New Orleans is not doing so well. After being struck by hurricane Katrina, the city has never regained its former glory. With increasingly powerful hurricanes hitting the city every year, much of the city's surroundings have reverted back to the swamp it once was. To add to the city's misery, a new economic crisis started by the meteoric rise of the value of the dollar has hit the nation. Police officer Martin Luther Martin, brothel owner J. B. Lafitte and Voodoo Queen MaryLou Boudreau all suffer the consequences of yet another economic failure. Something needs to be done. Each in their own way, will contribute to a series of events that will upset the politics and economics of the state of Louisiana severely.
Spinrad is clearly not impressed with the political and economic state of the US at the moment, and in this novel he presents a crisis that is an extension of the one we are currently crawling out of. It boils down to an extreme rise in the value of the dollar, which is nice in the short term because products get cheaper. In the long run it depresses wages however, which is not good for people trying to pay off a mortgage, closed before the rise of the dollar. A new round of foreclosures quickly ensues. I'm a little hazy on the mechanism that causes the dollar to rise and how realistic that development is. Economics is not exactly my area of expertise.
Whatever the exact economics of the situation may be, the message that the financial and political elite has failed to learn the lessons from the 2008 crisis is loud and clear. Spinrad argues that market economics cannot work without a large and stable middle class, and that the current direction of the US economy is not going to provide that. Since it is also very obvious that the economic elite is not about to change their ways, change must come from the bottom. And there we hit on a second issue Spinrad takes aim at, the deeply rooted mistrust of career politicians and the, in my opinion, somewhat naive belief that putting people in charge from other walks of life would yield better results. Looking at this novel in that light, the election of Trump as president couldn't be more fitting.
The main characters in the story are all people just trying to get by. They have opinions on what needs to be changed, but rarely are able to think more than a few steps ahead, or beyond their immediate surroundings. They are often shamelessly selfish in their motivations as well. Their actions quickly expose some of the divisions in US society. They clash with the religious conservatives, with the anti-union sentiment that has become so prevalent in the last decades, with the close ties between big business and the political establishment, and with the abuse of the system of checks and balances to endlessly block decision-making. It is, in other words, a revolution that meets with stiff opposition.
Spinrad swings all over the political spectrum in this novel. From police union actions that would make Joseph McCarthy turn in his grave to sending in the National Guard to end the anarchism caused by a lack of police enforcement. There is more than a bit of irony in the role of the religious and conservative National Guard commander in the story. Through his religious convictions, and more than a bit of common sense, he ends up doing things that are perfectly in line with his convictions but not by any stretch of the imagination in line with conservative orthodoxy. Whether you approach the problem from the right or the left, so Spinrad seems to argue, the conclusion that the balance between capital and labour needs to be restored is inevitable.
Being set in the Big Easy the dialogues are in a kind of Southern Vernacular English. Spinrad plays with the preconceptions associated with that variety of English, as well as with various stereotypes associated with the rural population of the Mississippi delta, and preconceptions of crime, drug use and race. He constantly tempts the reader to fall into one of these preconceptions and think of the characters as backwards, uneducated and dumb, only to have that character make a move that shows them not quite as simple as the stereotype would have it. This contrast is sometimes downright hilarious but can also be very confronting. The Voodoo queen is probably the best example of that. She is 'ridden' by the spirits but do not think her a puppet.
The People's Police is a very politically charged novel. It questions, it mocks, it satirizes and it challenges. The book is quite cynical about the world of politics and business in particular. You have to be able to appreciate a strong political message in the book to like it. Spinrad does not hide his own opinions, which border on the anarchistic at times, in the novel. I suspect this goes for a lot of his other books as well, so for readers familiar with his work, that will most likely not be a surprise. Personally, I enjoyed his sharp criticism and unapologetically cynical observations. It makes me curious what Spinrad has to say on terrorism. I may have to seek out Osama the Gun some time.
Book Details
Title: The People's Police
Author: Norman Spinrad
Publisher: Tor
Pages: 284
Year: 2017
Language: English
Format: E-ARC
ISBN: 978-0-7653-8429-4
First published: 2017
I just finished this novel recently, as well, and had a very similar response. Spinrad seems to approach the current political situation surrounding violence against blacks by police in the US by saying: if there were fewer laws, there would be less opportunities for such violence. An interesting view, to say the least.
ReplyDeleteYea, I don't think that particular notion will gain much support. Then again, Trump wants to cut back on rules. Maybe he can axe some on recreational drug use.
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