versions of Bad Faith and rise to the selfless cause of The Common People; this is a story of where the idea of the progression of history toward a final and just time, intersects with a culture where history does not end anywhere at all. Rather, it splits off into many tributaries, a crossroads every five metaphorical miles. Sinclair Lewis, tragicomic figure he is, stops at each of them, scratching his head as to which road to take
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