What I Am Reading: "Bug Jack Barron" by Norman Spinrad
This book has sat on my shelf for years, another old Ferretbrain recommendation that I picked up at my local used book store when I saw it. On their recommendation, I also read Norman Spinrad's other famous book, The Iron Dream, a few years back, the conceit of which is if Adolf Hitler had become a trashy sci fi novelist.
This novel comes from the "New Wave" science fiction era of the late '60s and '70s. It is one of those SF books that people speak of as being "prescient," as it concerns a game show host with power (one who runs for President, no less). Despite that reputation, I didn’t take much from it.
The book is about Jack Barron and his show, Bug Jack Barron: a call-in show where people can connect by videophone to complain about something, whereupon Jack will then connect a call to some bigwig to be appropriately lambasted. Through a call, Jack gets himself into a conflict with Benedict Howards, head of a foundation that is researching immortality and freezing clients so that they can take eventual advantage of it. In a nutshell, Howards needs Barron on his side so Congress will pass his Freezer Bill, and attempts to buy him by offering him an immortality contract; enlisting Jack’s ex-wife Sara to seal the deal. This leads to a thriller plot as Barron uncovers the gruesome secret of the immortality treatment. He plays his own power games along the way by stringing along both Howards and a coalition of anti-Freezer politicians (the GOP and the Social Justice Coalition, an outgrowth of '60s radicalism) who can give him muscle but want him to be their fusion Presidential candidate in return. The plot moves along; sometimes it is interesting, sometimes it is predictable, sometimes it is just plain dumb. Eventually, Howards' crimes and madness reveal themselves on live TV, and the day is saved.
This book is sleazy, a relic of the time of the macho hippies. Barron moves effortlessly through power transactions, cracking wise and being cool in the face of threats. Despite his initial aloofness, he is eventually brought around by Sara, his ex-wife whom he is still in love with (of course), and who exists only to ratify his own greatness and reward him for it through extended sex scenes. Jack despises the power-seeking of politics and causes, and views show business as more morally pure, since he sold out without having to "front" or climb a pile of bodies. Sara however seeks to bring him back to their days at Berkley where they all founded the SJC in a fit of idealism. This is her goal from the get-go, her only motivation a love for the Jack of old and a desire to see him destroy Howards.
In the end, she sacrifices herself as a motivation for him to do the right thing. Howard has gotten the two of them to take the immortality treatment, you see. They thought this would remove Howards’s leverage; but since the treatment involves harvested organs from young black children, they are thus, according to their contract, accessories to murder. This is the point at which I would have gotten an attorney involved, but instead Sara's sacrifice spurs Jack to take down Howards, since now only his future is on the legal line.
The book is obsessed with how edgy it is. This dovetails with my experiences of the other "New Wave" authors of the era, namely Harlan Ellison (who’s writing I do love). Much of the edge comes off as cringeworthy today. Jack's best friend is Lukas Greene, the black SJC Governor of Mississippi, and as a result a lot of racial slurs are thrown around. Lukas is convincingly hard-bitten about the American political scene; but Spinrad also decides that he has created a new state capital of Mississippi and it has degenerated into a slum. Jack narrates a visit to this area as “returning to the jungle.”
Despite this anti-authority edginess and Jack’s dislike for politicians, the media gets off lightly, and Jack uses his media powers for good. His off-cited audience of a "hundred million" are the normal and the downtrodden, and though he is dehumanized by their viewership, they are still loyal to the image of him; he eventually lives up to that image. Nothing that hasn't been covered in media-focused fiction elsewhere. It also does not choose to cover much of the implications of immortality, just Benedict Howards's obsession with the "up nose down throat" of the hospital and the "fading black circle." The prose style often devolves into this sort of stream-of-consciousness association as the characters think. It does keep the book readable once you get used to it, and is honestly a good style choice that does give the book more of a distinctive fingerprint. That stacks up, though, against the silly science, the atrocious gender politics and failed attempt at racial politics, the soft-hitting political and media commentary, and the whiff on the opportunity to philosophize. Skip this one.