Book Review & Analysis: Frogs At the Bottom Of the Well by Ken Edgar

Frogs At the Bottom Of the Well

by Ken Edgar

      Back in the 1970s, there were roughly two competing strains of feminism. One was that of the upwardly mobile career woman who strove to break the glass ceiling and change the system from the inside. That was reformism. The other, radicalism, was about destroying the whole system and rebuilding everything anew from scratch with an emphasis on replacing the so-called patriarchy with a matriarchy. Psychology professor Ken Edgar’s novel Frogs At the Bottom Of the Well addresses both political tendencies and it is clear from the beginning which one he supports.

The reformist element of the two headed feminist dragon is represented by Molly Reagan. She is the top performer of the Indianapolis women’s division of the police department which is headed by a tough old battle ax who looks over Molly Reagan with barely concealed lust as she changes in the locker room after a shift. This novel was published by Playboy Press after all. Considering that, it is surprising how sexually tame this story actually is though. Anyhow, the boss has come to summon Molly to a meeting with an FBI agent who has selected her for a secret assignment in New York City. She fits the bill quite well because, not only is she the best female cop in the region, but she is also beautiful, in part because of her long red hair. Redheads were considered to be hot in the 1970s, especially those who were true redheads, if you know what I mean.

On a side note, I’d like to point out the significance of Molly wearing pants throughout the whole novel. Younger readers probably won’t catch the cultural reference and the virtue signaling in this detail of fashion because social norms have changed to the point where a woman wearing pants means little if anything these days. Besides, 21^st century Americans have no sense of fashion to begin with. I mean, geez, have you ever seen such a poorly dressed nation anywhere on Earth? Even affluent people here dress like the dishwashers at Denny’s. But back in the early 1970s, pants were a symbol of female liberation. Ken Edgar didn’t break any new ground by having Molly Reagan wear pants since she certainly wasn’t the first, but it does show that he is on the side of sexually liberated women according to the semiotics of that time period. Edgar was certainly not the first to cast a woman as the protagonist in a police thriller novel either, but that still was a fresh and edgy idea at the time this was written.

Since Molly fits the necessary profile so well, she is sent to Manhattan with a sidekick to pose as her husband. Her assignment is to infiltrate a gang of lesbian terrorists led by a woman named May-One who has a fetish for redheads. When May-One falls in love with Molly, a little too easily to be believed, the undercover cop gets initiated into the group. In fact, May-One is so blinded by love for Molly that she lets her in on all the terrorists’ secrets without any suspicion that something might be wrong. Umberto Eco, in The Prague Cemetery, says that every secret society has at least three true conspirators and two infiltrators. In this novel, his formula falls short by one, but the idea still stands as Molly proves herself by staging an assassination of a police officer with assistance from the FBI. With this event, the narrative becomes a little disappointing. The author uses foreshadowing to set us up for the tension of action and then the action goes as planned. A plot twist or two to subvert our expectations would have gone a long way in making this a more exciting story.

Anyhow, as May-One and company take Molly on the lam, hiding out in a remote cottage up north in the Hudson Valley, she learns the backstories of each one and how they ended up as radicals. They mostly all came from upper class families, as radical activists often do, and all have issues with losing their fathers. Some had fathers who cared more about climbing the career ladder than having family relations with their daughters. Others died from accidents or injuries related to work. One got rich by destroying beaches in California while setting up oil rigs along the shore. Ken Edgar makes it clear that these women, tragic characters but not evil, all have legitimate grievances against the capitalist system. In this way he humanizes them, to a small degree, while acknowledging that American society has its flaws. It may be understated, but this book does not present a one sided view of political activism. The presented idea that radical feminists become what they are because of absent fathers might be overly simplistic, and also outright wrong, but then again this isn’t highbrow literature either so your expectations for insightful analysis shouldn’t be too high.

All along, Molly knows the importance of her mission. The lesbian terrorists have made contact with an organization of nuclear physicists who are assembling a suitcase sized atomic bomb which they will use to blow up the World Trade Center. That should make your head spin a little. It is highly unlikely that Al Qaeda found inspiration in this novel, but it was published seventeen years before they tried to blow up the World Trade Center the first time and twenty-five years before September 11, 2001. And we can’t overlook the theme of nuclear armed radical lesbian terrorists blowing up New York City as being almost reason enough to give this book at least one read. This idea is so over the top that it almost treads into John Waters territory. John Waters is far more creative and original that Ken Edgar and he would have done a much better job with this material, but for now this is all we’ve got.

While staying in the group’s secret hideout, Molly encounters Sun, the nuclear physicist who is in charge of the whole operation. He is an oversized egomaniac whose IQ is supposedly off the charts even though he comes off as being an intellectual mediocrity in the story. His motivation for wanting to erase society and start everything new? He can’t sleep and, actually more importantly, he can’t get it up. Yes, he builds nuclear bombs because he is impotent. Actually, even if he could get a stiff one, he probably wouldn’t get a chance to use it anyways because he wanders around the lesbian hideout looking like a dork in boxer shorts and dirty shirts. Somehow, Molly crosses the line of professional distance and ends up in bed with Sun. This is odd because everybody Molly encounters wants to get in her pants, but aside from May-One and Sun, no one ever does even though they might be better catches. Molly cures Sun, straightening out his overcooked strand of wet spaghetti, but even though he finds new power in his prick, he isn’t deterred from carrying out his nefarious plans of world destruction. May Lex Luthor live forever.

I won’t divulge any more details, but the end of the story is predictable as is almost everything else in the book. Molly Reagan’s defeat of the lesbian terrorists signifies that the heroics of the upwardly mobile, career advancing feminist is acceptable while the lunacy of radical feminism is naive and dangerous, though certainly more interesting.

This novel certainly has its flaws. It Is formulaic and predictable. The characters are cliché by today’s standards even if the police were considered progressive by the standards of the early 1970s. The characters are, however, well drawn enough to make them somewhat believable and more than just action figures in an action novel. And while Molly is interesting enough as a protagonist, a book about lesbian terrorists with am atomic bomb promises more from its villains. The action in the story isn’t strong enough to sustain our interest and the villain’s are the biggest selling point the novel has, but Ken Edgar doesn’t do enough to make the villains as exciting as they should be. Such an outrageous premise should revolve around outrageous characters. May-One, Sun, and their gang are outrageous, but not so much as to make this as exciting as it could have been. Edgar is too cautious as a write to push them over the top the way he should have. On a technical level though, Edgar is a good, if conventional, author. The pacing is fast, there is little in the way of loose threads, and he has a talent for building suspense. His ability and willingness to portray all sides of the conflict could have been more developed, but it is an adequate effort.

Frogs At the Bottom Of the Well has such a provocative premise, but Ken Edgar is such a middle of the road author that it doesn’t shine when it should. It could have the potential of cult status if only it had been a trashier, a little more weird, or a little more ironic in a humorous way. Instead it reads like a novel written with the intention of being made into a movie script, a slightly better than average undercover police action suspense story, but not one that could achieve classic status. It does reflect some of the moods and ideas of the time it was written in though, but this will only be recognizable to those with experience and a working knowledge of America in the mid-1970s.

 

Book Review: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti by Milton Rokeach

The Three Christs of Ypsilanti

by Milton Rokeach

      It was the late 1980s when a group of my friends gathered in front of a TV set with a couple six packs, a bottle of vodka, and a bag of joints. It was a special occasion. The Sally Jessy Raphael Show was on. It’s not that we had any particular fascination for that kind of trash talk show. It’s just that her guests were a special sort of people and we tenuously knew one of them. He was the cousin of someone we knew from high school and he, along with the other two guests on the show, believed that he was Jesus Christ. What ensued was a shouting match between the three kooks, no doubt encouraged by the shows producers for its entertainment value. We were rolling on the floor with laughter. This was real John Waters kind of stuff. And that friend of ours, with his cousin the nutjob messiah, may never have recovered from this incident. Anytime we ran into him after that episode of of The Sally Jessy Raphel Show, he looked kind of sheepish as we teased him about it. He went on to become a college professor and then died about a decade ago. I guess that means he’s over it by now.

On a slightly more serious note, in the 1950s a psychologist named Milton Rokeach gathered together three inmates at a psychiatric hospital in Michigan. All three believed themselves to be God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost or some sort of combination of the trinity. He wanted to see what would happen when three people who all claimed to be approximately the same incarnation got together in a room to talk shop from a deity’s perspective. He wrote about his experiment in The Three Christs of Ypsilanti.

Rokeach starts by introducing the three subjects. Clyde is an elderly Midwesterner who doesn’t have much to say aside from interjections meant to correct the false beliefs of the others. When someone says they are God, he gets angry and shouts at them because he is the one who is really God. Other than that, he mostly keeps to himself. Joseph is a bit smarter. A highly educated French Canadian and devotee of classic literature, he also believes he is God. Furthermore, he also believes the psych ward is a castle and an outpost of the retreating British Empire. He vows to fight in its honor, but often makes requests to be repatriated to the U.K. Aside from his delusions, he is functional on a day to day basis and can read Tolstoy and Flaubert, able to describe them, analyze them, and interpret them with clarity, accuracy, and freedom from delusional perceptual distortions. I actually took a liking to this guy. Then there is Leon, the youngest of the three. He was raised by his mother, a religious fanatic who was probably mentally ill herself. Leon is highly articulate, believes he is married to a yeti, and lives a life saturated in the muck of psychotic delusions. He is confused about his sexuality too and keeps insisting that people call him by names other than his own. Those names change according to what is happening in his life.

Rokeach’s expectation from the start is that, when the three Christs encounter each other, they will break free from their delusions of grandeur and realize they are not Jesus. His intention is to see what happens when the cornerstone of an individual’s identity dissolves and how that affects their beliefs and behavior. This, however, never goes as planned and the three patients persist in believing themselves to be God. In fact, instead of discussing their false identities with each other, they tend to avoid the subject altogether.

Rokeach’s brand of experimental psychology has two major components, one of which is more controversial than the other. The less controversial one involves daily soirees. The three paranoid schizophrenics gather around a table to chain smoke and talk. The more controversial one involves Dr. Rokeach impersonating different people in attempts to influence the patients’ behavior and beliefs. With Leon being the most articulate of the three Christs, the most interesting results come from him. The doctor writes letters to him claiming to be Leon’s wife named Madame Yeti Woman. By impersonating and manipulating Leon’s delusions, the complex, and sometimes confusing, nature of his belief system is revealed, involving an alternate race of yetis, hermaphroditism, first name changing, and ritual masturbation. Leon also begins constructing masks out of colored cellophane, cardboard, and rubber bands which he wears to avoid eye contact when in the presence of a female doctor he is sexually attracted to. Dr. Rokeach gets less spectacular, but significantly revealing results, when he writes letters to Joseph, pretending to be the director of the psychiatric hospital. The intention is to convince Joseph to embark on a writing project. This, along with another experiment in the use of placebo medications, ultimately leads nowhere.

While Rokeach’s attempts at persuading the three Christs to shed their false beliefs ends in failure, he does provide an interesting analysis of the content of their delusions. There are definite patterns as to when and why the delusions come out as well as a logical consistency, maybe even a symbolic role, that the delusions play. These three men suffer from problems of inadequacy, fear of failure, anxiety over social conflicts, and sexual frustration. Leon himself appears to be confused because he is bisexual. Rokceach finds that their delusions are all strategies created to help these men manage the turmoil of their inner conflicts. The difference between them and non-schizophrenics is that they construct false identities and delusional beliefs to avoid facing their problems whereas other people deal with similar issues in ways that are more in line with what is considered normal by society’s standards. Furthermore, these three men have weak and fragile egos that could easily be shattered when confronted with ideas that conflict or threaten their sense of self. Their delusions act as a bulwark against such threats and protect their egos from fracturing whereas people with effectively formed egos are able to withstand the stress of social pressure. This is also why these schizophrenic men spend more time alone than people with more well-adjusted ego formations.

Although this book is dated in its theory and methodology, it is still an interesting read. Rokeach is a talented writer and is highly successful in describing the personalities of Joseph and Leon. This is one of those narratives where the characters are so distinctly drawn that you feel as if you know them from the start. It is a perfect balance without any over- or under-writing and this is mostly accomplished through the use of dialogue. Rokeach, a sharp observer of human behavior and character, could have been a good novelist if he had chosen that path. It is also a great story. Based around a scientific framework, it starts with a proposition for investigation, gathers and describes the found information and data, interprets the data, and leaves us with a deeper understanding of human nature. What I found most important in the end is that Rokeach humanizes his subjects by showing that they struggle with issues that are common to many people. It is just that they depend on alternate ways of handling their problems that are idiosyncratic to the rest of us.

Otherwise, the theory and practice of this study are undoubtedly controversial by today’s standards. Rokeach’s theory of schizophrenia being the result of improper ego formation and psychological adjustment during childhood is ancestral to Freudian thought. I don’t keep up with contemporary practices in the field of psychiatry and therapy, but I do know that psychoanalysis has largely been rejected long ago. The ethics of Rokeach’s methods are questionable too. His intention of shattering the ego of a schizophrenic just to see how it effects their behavior and beliefs could be harmful to the subject and might even lead to permanent psychological damage. Why don’t we just crack somebody’s skull open with a hammer or break a couple ribs just to see what happens? Also, the three Christs are not violent or self-destructive and are actually quite high-functioning for psychologically disordered people. It is probably unethical to even be keeping them locked up in a psychiatric facility when living under care in the wider community would be more beneficial to them. Then there is the issue of impersonating people like wives and hospital directors to manipulate their behavior. I’m not convinced that encouraging delusions is the best way to help schizophrenics manage their lives, especially because there is more emphasis on controlling them than there is on curing them. The authoritarian overtones of the doctor’s practices are a little discomforting. But then again, Rokeach was working with the available theories, ethics, and knowledge that were available to him at the time he did his research so he can’t be entirely blamed for not living up to whatever standards we have in our present day. That is the nature of science and society at large so I’d argue that postmodernists who insist that a literary text be isolated from the author, time, and place in which it was produced are entirely wrong if we are to make a fair judgment about its value and meaning as a written work.

When taken as it is, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti is a fascinating story. Despite being dated, it offers a working theory and framework of interpretation and, even if it is not congruent with current ideas, the relation between that framework and the information it explains makes for a neatly packaged story and set of ideas. And even though Rokeach did not get his intended results, he does demonstrate how a lot was learned along the way. In the end, I’m left with some interesting questions though. For example, why is it that so many psychotic or schizophrenic beliefs are expressed through religious delusions and what does this say about the nature of religion? And why are there so many psychological studies of the mentally ill and so few studies of the psychology of psychologists and psychiatrists? Finally, to what extent do we all use systems of belief to protect our egos? If beliefs and truths are separate ontological categories of knowledge, does that mean all beliefs are potentially delusions? How do we sort out delusional beliefs from legitimate beliefs? I don’t have the answers to these questions and I suppose you don’t either. Stay humble. Just because you’ve read Plato or Nietzsche that doesn’t mean you know anything. 

 

Book Review & Literary Analysis: The Gas by Charles Platt

The Gas

by Charles Platt

      I will say from the start that I believe no book should ever be banned on the grounds of obscenity. Having said that, if there ever was a book that was likely to be burned it would be The Gas by Charles Platt. That was exactly what happened. When originally printed in 1970, the uptight British censors got a hold of most copies, banned the book and sent the remaining print run straight to the incinerator. I’ll agree with the censors on one thing though: this novel certainly is obscene. It recklessly crashes through all taboos in a frenzy that is nothing less than sadistic. Of course that doesn’t mean it should be banned or burned. Quite the opposite. It should be studies, analyzed, and interpreted. We may even learn something in the process. Fortunately, this short novel was reprinted in 1980 and if you are lucky or unlucky enough to find a copy, you can further enlighten yourself in the ways of sexuality that are dirtier than sewer water.

It doesn’t take long for things to start happening. With minimal background or plot development, the lead character Vincent steals a Rolls Royce and picks up an attractive yound hitchhiker named Cathy. You can see where this is going already. After some explicitly described sex that reads like the rougher passages in Letters to Penthouse, Vincent explains that they are in great danger. He works at a military chemical weapons laboratory where a toxic gas has accidentally been released into the atmosphere. The gas causes peole to go into a trance where they lose all sexual inhibitions and morality falls away just as easily as underwear at a nudist colony. As the gas spreads over England, massive orgies ensue and anybody who has been affected sinks deeper into pits of uninhibited violence and depravity. If you are easily disturbed by graphic depictions of paraphilias, this isn’t a book for you.

Vincent’s plan is to rescue his family who live in London. He wants to take his wife, son, and daughter up to Scotland where the gas has not reached. He takes Cathy along with the intention of rescuing her and, after crashing the Rolls Royce, he hijacks a car being driven by a priest who he intends to rescue also. What could possibly go wrong? Well to start, after receiving two head injuries, Cathy starts going crazy and having delusions about Vincent being a communist or fascist secret agent who unleashed the gas deliberately. And the priest, after abandoning his vow of celibacy to indulge in a menage a trois, begins to...how can I say it nicely?...involve his bodily fluids and excretions in the act of making love all the while whimpering and sniveling because he has forsaken his pact with God.

At this point, the novel may seem like nothing but a sick pornographic fantasy with a plot as thin as wet toilet paper. It does, however, provide us with some symbols for consideration. One involves the way that social roles enforce sexual taboos. Vincent’s act of rescuing a nubile young woman, a priest, and a his family represent ways that, in a Freudian sense, libido or sexual energy, are held in check in order to make society functional. Within the nuclear family, sexuality is kept in check through the incest taboo, preventing sexual relations between children and their parents. The expression of that sexual energy is also contained while being expressed in the relationship between husband and wife. The socially constructed taboo against extra-marital sex is represented by Cathy whose presence in Vincent’s cell threatens to rupture the sexual energy contained in his family’s structure. Note that Cathy becomes more threatening to Vincent as she slips into her psychotic delusions. The priest also represents the social taboo of familial sanctity, an extra-legal taboo that is enforced through the institution of the church. It should also be noted that the priest is the one who introduces taboo bodily fluids like urine, feces, and blood into the sexual activities .of Vincent and his crew. The purest and most morally spotless member, the man representing the cleanliness of the spiritual through his role as religious authority and arbiter of religious practice is associated with filth. The packaging of religion with filth is not new; it was St. Augustine, for example, who said that we are born between feces and urine, indicating our lowly status as the excrement of God’s creation.

There are social, psychological, and biological reasons why bodily substances are taboo. The ingestion of another person’s blood, feces, or urine could potentially be fatal and so psychologically people regard them with disgust. Seeing excessive amounts of your own blood could also be reviled as it might be a warning sign that you are in danger of bleeding to death. Through the course of evolution, we have developed a physical, olfactory revulsion towards feces and urine because that is our body’s way of telling us that it is not food and ingesting it could potentially kill us. Unrestrained sexuality can lead to overpopulation or high rates of birth defects when the incest taboo is broken. If we go by the logic of Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, libido needs to be contained and sublimated into industrial productivity because if the proletariat if fucking more than working then the capitalist system can not sustain itself. There is a good reason why “make love not war” was a slogan of the 1960s. Therefore, semen, feces, urine, and blood are all substances that need to be contained in their proper vessels. We have built psychological defenses and social taboos, mainly enforced through the institutions of religion, law, and social praxis to keep them hidden, presumably for the benefit of the common good. Violation of these taboos are existential threats to Vincent in the guise of the psychotic Cathy and the germ infested priest. But notice that no direct threat to Vincent comes when he violates the incest taboo, an aspect of this story which could have been one of the main reasons why this book was burned by the British authorities.

Anyhow, returning to the story...Vincent agrees to stop in Cambridge en route to Scotland because Cathy’s brother lives there, potentially able to let her stay until the gas cloud goes away. Cathy’s brother Edmond is a student studying the science of experimental psychiatry at the university. By the time Vincent and his group get there, he has already succumbed to the influence of the gas. An orgy with him, his landlady Mrs. Dunnell, and everybody else takes place. Ther is no need to analyze the sex here, but it is gross and offensive. It’s also cartoonish and sometimes ridiculous. Honestly, at this point, the excessive sex gets to be redundant and dull, even if the author does take it up a notch or two. When the minuscule plot fades into the background, being overridden by page after page of violent sex, the sex starts to seem like filler more than anything. Besides, an engineering student might initially be fascinated the first few times he sees an engine’s pistons popping, but by the time he gets to retirement the sight is so familiar that it no longer holds any fascination. Yes, sex is exciting but an elderly man might say that there isn’t much difference between rubbing one off and taking a leak. That’s where the spectacle of outre sex in this book ends up. If you’ve already read the works of William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, or the Marquis de Sade then this literary territory won’t be anything new to you anyways. And if you actually find any of it arousing, then you will probably wind up in jail someday.

Fortunately, the carnal indulgences recede towards the end as the plot emerges back into the open. Vincent gets tricked into participating in one of Edmond’s experiments at the university and the results lead to the murder of people who represent Vincent’s deepest insecurities. This horrifies him but also proves to be cathartic, giving him a sense of liberation and greater agency in the conduct of his life. Edmond provides him with a psychological profile that also helps, as well as insults, before going on to explain that he plans on conducting further experiments to find out how he can use the effects of the gas to control Cambridge University. Here the author presents us with his view of the institutions of science and psychiatry as being a means of social control, an emerging field in the technology of domination, one that will replace religion as the primary means of oppression which can be seen in the light of the novel’s next passage.

Vincent gets abducted and taken into a church that is filled with a congregation of young lesbians. Rock music has replaced the church organ. On the altar stands the psychotic Cathy, vowing to kill al men and standing over a pile of naked male corpses who were castrated before being snuffed. Elements of the youth counter-culture of the 1960s, the Sexual Revolution, and the upsurge of radical feminism have fused into a cult of Neo-Paganism. It is reminiscent of Euripides’ Greek tragedy The Bacchae in which the Maenads, followers of the god Dionysus, go into a frenzy and behead King Pentheus. Like the Maenads, Cathy’s cult has entered into a trance where the free reign of their libido leads to the slaughter of the patriarchal overlords who sit at the top of society. Vincent gets taken up to the altar in preparation for the ceremonial sparagmos, but gets saved by the priest who runs into the cathedral. The priest and Cathy kill each other, Vincent escapes to find his family, and the church collapses.

In this scene, a movement of Pagan reawakening threatens the social engineering of the traditional Christian church. The Pagans are lesbians run by a young woman while the church is represented by an elderly priest. The young are supplanting the old, a practice of sexual liberation is replacing the theology of sexual repression, the old is giving way to the new or maybe it’s more accurate to say the primal is reasserting itself over the modern. In the end, Cathy and the priest cancel each other out through mutual destruction. Religion is dead, making room for the amoral institution of scientific discipline to become the means of social and psychological domination.

The story ends with Vincent and his family escaping to Scotland as the effects of the gas wear off. Once across the border, their lives stabilize and the nuclear family unit remains intact. But there is a catch. Let’s say that the last scene ends with Vincent and his wife proving that they believe in “keeping love in the family.” After going through the experience of losing all inhibitions under the influence of the gas, the family can not go back to where they were before it all started. They have adjusted to a new reality, one in which they can function despite having a new orientation to their sexuality. The family unit remains the basis of social order, but family values have been radically altered. The preoccupations of the 1960s all filter into this story including sexual liberation, the military industrial complex, the breaking of taboos, and the places held by science and religion in the modification of social relationships. I believe that Charles Platt is saying that once we have gone through the cultural transformations of the 1960s, there is no going back so we have to find a way to live with it whether we like it or not.

There was a point where I considered not finishing The Gas. This book did thoroughly disgust me, but that’s not the reason I almost quit. The excessive descriptions of sex just bored me at times and often felt pointless. But in the end, the plot did hold up and the story does make a statement. Compared to Charles Platt’s Garbage World, a far superior novel in its execution and social critique, this one just barely held my interest. In comparison, Garbage World analyzed society the way we used to dissect frogs in high school biology classes, that is with precise use of a scalpel so that the different organs could be extracted and looked at carefully. The Gas doesn’t work the same way; it is more like stomping on the frogs until their guts squirt out and then throwing their entrails around until they are a gelatinous ooze dripping down other student’s faces. Similar to a cafeteria food fight, it’s like a biology class frog fight. Your average bukkake video is more sanitary in contrast. It assaults society and it assaults the reader almost as if Platt is trying to induce uncontrolled nausea in his audience. He almost pulls that off and I’m sure that for some squeamish readers he actually does. And the title leaves me wondering if it has a double meaning. The gas is the catalyst for the whole story, being an agent manufactured for chemical warfare, but “gas” can also have other meanings. Getting gassed can mean being drunk or intoxicated and having a gas can mean having a good time as in, “The party last night was a real gas, wasn’t it?” This novel is a sex and violence party and I’m sure Charles Platt had a gas writing it, even if the results were not as profound as he would have intended.

 

Book Review: Bad Lands by Tony Wheeler

Bad Lands:

A Tourist On the Axis of Evil

by Tony Wheeler

      Some countries are like people. They find themselves living on the wrong side of the tracks. In the various cities I’ve lived in throughout my life, I’ve ventured into and out of all sides of those tracks. What I’ve found is that just because people live in the rougher sides of town, that doesn’t mean they are all rough people. In fact I’ve found the opposite: sometimes living in the bad neighborhoods brings out the best in people. I’ve certainly found that the biggest assholes I’ve ever met have been people living in the nicer neighborhoods or the suburbs. I’ve had a few nasty encounters in some rural areas of America too and in fact, almost all of the crime and violence I have encountered have been in the USA. The same can be said for countries. I’ve lived in and traveled in sixty different countries and most of them were in the Global South. I imagine Tony Wheeler, author of Bad Lands: A Tourist On the Axis of Evil would have a similar view.

Tony Wheeler writes for Lonely Planet, that omnipresent series of guidebooks you used to see in the hands of almost every backpacker and hostel dweller you ever encountered on the road twenty or thirty years ago. In this book he delves into the genre of travel narrative very much in the spirit of what Lobely Planet was all about. Now anybody who prefers to stay at home with their eyes glued to their TV sets or the internet might have the impression that life outside America is both bizarre and dangerous. The truth is that such a viewpoint is about eighty percent wrong. Wheeler visits some of these forbidden zones to find out what they are like.

Something has to be said about what Wheeler means by “badlands” and how he chose his travel destinations. When George W. Bush, the second worst president in American history, made his first State of the Union Address, he identified the countries of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as being an axis of evil, state sponsors of terrorism that sought to destroy America. Actually Iran was the only one of the three countries that was legitimately a state sponsor of terrorism, but that is neither here no there for the purposes of this book. Those three countries are included in Wheeler’s itinerary. The others he includes are nations that have low regards for human rights; they include Afghanistan, Myanmar, Cuba, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. He also includes Albania because they were a severe violator of civil liberties under the lunatic regime of Enver Hoxha not too long ago in historical terms at least. I myself have traveled in Albania, as well as Myanmar and Saudi Arabia. Note that Wheeler’s selection of destinations are not the most dangerous countries in the world, just the ones that are on the West’s shitlist with the exception of Saudi Arabia, the USA’s darling on the Arabian Peninsula.

So what did Tony Wheeler find on his journey through the badlands? Lots and lots of friendly, helpful, hospitable, and often happy people who were proud to show off their countries. There were lots of visits to tourist sights too. He visits ancient minarets in Afghanistan, castles in Albania, Buddhist temples in Myanmar, classic architecture in Cuba, museums in Iraq, beautiful mosques in Iran, Roman ruins in Libya, bizarre communist monuments in North Korea, and the ancient ruins of Madain Saleh in Saudi Arabia. He relies heavily on local transportation which can be a test of one’s patience when traveling in the third world. This takes him across deserts, through mountains, along seacoasts, and up rivers in shoddy vehicles with stops along the way in small villages. The only real danger he encounters, aside from horrible driving, is a riot in Kabul which he actually is not close to when it happens, although it is bad enough that he hides out in the British embassy while it goes on. Not alll of it is good though; Cuba is decrepit and he says the government treats people there like patients in a mental institution. Saudi Arabia is just a little bit dull. Otherwise you can say that his travels are like ordinary backpacking adventures that just happen to be in countries that America considers to be enemies. The descriptions of what he sees and does are good and for anybody who likes exploring life off the beaten path, this book can resonate well, bringing back memories and making you want to hit the road once again in search of unique experiences.

Being almost twenty years old, it is interesting to see what has changed since it was written. Afghanistan is now entirely governed by the Taliban. Albania has a booming economy and a growing tourist industry; Tirana may even be the next Barcelona. Myanmar has sunk into disaster after Aung San Suu Kyi proved to be a better leader while under house arrest and the Rohingya genocide continues without any interest from the outside world. Or is that genocides aren’t really genocides when they are done by post-colonial people who aren’t white? Cuba has opened up to the rest of the world, but their economy still continues to crumble. The war in Iraq is over and tourists are coming back even though it still is not a safe country. Iran is still Iran. North Korea is still North Korea. Libya has fallen into chaos after the Arab Spring, the assassination of Gaddafi, and the resulting civil war. Saudi Arabia has gone through massive social and legal changes, finally making progress while the rest of the world turns towards authoritarianism. Some countries got better, some got worse. If Tony Wheeler were going to do this again, he probably would need to include Venezuela, Russia, Belarus, Haiti, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, and China. Now that Donald Trump has been tragically elected president a second time, it may not be long before the USA becomes a badland itself.

After finishing Bad Lands, I was reminded of Plato’s famous “Allegory Of the Cave.” Today’s troglodytes are the masses of Americans and Westerners whose perceptions are trapped and distorted in their caves made of movies, TV, news, social media, and cell phone junk. Tony Wheeler is like the guy who leaves the cave and comes back to tell them what the real world is about, but they scoff and call him crazy, going back to their lives of ignorance dominated by sports and political propaganda fed to them by the ruling classes. It’s their loss. Tony Wheeler is right. The world outside the media cave is an amazing place, much more interesting than anything you will ever see on a screen. The world is there for you and everybody else. It’s endlessly fascinating. If the things you watch on your screens are more interesting than what you do in real life, then you are doing life wrong. Go out and live.