Florence of Arabia: A Novel by Christopher Buckley

Florence of Arabia: A Novel by Christopher Buckley, (Random House: New York; 2004), 272 pages, ISBN-10: 1400062233.

In Florence of Arabia: A Novel, Christopher Buckley satirizes the practice and practitioners of United States foreign policy in the Middle East. Buckley’s approach is to demonstrate the impact of United States’ ill-thought-out, bumbling, inappropriate, and poorly executed imposition of American’s beliefs and modern progressive views in two fictional Middle East countries.

Buckley’s satire focuses on a career State Department diplomat (Florence Farfalitti) and her single-minded devotion to her career. This devotion appears to be at the exclusion of everything else: she appears to have no family, spouse, or interests outside her career. Florence’s life changes when she becomes part of a diplomatic incident where a wife of a prominent Middle Eastern diplomat approaches her seeking asylum in the United States. The wife is denied asylum, is returned to her home country, and publically beheaded. Florence is outraged by her country’s abandonment of her friend, the asylum seeker. Her outrage spurs her into frenzied activity that produces a policy document outlining plans for changes to the United States Middle East policy to one where female emancipation/liberty/equal are discussed, supported and encouraged. The bosses in the State Department angrily reject Florence’s proposals; however, she is privately recruited by un-named American backers in a secret mission to impose equal rights for women in the fictional Middle East emirate of Matar, the “Switzerland of the Gulf.” She recruits a varied team of experts to implement her plan via the medium of television. Her television station targets repressed Middle Eastern women through a provocative line-up of programs that includes “The Thousand and One Mornings,” a day-time talk show that features self-defense tips to be used by women against their boyfriends during Ramadan. There is also a popular soap opera that features characters that appear to be based on the Matar royal family. There is also a situation comedy about an inept but ruthless squad of religious police.

Florence’s plan, once implemented, changes the Middle East, but not in the way she intended. While the television station programming is very popular and profitable, it provokes a religious backlash against the television station, its staff, the ruling regime of Matar, and eventually a political struggle for the control of the emirate. Chaos, death and an uprising ensue.

The targets of Buckley’s satire in Florence of Arabia are the practitioners of United States foreign policy. Diplomats are hilariously portrayed as dithering do-nothings, whose obsequiousness and timidity towards ruthless tyrannical allies results in the death of persons who seek nothing but liberty. On the other hand, activist diplomats that seek to plant the succulent root of women’s equality in the barren soil of the Middle East end up causing turmoil, instability, death, and harm to the cause they originally intended to promote. Florence of Arabia is fiction/satire: nothing like this could ever happen in real life, could it? To this reviewer, it triggers memories of previous administrations’ “doing God’s work” in Somalia, and expanding democracy in the Middle East, by imposing it on Iraq. Florence of Arabia is both engaging and humorous, while simultaneously appearing as though it could be a non-fictional, cautionary tale for those starry-eyed idealists seeking to change the world for the better through diplomacy.

Thank You For Smoking: A Novel by Christopher Buckley

Thank You For Smoking: A Novel by Christopher Buckley, (New York: Random House; 1994) 228 pages.

Thank You For Smoking: A Novel by Christopher Buckley is a satirical fictional romp that exposes the repugnant work of a tobacco industry lobbyist in Washington D.C. The story follows chief tobacco industry spokesman Nick Naylor, a man desperately trying to save his job from being given to a younger but equally ambitious female co-worker. Naylor is a seasoned media performer who uses rhetorical flourishes, double-talk, manipulation, scientific skepticism to attempt to make the weaker argument stronger, namely, that there is no scientific evidence that smoking is damaging to your health. He plies his trade at conferences, television talk shows and interviews. Naylor knows his days as chief spokesman are numbered and, in a series of interviews, attacks and humiliates critics of the tobacco industry. Naylor gets extensive publicity for his clients in a series of high profile interviews, but his success proves short lived for he is threatened, kidnapped, and poisoned to a state close to death, an event he also uses to gain positive publicity for the tobacco industry. From hereafter, Naylor's life and career begin to unravel. His initial success in obtaining positive publicity for smoking is rapidly followed by an alienation of his lobbyist friends, him becoming a suspect in a F.B.I. investigation into his kidnapping, and the unexpected death of his only patron in the tobacco industry (the tobacco industry's chief industrialist). Nick is left alone to use his wits to defend himself against his co-workers, the F.B.I., a Senate Inquiry and ultimately criminal prosecution.

Buckley's booking is a ripping yarn, a fast moving and engaging close-up examination of the sewer that is political lobbying in Washington D.C. A notable feature of this book is Buckley's ability to make the reader sympathetic to such a loathsome character as Naylor. Perhaps its that Naylor is an under-dog - him against the smokers, scientists, medical profession and media - that makes us delight in his deceptive use of sham rhetoric to dissemble, obfuscate, bluster and charm in such a manner that we find him, at times, both outrageously funny and charming. It is no wonder his protagonists refer to him as Satan. Or, perhaps, we are somewhat sympathetic to the character because he embodies a rugged individuality that can be so appealing - the lone individual (with considerable financial backing mind you) standing up to the self-righteous, sanctimonious, busy-body, know-alls that proliferate Washington D.C. who want to govern, regulate and control all aspects of our lives. Nick Naylor stands up to them, but ultimately both he and his opponents are portrayed in unflattering light, as equal pigs with their snout in the Washington D.C. trough.

Thank You For Smoking may not be enjoyed by lobbyists or federal regulators and other do-gooders, but it is very enjoyable for the rest of us. If you read it in public, don't be surprised if you laugh out loud.