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I bought the book mostly as a curiosity.
I was expecting to encounter a dated pulp novel larded with camp, and I wasnt entirely wrong.
TheTimes,in its initial review, called it a wild, vigorous, curiously readable melange.
But we live in a moment where no metaphor orform of satireis big enough to contain whats actually happening.
The antic use of ten-dollar words here feels somehow apposite.
To him, it was a prevalent feature of our society.
But there are hints in old interviews about the roots of his disillusionment.
You lose respect for public judgment because you know you might sell them anything.An-y-thing!
People plot, scheme, and give long and windy backroom soliloquies about returning America to its original purity.
InThe Manchurian Candidates dystopia, all of our institutions are broken.
He also wrote ambitious historical works.
But its the political stories that offer the most intense distillation of his worldview.
Such is the moment we live in.
