|
|
Executive Times |
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
2008 Book Reviews |
|||
|
|
Windy
City: A Novel of Politics by Scott Simon |
|||
|
Rating: |
*** |
|||
|
|
(Recommended) |
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Affable Scott
Simon, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, has titled his latest novel, Windy
City: A Novel of Politics. It’s a funny novel, something of a Chicago
love story, longer than Chris Buckley would have written. Protagonist Sunny
Roopini is an alderman who becomes acting mayor following the death of the
beloved mayor. The cast of characters provide Simon with ample room for riffs
on diversity, and the plot plods along in an easygoing way that makes readers
almost as affable as Sunny Roopini himself. Here’s an excerpt, from the
beginning of Chapter 3, pp. 47-49: "Who would want to kill
the mayor?" Chief Martinez asked aloud, after all politicians had been
safely removed from the premises. The mayor's office brimmed with
brass-buttoned district commanders, blue-suited security cops, and
investigators wearing gloomy gray suits. A growing parade of police
technicians in blue windbreakers loudly stretched yellow crime scene tape
across the length of the mayor's office, unsnapped equipment cases, and
hailed patrolmen to hold this, hold that, and use their investigative acumen
to discover where to get coffee at this hour. "I
mean, who would want to kill the mayor?" Chief Martinez repeated. After
a mute moment, at least twenty hands shot up around the room. "Let
me rephrase that," the chief added in the general laughter.,
"I mean, which son of a bitch actually went ahead and did it?" The mayor had been at once the
most popular man in the city and the most despised. He was the most powerful
and the most desperate for approval. No one else knew quite so many
people. Between handshakes, winks, and waves cast out from podiums like
blessings; between staffers, allies, adversaries, police, teachers, bus
drivers, CEOs, parish priests, brokers, bakers, beauticians, street people,
storefront reverends, and all forty players on the current roster of the
Chicago White Sox (whom the mayor had made it his business to meet), Chief
Martinez figured that at least fifty thousand people had the impression they
knew the mayor personally. The police had compiled an
inventory of 1,476 people described, in the parlance of the times, as persons
of concern. They had personally, if usually indirectly, threatened
to kill the mayor of Chicago, either in a letter, a phone call, or
increasingly, by e-mail. Of this accumulated number, 617 had said that they
wanted to "kick your fat ass," "break your fucking neck,"
or apply some other force that, while technically short of homicide, was
nevertheless regarded as threatening to the mayor's person. Other correspondents obligingly
listed the kind of details that experts found signals of forethought and
sincerity: 349 said someone should shoot the mayor—"Shoot you in your
big black head" was a common expression; 320 avowed that they would be
gratified to see someone "blow up your fat black ass." A much
smaller number, 89, said that the mayor should be slashed or stabbed, while
64 said that the mayor should be hanged. (Of that number, 13 were so
explicit as to specify "by his balls," rather than his neck.
Department psychologists suggested that this desire was so precise as to
merit its own category.) Another minority of 9 said that
they wanted to fuck the mayor's brains out, fuck him up the ass, or
otherwise desired to hasten his demise with ferocious sex. When Chief
Martinez once suggested that some of those correspondents might be more
carnal than murderous, department psychologists pointedly asked the chief to
recall his days on foot patrol: how many husbands' and wives' heads had he
seen cracked by a beer bottle an hour after a couple had been in bed? Desire
and murder, they reminded him, were compatible passions. Then there were other, utterly
distinct threats that were imagined with almost breathtaking intricacy.
Twenty-eight (a number so unexpected that authorities wondered if it was the
product of an organized campaign) said that they longed to pour honey over
the mayor's private parts and sprinkle fire ants over the spill (which
sounded excruciating; but arthropod experts at the Lincoln
Park Zoo had evaluated the possibility and said that the bites would not
prove fatal). The
overwhelming number of threats, 843, made mention of the mayor's race. Some
-217 seemed to believe that the mayor was a closeted gay; 209 assumed that
the mayor had to be some kind of furtive Jew, a covert convert, or in the
thrall of Jews; and 107 blamed the mayor for not hiring them for a city job,
for causing them to be fired from a city job, or for the fact that they
couldn't seem to find or keep any kind of job as long as he was mayor. They
implied that in his city only blacks, gays, or Jews got jobs. Interestingly,
most of the threatening messages did not express themselves in the
conventional vocabulary of racial invective. They might threaten to kill the
mayor for being black, a closeted gay, or secret Jew; but not for being a
coon, a fag, or a kike. A generation of enlightened instruction had managed
to adjust the language-if not much more than the language-of bigotry. An
amazing number signed their threatening letters with addresses or imparted
some other bit of information (a place of work or worship, the name of a
friend or neighborhood) that assisted police in finding them. Two
plainclothes officers, a man and a woman (a mommy and daddy, as the
teams became known) would ring their bells shortly after ten at night.
(Psychologists had counseled that anyone who sent a menacing message to the
mayor would almost certainly stoke their revulsion by watching the
late-night news.) The mommy and daddy would introduce themselves as Citizen
Satisfaction Officers, eager to hear complaints. The
mommies and daddies often noticed the same signature artifacts in the
suspect's apartment: browning newspapers, forsaken coffee cups, a permanently
unfurled sofa bed, discarded wrappers, and an uncombed cat snoozing on piles
of soiled clothes. Daddy would play with the cat—this was considered
unexpected and disarming-while Mommy kept up an unthreatening line of
conversation as both officers scanned the apartment for signs of weapons, explosives,
or some kind of plotting. The plot
momentum is often predictable in Windy
City, and at least a hundred pages could have been edited out without any
loss at all. In a political year, Windy
City is a topical diversion, providing enough entertainment, especially
laughter, to be worth the hours spent in reading. Steve
Hopkins, April 21, 2008 |
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
Go to Executive Times Archives |
||||
|
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the May 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Windy City.htm For Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
