This fiction debut presents young Thurgood Brinkman, a reporter for a Washington-based national daily who undergoes a life-changing experience, of sorts, when he goes to Kuwait to cover Desert Storm. Much of the book is played for laughs as the witty narrator Brinkman portrays associates like Sojourner Truth Zapader, a with-it columnist for the rival Washington Post. It's not always clear what Farley is after here--satire, serious novel, or situation comedy--but he has an original voice that sounds slightly like Nabokov doing the Letterman show.
From Publishers Weekly
Brittle and energetic, Farley's first novel tells the story of 29-year-old Thurgood Brinkman, an idealistic young African American reporter who just can't seem to get it all together. Alternating between bouts of self-righteousness and self-loathing, the Ivy League college graduate keeps hearing how lucky he is to work for National Now!, a "comic-book-colored newspaper" that appears to be a cross between USA Today and Time. But he hates his job churning out mindless formulaic features. "Journalism," he moans, "is to literature what gum is to filet mignon." The Persian Gulf War is brewing, but at first Thurgood doesn't pay much attention. After all, he cracks, isn't Iraq "the past tense of Iran?" But when his idol, Sojourner Truth Zapader, an outspoken Washington Post columnist?who also happens to be the woman of his dreams?suggests he accompany her to Kuwait, Thurgood jumps at the chance. Before long, he's on the roof of the Baghdad Howard Johnson's, looking out at the "ghastly loveliness" of a burning city under attack by American bombers. Along the way, our intrepid hero offers up a steady barrage of riffs on everything from lesbian cybersex and black anti-Semitism to the ethics of geopolitical warfare. There's a lot going on in this ambitious romp, and Thurgood's diatribes are the most entertaining part, but the book is marred by a meandering plot and a wavering satirical tone that never quite finds its own level. Like his well-meaning protagonist, Farley is filled with passion and big ideas, but he's not entirely sure what to do with them except subject them to an irony that is simultaneously self-deprecating and mildly self-aggrandizing.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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