A gritty satire of America as exemplified by the contrived episodes of a reality television show aiming to elect a prospective senator
Colt Cortez is a clear favorite vying for a senate seat in 2024. Yet in politics nothing should be left to chance, especially for an individual with as many personal faults as this candidate. What better way these days than through a reality show? One hyping his populist platform while ignoring revealing truths about the true Colt—his drug use, broken marriage, sexual proclivities, and more—with distracting exploits and stunts to entice and charm the public.
Yet Colt isn’t even necessarily the biggest personality in his sphere, let alone the novel. The events and characters comprising Nasparnival easily match and sometimes overshadow the protagonist’s surface superficialities, giving vibrant life and humanity to this epic satire. His cohort of accomplice friends is like a troupe of action-adventure characters, each with specific talents funneled into a single goal: get Cortez elected. They have no financial boundaries, few ethical ones, but a great capacity for troublemaking.
They also live in and helped build The Omega, a quintessentially fabricated town envisioned and built on land acquired by Wit Cortez, Colt’s grandfather. The elder Cortez in his prime was a brazen taker and the epitome of a zero sum philosophy of life he’s instilled in his grandson and grandson’s friends. As a group they have sustained a high degree of adolescence into their adult lives. As one of their fathers, Dr. Thor Forrester, puts it:
“‘Living the clique. They ain’t clicking unless they are cliquing. Clique, clique, clique…one can practically hear that sound as you see them walking; actually, before you see them too. United States of America High School. USA High. Yeah, and in the USA we’re all high and anyway, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, it’s all about high school. Everything geared to that fourteen to eighteen-year-old age group mentally . . . They were Facebook before Facebook. High school. Addicted to high school.’”
Dr. Forrester can relate to cliquishness thanks to his past as a former member of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. His is a significant and highly entertaining role in the novel, but still just one of a cast of terrifically entertaining characters. The novel’s size allows each to billow out into full expression without abandon. What elevates them as characters is they all possess individual motivations, independent of their loyalty toward Colt Cortez.
The irreverence of Cortez’s inner circle shines through unabashedly. Such as when they vanquish Colt’s rival for the senate seat, a piece of work himself. Imagine what Thomas Pynchon might make of Alex and his Droogs from Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. Only Cortez’s group’s violence is for show as they operate openly with the means to do pretty much what they want legally. Or defensibly with their own stable of lawyers when they cross the line. Also, their mischief is driven by a tangible goal.
But Colt and his crew, and The Omega itself, have enemies beyond opposing candidates. Many wronged by Colt and his grandfather want to see him fail—and fail badly. Including Colt’s estranged ex-wife, Debi, and her constraining prenuptial agreement. But there are others who blame him for literally driving them to addictions. Three in particular—Tucker, Kyle, Cynthia—who share notes at a clinic in group counseling to discover a common desire to foil Colt and his aspirations.
What enriches the narrative further and sustains its satirical edge is the uncertainty of reality itself. Not in the existential sense but in terms of what’s true versus what’s contrived. Essentially two aspects alternate: the staged publicity spectacles that make up the episodes and the generally more sincere but still self-serving accounts of what occurs outside it. The non-episode chapter titles begin with “Reality?,” the question mark a caveat that reality is obscured, whether by choice or design.
There is so much in this vast work, so many inventive scenes, rich characters, cultural references, and philosophical asides. It fares well alongside longer ones by such as those by Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace in terms of scope, ambition, wordplay, but with a sharper irreverence more in tune to early 2020s. Such as a scene staged as part of one episode in which Colt participates in a paintball style school shooting game. I suspect it’s partly inspired by the Eschaton game from Wallace’s Infinite Jest. The notion of using a school shooting, even a mock one, as publicity isn’t as tasteless today as it once might have been.
Then there’s the modern silliness of The Omega’s Fall Back Friday Nights program:
“. . . a weekly event where residents of The Omega . . . turn their clocks back between one and three hours every Friday night, depending on Colt’s whims, from January 1 through Election Day on November 8. By Labor Day, The Omega becomes a zombie land filled with people walking around not knowing what hour or day or month it is. Banks open at two a.m. Restaurants close at noon in broad daylight, opening again for breakfast at nine p.m. Parades are done in the dark; jackhammers pound away under the mid-night starlight.”
It’s difficult to resist joining the fun. If I were to attempt a catchphrase, it might center around how it captures the three Rs of reality: revenge, romance, and rabble-rousing. Truly more than a novel, Nasparnival is an experience. A book to explore as much as read, with plenty of laughs along the way. A satire within a political context that manages to remain untainted by politics: that for me makes Nasparnival utterly enjoyable.
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