Skin Head Loner

 The Harder They Come by T .C. Boyle, 2015

This book is about a particularly American virus. Criminal punks in Costa Rica that get killed by a cruise-boat tourist. A crazed son in the northern California woods. Right-wing sovereign citizens that think not wearing a seat-belt or not updating their car tabs is 'sticking it to the man.' Destructive Mexican cartel marijuana growers in the woods get the blame for worse, but they didn't do it. Fools all.

Boyle is described as 'sardonic' because he makes knowing fun of everyone. If you are to believe your eyes environmentalism sucks, liberalism sucks, right-wingers suck, fuck-ups suck, humans suck. Describing laughable and tragic reality – or perhaps shaping it.

Boyle deals in the cultural milieu, the accurate detail, the current usage, the extreme circumstance nearly all the time. Murder with a current cache. Hip cultural knowledge. Psychological penetration. Ridiculous people. Sad sacks and pathos. Boring normality. Undertones of politics. Product placement. He's a smarter Tom Wolfe.

Here Boyle pokes fun at retired white people, but his depiction of Latinos is not a walk in the park. In this story they're mostly criminal elements – thieves, illegal marijuana growers or an officious cop.

And Boyle must hate reggae because it shows up as some kind of sorry theme. The creepy bus driver in Costa Rica likes it. The ratty stupid dog has dreadlocks. The crazed weed-sucking survivalist is a former lover of Bob Marley. And you know, the Jimmy Cliff riff from the book title – “the harder they fall.” Great wisdom, except everybody 'falls' here – which is not what Jimmy Cliff meant. I'm not a fan of reggae, but really?

SOVEREIGN CITIZENS

The book is mostly about two people who think they don't live in a society with other people. Sten, the 70-year-old retired school principal and former Vietnam vet is both a man of action and a man who does a bit of thinking, unlike many around him, but he's still part of the community. On the other hand is his son Adam, a crazed kid 'mountain man' dreaming of the past fighting 'hostiles' and Sara, an older sovereign citizen who lives in a fantasy world of individualism as she pursues her business. Given their ideas the two of them should really live in the woods and never come into town, but they do because they can't actually live alone. Thievery, drinking and dope, growing opium and carrying out minor acts of rebellion suffice until they don't.

Cliven Bundy - Millionaire Cow Rancher

This story is mixed up with that of John Coulter, a real member of the Lewis & Clark expedition, a trapper and mountain man and his contact with 'hostiles' like the Blackfeet and Crow. So in several ways this is a story of north American 'white' people problems extending back into time. In the warped understanding of these right-wingers, the modern 'hostiles' are 'aliens,' Chinese, Mexicans - or anyone representing the state or anyone bothering them. That includes cops. This book is a fictional reflection of the Ammon and Cliven Bundy's of the U.S., even of the whole reactionary movement that lives saturated in this mythology. Society doesn't exist, only we do. It is not just about one killer kid and his off-slant girlfriend.

If you've ever dealt with sovereign citizens and their cracked legal theories, this is a hoot. What is not funny is the murderous logic of people who still think they live on the frontier, guns and all. Skin-head hard-ass young punks thinking they are in 'Nam when they aren't. In a setting of bewildered, pudgy normal people, this book splays the outliers like gutted fish. The possible horrors hiding in 'normal' or suburban life is a familiar theme of film and books. Here it is again. But it is our reality too.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left: “When the Killings Done,” “Budding Prospects,” (both by Boyle); “Deadwood,” “Lewis and Clark Through Indian Eyes,” An Indigenous People’s History of the United States,” “The Heart of Everything That Is,” “”Empire of the Summer Moon,” “Loaded,” “A Fascist Edge,” “This Land – How Cowboys and Capitalism Are Ruining the American West,” “Fascism Today.”

And I got it at the Minneapolis East Lake Street Library, which is open again after being damaged.

The Kulture Kommissar

April 30, 2021