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.

The Great Fletch by Hugh Lunn

The Great Fletch: The Dazzling Life of Wimbledon Aussie Larrikin Ken Fletcher, by Hugh Lunn, (Sydney Australia: ABC Books; 2008), 355 pages.

This is a sympathetic biography of Australian tennis “great” Ken Fletcher, written by Fletcher’s childhood and life-long friend Hugh Lunn. The book memorializes the childhood, tennis playing successes, disappointments, adventures, and post-tennis life of the man that had the “most beautiful forehand in the world.”

Hugh Lunn’s biography of almost forgotten and overlooked tennis player Ken Fletcher shines a sympathetic light onto the late tennis player’s life. Lunn had an advantage writing this book: he knew Fletcher from childhood. Both grew up on the same street in Brisbane, Australia. They attended the same school, church, and even resided together in Hong Kong in the 1960’s. They remained good friends until Fletcher succumbed to cancer in 2006. The Great Fletch, therefore, is liberally peppered with Lunn’s personal observations and recollections, along with those gathered from Lunn’s interviews with Fletcher’s extensive world-wide collection of friends and acquaintances.

Lunn’s purpose is to remind us of the varied and charmed life of one of tennis’s great players. Born in Brisbane, Australia, Fletcher, the only son of a train driver, had a gift for tennis. This gift was nurtured on a back yard tennis court, and displayed throughout the world. His ability and achievements were so prodigious that in 2000, Wimbledon, the home of tennis, recognized Fletcher as one of Wimbledon’s great players of the 20th century. He partnered with Margaret Court/Smith to do what no other team has achieved by winning the Grand Slam of mixed doubles (i.e., winning the mixed doubles title at the French Open, U.S. Open, Wimbledon and Australian open in the one calendar year). He also won the Wimbledon Doubles title with John Newcombe, and many other tennis titles, as well as being a member of an Australian winning David Cup team. Sadly, it is only the achievements of Fletcher’s contemporaries that we remember, contemporaries that include Rod Laver, John Newcombe, Tony Roche, Roy Emerson, Ken Rosewall, and others. It is hard to stand out, let alone be remembered, among such notable contemporaries.

Lunn’s book shows Fletcher as a man who loved life, enjoyed meeting people, and looking after them. He was at ease with the rich and famous, as well as the poor and downtrodden, and used his friendships with the wealthy to do good. Despite all his tennis successes, Fletcher considered his life a failure because he failed to win the Wimbledon men’s singles title (he lost 3 times to the ultimate champion). This is a harsh self-assessment. Tennis may have been his profession, but his vocation, ultimately, was helping others. His greatest legacy may be his introduction of Chuck Feeney to Australia. Fletcher maintained a friendship with Chuck Feeney, who, 30 years after their meeting in Hong Kong in the 1960's later would be a billionaire philanthropist seeking to give away his fortune. Fletcher’s long list of friends and acquaintances helped Feeney do just that. At the time of his death, Feeney had donated $350 million to charitable medical-research related causes in Fletcher’s home town, something that would never have happened if it was not for Ken Fletcher’s influence.

Lunn’s biography is a fine memorial to his friend’s memory. It is neither referential nor iconoclastic, but a humorous, realistic and honest portrait of his friend’s success and failures – if they could be called that. Fletcher was not only a great tennis player; he was wonderful person that always tried to do good by being a great and loyal friend and acquaintance to many throughout the world, and that is something definitely worth remembering.

The Don: A Biography by Roland Perry

Roland Perry’s “The Don” is a biography of Donald Bradman's exploits as the world’s greatest cricketer. It is a detailed, comprehensive account of his performance on the cricket field as a boy, through to his retirement from the game as a player, selector and administrator. The breadth and depth of Perry’s book are astounding – it’s almost an annotated narrated almanac. The author’s intention is to comprehensively and exhaustively detail Don Bradman’s cricketing achievements. It is through observing these achievements and Bradman’s conduct while achieving them that we learn something of the character of this private, competitive man of exceptionally rare talent and ability.

Perry’s book’s greatest strength is his coverage of Bradman’s entire cricketing career. By obtaining Bradman’s co-operation in the production of the book, Perry explains in exquisite detail Bradman’s childhood encounters of the game, his first schoolboy innings, as well as notable club, State, invitational and national team batting and bowling performances. We learn of the origin of his unorthodox batting grip, his exceptional concentration, relentless domination of all forms of bowling that broke many batting records, both in terms of the runs scored, and the speed with which he scored them. Perry also demonstrated Bradman’s humility and good natured competition conducted within the true spirit of the game. His achievements, so meticulously described in Perry’s book, give no doubt to even the most skeptical observer of the game, that Bradman was, without doubt, the greatest batsman that the game of cricket has ever seem, or is likely so see ever again. To convince the reader of Bradman’s status in the cricketing world, (and some readers need no convincing, only confirmation), Perry’s book takes more than 500 pages. If there is any weakness in the book it is (arguably) that the recollection of Bradman’s exploits takes too long, over too many pages. Some readers may tire of the recollection of excellence, however, this should only underscore the uniqueness of Bradman’s on-field achievements, namely that there are so many of them, that the diligent reader may tire reading about them. Nonetheless, Perry achieves the purpose of showing the uniqueness of Bradman.

This is a book for cricket fans who wish to be reminded to Bradman’s place as the greatest batsman ever to play cricket. It is also a book for serious sports lovers interested in the on-field achievements of the greatest cricketer that game has ever seen, or is likely to see again.

"In a Sunburned Country'" by Bill Bryson

In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson, (New York, Broadway Books, 2001)

ISBN 0-7679-0386-2.

Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country (also titled Down Under in some markets) is an account of his travels in Australia in the 1990's. The title, as Bryson acknowledges, is taken from a poem much beloved in Australia, but hardly known elsewhere. The fact that this poem is largely ignored and overlooked outside Australia is very appropriate considering that Bryson's book is about a largely ignored and overlooked country. The world outside Australia knows that its there yet, for the most part, considers it not worth of its attention. This is quite understandable when you consider that Australia is a largely and empty country. Its also a long way from nearly everywhere, making access difficult, expensive and time consuming. Its population is small by world standards and its place in the world is largely peripheral. Its sports are of little interest, and it doesn't cause trouble or upset other nations. Bryson's view is that we are all the poorer for our ignorance of Australia: to him its a fascinating place populated by good-natured people where interesting things happen. Bryson takes it upon himself to evangelise to the world with a message that we should pay a lot more attention to this ancient and distant land.

Bryson's recalls a series of journeys. In the first section, he spends a few days in Sydney prior to traveling to Perth by train on the Indian-Pacific Railway, the second longest train journey in the world after the Trans-Siberian Railway. He breaks his train trip at the old mining town of Broken Hill, and makes a side journey by four wheel drive vehicle to the opal mining town of White Cliffs, notable for its inhabitants' tendency to live in underground accommodation dug into the hills, done primarily to escape the oppressive heat.

In his second narrative, Bryson explores Sydney and its surrounds, before traveling west by car through the Blue Mountains to various agricultural and horticultural areas. He drives onward to Canberra (Australia's unusual capital city), Adelaide (the only major city not to be settled convicts), and then to Melbourne, where he is joined a former newspaper colleague who shows him the sights of the region.

Bryson then travels by car from Sydney to Surfer's Paradise. During this journey north up part of Australia's ridiculously long east cost, he detours to visit the site of an Aboriginal massacre, a place even ignored or forgotten by Australians. After a plane flight to tropical Cairns, he "dives" on the Great Barrier Reef. After another plane flight to Darwin, he and a colleague drive south through the Northern Territory to Alice Springs, and then to Ayers Rock/Uluru. His final narrative comprises an account of his exploration of the Perth region, and his exploration of the coast of Western Australia north of Perth.

It would not surprise readers familiar with Bryson's other book to know that he again excels at meshing his pithy, humourous and sometimes sarcastic observations with a wide and detailed reading of history (both recent and not so recent), which place many events in context, and gives rise to occasional hilarity. For example, Bryson was startled to read that in 1967, the then Australian Prime Minister (Harold Holt), while one day walking along the beach, plunged into the surf for a swim and was never seen again. Bryson was both astounded that a county could have a Prime Minister that could just disappear, and that news of this event had failed to reach him. He later views Holt's official portrait in Canberra, and visits the beach where he vanished. Upon leaving the beach, a guide almost as an afterthought, tells him that a memorial was built to honor Holt, and the memorial was a municipal swimming pool.

Bryson's incurable curiosity, wide reading, enthusiasm, optimism and openness to the unfamiliar is engaging and effective. His genuine enthusiasm and love for Australia and makes this book immensely enjoyable and makes every reader want to pay more attention to this exciting, isolated and overlooked destination.

"A Man’s Got to Have a Hobby: Long Summers with My Dad," by William McInnes

A Man’s Got to Have a Hobby: Long Summers with My Dad, by William McInnes, Sydney: Hachette Australia, 2005.

Summary: A humorous and touching recollection of growing up in suburban Australia; a book of recalled memories of a son’s love for his father, a love that he didn’t verbally convey to his father when he was alive.

William McInnes’s A Man’s Got to Have a Hobby: Long Summers with My Dad, is not you run-of-the mill memoir. For a start, it doesn’t follow the expected model of a lot of memoirs and autobiographies where the book is a platform for the author to boast of his achievements – “I did this and I did that” – to foster admiration and respect of the author. McInnes is (apparently) an actor of some merit and relatively well known in Australia. He doesn’t tell us this fact, but are able to work it out from the fact that he is a guest of honor at a fundraiser in his home. McInnes, it seems, could have told us how he got to be successful, but chooses not to; that would be “showboating” as his Dad would call it. McInnis’s purposes is to share with us his memories of the joys and delights of growing up in the 1970s and 1980s in Redcliffe, Australia, and, through that re-telling, sharing his wonderful memories and influence of his Dad during his upbringing.

The book’s narrative is also somewhat unusual. The arrangement is not linear or chronological, but subject oriented in three parts: “A Fine Vessel,” “The Night of Nights”, and “Saying Goodbye.” In “A Fine Vessel,” McInnes recalls the past as he looks around his childhood home. While visiting the old family home, McInnes recalls what is was like to grow up in the house on the battle axe block next to the fire station. His search for the telephone in the office sparks a series of haphazard memories of his Dad’s various “renovations” that sometimes appeared unexpectedly overnight, such as a new doorway or wall. We enjoy the humorous and delightful recollections of Dad’s attempt to play tennis with a bent tennis racquet, the family’s celebrations and parties in the backyard, unusual neighbors, curious family rituals and nicknames for people and food. We learn of Dad’s outside construction projects like the incinerator in the backyard to burn household rubbish, and the brick barbeque that belched so much smoke that they called it Bismarck after the battleship of the same name in the movie “Sink the Bismarck.” We learn of McInnes’s fear of cane toads, and his father’s failed attempts of win a seat in Parliament, and the curious dress habits of members of the Labor party. It was a time when any K-Tel product was a prized possession including the glass cutter and record selector. We learn his Dad’s unique expressions, such as “Jesus wept,” “don’t be a banjo player,” and “for Christ’s sake.” His father’s insults were apparently incandescent, but often punctuated will lessons such as the recollection of his Dad’s unexpected response to McInnes’s verbal baiting by saying “if you ever judge somebody by what they are and not by what they do, then you’re a bloody fool.”

Part two, the “Night of Nights” unfolds during his presence at a fundraising dinner as one of the invited guests. Through a string of recollections stimulated by people he sees and meets, McInnes give us a bit if a history and geography lesson about Redcliffe – it’s a peninsula north of Brisbane on Moreton Bay that used to be a tourist destination for Brisbane residents in the 1940s that caught a steamer to visit that was was the site of the first penal settlement in Queensland until it was abandoned for the site o present-day Brisbane. We learn of McInnes attending Humpybong school, his adventures swimming off the pier, when he first kissed a girl, and how meeting his former football coach in the bathroom brings on some sport related memories. We are told of attending football matches with his Dad in support of the local team the Redcliffe Dolphins. McInnes recalls how he went with his father to local games demonstrates how life has changed since he was a child. In those days activities and entertainments were predominantly local. There were no national football competitions and people supported the local district teams. The team members were people from your local area, as were the supporters. Everyone knew each other. We learn of the family’s likes and dislike of certain players, and how the team had a loyal and dedicated fan base that supported them despite time never winning the competition. They did, however, manage to lose in glorious fashion.

The third part of the book, “Saying Goodbye” recalls the author’s confrontation with the death of his aunt, which in turn revives memories of the earlier death of his father. In this moving, honest, emotional and best part of the book, we learn of the importance of family and the son’s admiration and love for his Dad. McInnes recalls how Dad helped Aunt Rita find some land to build a house. Rita’s illness, suffering and death remind McInnes of his Dad’s death from numerous ailments including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and ultimately cancer. For anyone who has witnessed a loved one suffer from such ailments, the story is familiar and moving, particularly the recollections of the original diagnosis, the decline in health, and ultimately peace through passing.

These stories are a joy. They remind us all about growing up, families and their customs, and peculiarities. It’s a warm and emotional book for its reflections of the past, but it is more than this. This also book appears to be the McInnes’s way of saying that he loves his Dad. He never told him in person – even on his death bead – but he does in this book. In a way, this is also a book about love; a son’s recollections of his father, a man who saw so much suffering in war, but still carried on with life, full of energy and belief that love is the most important thing. McInnes’s book reminds us how men like his Dad are not so common any more. We learn that he was a child of the depression, and a paratrooper in the Second World War. He didn’t talk of his war experiences, but we get a glimpse of a few occasions of how deeply it affected him. On the beach on day while watching a storm, he confided to his son how the storm’s thunder and lightning was just like a barrage, just before they send you in. “Poor bastards” he said, and McInnes knew he was thinking of his friends and the war. On another occasion when visiting Dad in hospital, McInnes recalled how Dad used to say “get some milk for the baby.” One of McInnes’s sisters recalled that as something from the war. Dad was part of the army liberating the concentration camp at Belsen. Upon entering, Dad was approached by a lady with a dead baby in her arms asking him to get some milk for it. Knowing that the baby was dead, and had probably been dead for days, and that there was no milk, he cradled the baby in his arms and said to his colleagues to get some milk for the baby. That’s the sort of person he was.

McInnes’s memoir is compelling and thoroughly enjoyable. It’s both a memoir of growing up in the Brisbane suburbs in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as a tribute to his Dad. Its historical, funny and poignant, a thoroughly enjoyable book that mixes comedy and tragedy, humor and suffering, life and death, but is ultimately a joyful and optimistic celebration of life.