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September 22, 2005

GUEST REVIEW: THE BRIEF AND FRIGHTENING REIGN OF PHIL

Phil The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil
George Saunders
Riverhead
134 pp, paper
$13.00

FEAR AND LOATHING IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF SAUNDERSLAND - Guest Review by Jim Ruland

The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by George Saunders is the tale of two beleaguered nations, Inner Horner and Outer Horner. Inner Horner is so small that only one Inner Hornerite can fit in it at a time, which causes a great deal of friction with its relations with Outer Horner, whose residents are inclined to view the spillage from Inner to Outer as an invasion of very personal space. The story’s conflict boils down to this: Are you an Innie or an Outie?

Enter Phil, an overzealous tinpot bureaucrat who abuses his position as Special Border Activities Coordinator to levy ridiculous taxes upon Inner Hornerites in the Short Term Residency Zone. Phil’s fear mongering creates an us-versus-them situation in Outer Horner and he bullies his constituency into signing a Certificate of Total Approval and his taxes become increasingly dehumanizing. Or at least they would be if the characters were, indeed, human, but they're not.

Although they have names like Cal and Carol and Larry and Freeda, they have vents and valves, leak hydraulic fluid and are easily dismantled. One character “resembled a gigantic belt buckle with a blue dot affixed to it, if a gigantic belt buckle with a blue dot affixed to it had been stapled to a tuna fish can.” Perhaps the strangest and most consistently amusing attribute belongs to Phil, whose brain is mounted on a sliding rack. Whenever he gets overly excited the armature opens like the drawer on a cash register and his brain falls out. If Phil’s brain is disattached for too long, he will stop making sense, or rather start making even less sense than he usual does, and this causes problems for the people of Inner Horner.

Phil, whose hunger for power stems from deep-seated insecurities, decides to disassemble Cal in front of his wife and child. Freeda, a member of the Outer Horner Militia, realizes she cannot in good conscience follow Phil’s orders anymore and she too is disassembled. It’s a dark day for Hornerites of every stripe. With Phil in power, no one is safe. Sound familiar?

This allegorical fable feels like it was dreamed up by someone who skipped the Brothers Grimm and rocketed straight from Seuss to Star Wars with pits stops in Tralfamadore along the way. Although it’s hard to say what these creatures are, they treat one another as if they were human and come bundled with secrets and shame and ambition, just like the rest of us. Yet we never get a good look at these people, we are never permitted to see the whole “person.” All we see are their quirks; all we know are their shortcomings. The lack of a central character with whom the reader can sympathize doesn’t help. This is Phil's story and, for better or worse, we're stuck with him.

This is rich material, but sometimes the characters don’t feel so much like characters as manifestations of a droid workshop. Obviously, it matters less that the denizens of Inner and Outer Horner are so different from us as long as the reader is unable to distinguish the differences between an Inner Hornerite and an Outer Hornerite. But can satire function in a world that is so different from our own?

That depends on for whom the book is intended: children, adults, or somewhere in between, like regular viewers of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Saunders’s decision to make the characters sentient machines makes their dismantling easier to take than, say, rounding them all up in cattle cars and gassing them in death camps or massacring them with machetes and bayonets in soccer stadiums. Despite all the winks and nods that indicate the situation in Inner and Outer Horner is not unlike our own America, and Phil is our President, Saunders’s subject is genocide. If penguins and clown fish can teach us something about love, why can’t walking talking sump pumps teach us something about hate?

As the tale galumphs toward resolution some very strange things happen. Outer Horner is invaded by Greater Keller, a nation inhabited by a race of freakishly tall folks, who scare off Phil’s goons and liberate Inner Horner. This deus ex machina resolution is trumped by the appearance by a figure who has huge hands, indescribable lips and a flower garden around its wrist. No, it’s not Angelina Jolie, it’s the Creator, and It has a message for the squabbling Hornerites:

EACH OF YOU WANTS TO BE HAPPY. AND I WANT YOU TO. EACH OF YOU WANTS TO LIVE FREE FROM FEAR. AND I WANT YOU TO. EACH OF YOU ARE SECRETLY AFRAID YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH. BUT YOU ARE, TRUST ME, YOU ARE.

Apparently God is Kurt Vonnegut in Saundersland.

My trouble with The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil is that it’s a little too on the nose, and if the book is intended for children that’s fine, exactly as it should be, but what lessons does it teach? No matter how bad things get, God will bail you out? That’s fine so long as you don’t live in Africa or the Middle East or a hundred other places where human beings for some reason or other cannot peaceably coexist with their neighbors.

But I’ll tell you whom the book is not for: the current leadership of this country. They’ve already received personal messages from the Creator and have been reassured that their happiness, freedom and security is priority number one with The Man Upstairs.

Posted by TEV at 12:01 AM in Reviews |

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Comments

Jim,

Excellent review. I have not read the work yet but I have read Saunder's previous stuff and it pointed in the deus ex machina direction. Maybe because he does not have answer but feels he has to offer one?

Very American.

Jacky Treehorn

Posted by: Jacky Treehorn | September 22, 2005 at 12:59 PM

I thought this was a fair and accurate review. I have read the book and found something lacking, some quality that seemed in evidence in Saunders's previous works. Was it because, as the reviewer suggests, there wasn't a main character to like/relate to? A surface examination of the story finds language that, if not forced, at least seems uncomfortable. I wanted the language to be more playful and fun, instead of stuck in the cardboard phrasings of fable-ese. I eagerly await the Saunders short story collection scheduled for publication in May 2006: The Red Bow.

Posted by: Ray Barker | September 28, 2005 at 10:15 AM

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