in review / By Jay Aubrey-Herzog

Books of 2007

The Braindead Megaphone by George Saunders. Saunders is that rare bird, a satirist with heart. In this, his first collection of non-fiction, he patrols the border with the Minutemen (and tries his best to understand them), visits the Mideast theme park for the super-rich in Dubai and goes to Nepal to visit a boy who is claimed to be the reincarnation of the Buddha. There are also appreciations of Saunders’ satiric precursors Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut and Donald Bartheleme, and several Swiftian modest proposals including “Manifesto”, which is one of the best pieces Saunders has ever written. In the title essay he lays out a metaphor for the current media environment that is spot-on. A grab bag from one of America’s finest writers.

Zeroville by Steve Erickson. A writer of startling originality and imagination, Steve Erickson has flown under the radar for most of the two decades he’s been publishing novels, but this might be the book that changes that. It’s the story of a “cineautistic” ex-seminary student named Vikar who wanders into the violent aftermath of the ’60s in L.A. Vikar becomes a film editor, and develops a unique metaphysics of the movies.Zeroville is at once a great surrealist novel and a documentary portrait of the chaos of the post studio era in Hollywood in the ’70s.

Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis. A twisted little piece of dark satire from the author of Transmetropolitan. Like Michael Chabon, Ellis bends the detective genre to his own purposes. Detective Michael McGill is sent on a quest for the hidden constitution of the U.S. by the president’s heroin-addicted chief of staff. What ensues is a weird trip through the sexual underbelly of America. What it lacks in verisimilitude it more than makes up for in audacity. It’s also hellishly funny.

God is Not Great:* *How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens backed himself into a corner with his support of the disastrous Iraq war, but here he’s back at his best, defending freethinking atheists from the forces of unreason. There are few writers alive who can match Hitchens’ slashing rhetoric in full flight, especially when logic is on his side, as it is here. His blunt title ensures that he’ll make few converts to his point of view, but God is Not Great is a bracing tonic for fellow unbelievers.

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