Categories Archives: Reviews

What Happened to Liberal Democracy? A brief review of two books.

Posted on August 15, 2011 by admin

I’ve been looking for some book length works of political analysis, to add to what my consulting experience and reading of other sources tells me is going on beneath today’s headlines. I’m particularly interested in Sheldon Wolin’s Democracy, Incorporated and Chris Hedge’s Death of the Liberal Class. Of the two, Wolin’s book is the more [...]

The Paradox of Feminism in Norman Rush’s Mating.

Posted on May 30, 2011 by admin

Recently, I was introduced to the author Norman Rush through his interview in Paris Review. I had heard of him years ago, when White People and Mating came out, but I had never read him, so it surprised me that with so few books to his credit, he would make make it into such august [...]

Posted on October 8, 2010 by admin

In Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster describes three types of reader. The second type, when asked “What does a novel do?” replies: “Why it tells a story of course, and I’ve no use for it if it didn’t. I like a story. Very bad taste on my part, but I like a story. You can [...]

← Previous postNext post →

Banana Republican Blues

A Novel of the Great Contraction

Prologue

In a barrier island village along the Florida Coast, the name of which one never speaks, there lived until a short while ago, a gentleman of a certain estate. He still kept a mallet and saddle around, but the stable of ponies for contact sport and the greyhounds for coursing were gone. His abode was a measly ten-room apartment above a mere twelve-car garage, and what little income he had left, from renting out the manse, was consumed by debt and daily expenses.

A crock of well-spiced brisket of beef, otherwise known as chili, squabs he reared in a homemade coop, and vegetables raised on the polo ground, served as his principal diet. His vast collection of bespoke suits, ill-adapted to the Florida climate, had formerly sold on consignment, yet he recently cut a courageous figure in Brooks Brothers seconds from the outlet mall.

He was known by his peers for his excellent mind, though few could have said what for, and given to perusing sophistical tomes by Moldy Friedman, Ein Rant, and Friedrich von Hiccup, which still infected the imagination of the drug-addled leadership class. As these had become noxious to him, he burnt them on his bluestone hearth and collected second-hand cookery books, from which he gleaned his knowledge of chili and the delicacies of the Creoles. He supplemented this reading with novels, chronicles of the open road that urged him to dispossess himself of all that he once held dear. The most notable of these were Don Quixote and The Tale of Huckleberry Finn.

It is said by some that he went rather mad when, touched by death, consumed by debt, and wilted by the endless summer, he auctioned off his remaining estate and all the valuables therein. Rumor had it the auction price settled his accounts at Goldman-Sachs, but did not leave enough for his bookie. As the white collar criminal class might say, Eddie was on the lam.

Read On

Follow @bonalibro

Static Pages

About
August 17, 2010, 15:30
Welcome to BonaLibro. BonaLibro is a community blog site for writers imaginative literature. Each member has his own URL and is listed on the main blog for…
Banana Republican Blues
June 5, 2011, 13:31
This mildly dystopian farce concerns the misadventures of a bankrupt plutocrat seeking work in the hospitality trades.
Privacy Policy
May 28, 2011, 19:03
Welcome to bonalibro.us. We take your privacy seriously; therefore, below we provide you with our privacy policy, where we intend to be transparent about any…
Site Map
October 5, 2011, 14:33
This page contains the site table of contents. Use it to quickly find content on this website.

Blog Posts

Category: Announcements (4)
- Books for Wall Street Occupiers by: admin
  October 8, 2011, 22:45
  I've begun a new Kickstarter campaign called Books for Occupiers. For each $12 contribution, you will be sent a paperback copy of Banana Republican Blues,…
- New Work in Progress by: admin
  June 26, 2011, 13:03
  Join the author as he creates a new work of fiction, a genre bending mystery in the grand tradition of literary farce.
- ABNA Semifinal results by: admin
  May 16, 2011, 13:04
  Moonbeam Highway misses the cut for the semi-final of the ABNA. ABNA Publisher Weekly Reviewer Wall Street wizards, Christian conservatives, and preening…
- ABNA Quarterfinal results by: admin
  March 23, 2011, 04:16
  I am pleased to announce that Moonbeam Highway made it through to the Quarterfinal round with two very positive reviews from the judges. ABNA Expert…
Category: Reviews (3)
- What Happened to Liberal Democracy? A brief review of two books. by: admin
  August 15, 2011, 19:53
  Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Incorporated and Chris Hedges Death of the Liberal Class
- The Paradox of Feminism in Norman Rush’s Mating. by: admin
  May 30, 2011, 21:46
  An interesting literary and political paradox.
- by: admin
  October 8, 2010, 21:25
  In Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster describes three types of reader. The second type, when asked “What does a novel do?” replies: “Why it tells a…
Category: Interviews (1)
- Interview with Chip Bishop, author of The Lion and the Journalist. by: admin
  October 26, 2011, 14:02
  The Lion and the Journalist is a new title from Lyons Press. It first in the Fall of 2009 on Authonomy.com. I was the first to spot it and champion it to other…
Category: Commentary (47)
- Renegade — Henry Miller and the Making of ‘Tropic of Cancer.’ — Why do men revel in the degradation of women? by: admin
  January 30, 2012, 13:50
  Renegade — Henry Miller and the Making of ‘Tropic of Cancer.’ Why do men revel in the degradation of women? Jeannette Winterson's review of…
- Willard "Mittens" Romney is a Plutomaniac by: admin
  January 21, 2012, 05:58
  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/opinion/brooks-the-wealth-issue.html?ref=opinion When I was a scholarship student in prep school I remember seeing a lower…
- Another Comment Censored by the NYTimes - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com by: admin
  January 9, 2012, 18:10
  Opportunity Is More Important Than Economic Mobility - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com. As a dogmatist for the Heritage Foundation, your solutions sound like…
- Charlie Rose - Rep. Barney Frank by: admin
  January 7, 2012, 20:44
  Charlie Rose - Rep. Barney Frank. You really tipped your hand, Mr. Rose, in that fight with the Congressman over the private sector doing it better. The…
- The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value - Forbes by: admin
  January 4, 2012, 22:18
  The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value - Forbes. As one who has followed the stock market for nearly twenty years, I've been unimpressed…
- Tenure's Dirty Little Secret - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education by: admin
  January 4, 2012, 13:07
  Tenure's Dirty Little Secret - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education. I notice Milton Greenberg does not refer to the infamous letter of Lewis…
- Comment on David Brooks, Midlife Crisis Economics by: admin
  December 28, 2011, 10:43
  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/opinion/brooks-midlife-crisis-economics.html The type of big government is exactly the question I would address. The type…
- Comments on Stanley Fish, The Old Order Changeth by: admin
  December 28, 2011, 10:40
  http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/the-old-order-changeth/ The Digital Humanities, come to save us all. What, exactly, are they anyway? The…
- Don't Tax the Rich? by: admin
  December 19, 2011, 15:51
  Tax inequality?Ian Ayres of Yale and Aaron Edlin of Berkeley presented an innovative tax proposal in today's NYTimes. It's an interesting idea, one designed to…
- The New York Times Wouldn't Take My Comment (for twelve hours). by: admin
  December 5, 2011, 20:48
  As I wrote on Paul Krugman's column today submitted at 11:40 p.m. EST, (I will try and recreate the gist since comments now disappear as soon as they are…
- Obama tells Labor: F*** Y** by: admin
  November 29, 2011, 11:34
  The Future of the Obama Coalition I suppose it was inevitable that the Jackass party would abandon the last leg of its traditional base in favor of…
- Examining the big lie: How the facts of the economic crisis stack up | The Big Picture by: admin
  November 27, 2011, 12:47
  In Economics 101, the economics faculties used to trot out the “Tragedy of the Commons” problem to show us how inferior socialism was. The thesis was later…
- Craven Political Crudités - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com by: admin
  November 27, 2011, 11:42
  Taking issue with another comment, Josiah Wright speaks to a constituency that has largely been left out in this country. It is a constituency of loyal and…
- The Enduring Cult of Kennedy - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com by: admin
  November 27, 2011, 11:25
  You can say what you like about Kennedy, but he did get the media to shine a spotlight on the great unfinished business of Democracy. I was only eight years…
- A Capitalist Muses on Profiting from Communism by: admin
  November 15, 2011, 15:47
  Wouldn't it be grand if the company could move operations to totalitarian Communist countries where workers are strictly disciplined and wages are suppressed.…
- Comment on The Campaign Jungle - NYTimes 11/13 by: admin
  November 13, 2011, 22:05
  The Campaign Jungle - NYTimes.com. As the Abramoff interview on 60 Minutes last weekend made quite plain, the corruption has been there for a very long…
- Comment on The Public Editor NYT 11/13 by: admin
  November 13, 2011, 20:20
  Who Is Occupy Wall Street? - NYTimes.com. Those who view Occupy Wall Street dimly have plenty of venues available to them to make their dim views known. So…
- Comment on Tom Friedman's Column 11/13 by: admin
  November 13, 2011, 20:16
  The Last Person - NYTimes.com. India sees itself as a developing country and its people see themselves as having a mission. What that mission seems to be is…
- Comment on Joe Nocera, Teach with the Enemy by: admin
  November 8, 2011, 22:19
  Joe Nocera, Teaching With the Enemy makes some excellent points about a much maligned institution. Great teachers are rare, but one can encounter them…
- Comment on Deepak Tripathi How Capitalism Flopped by: admin
  November 8, 2011, 21:10
  How Capitalism Flopped offers a very concise analysis of our present situation. My comment is as follows. Economics 101 teaches us that a shift in the…
- Telling Americans to Vote, or Else - NYTimes.com by: admin
  November 6, 2011, 20:03
  Telling Americans to Vote, or Else - NYTimes.com. This is one of the best suggestions to come along in a long time. Our political system has too long been…
- The Unintended Consequences of Supply Side Economics. by: admin
  November 6, 2011, 09:54
  (I posted the following comment on Tom Friedman's Sunday column, Saturday at 8:45 p.m. EST when no comments were showing. At 8:00 a.m. and still no comments…
- On the Firing of General Peter Fuller by: admin
  November 5, 2011, 21:47
  The firing of General Peter Fuller for remarks he made about Hamid Karzai, shows just how preposterous and deluded is our presence in Afghanistan. Having…
- The NY Times Would Not Take My Comment by: admin
  November 5, 2011, 05:56
  I submitted the following comment to Paul Krugman's essay, Oligarchy, American Style well within the deadline. It was not accepted. Should I wonder why? Econom…
- Reuters denies me my first amendment rights. by: admin
  October 31, 2011, 20:12
  Reuters has denied me commenting rights, because of comments such as this. The fact that OWS has not declared a set of demands is what I regard as its…
- Reply to Edward Stille by: admin
  October 24, 2011, 15:45
  In reply to Edward Stille's New York Times editorial I wrote, "as long as everyone has a chance to compete," is the key phrase in this editorial. We can…
- Reply to Rawls on Wall Street by: admin
  October 23, 2011, 11:20
  In reply to Steven Mazie's article, Rawls on Wall Street, what "we are the 99%" recognizes is not so much that we are all the same, but that we are all…
- Reply to: Occupy Wall Street Is Being Overhyped by: admin
  October 20, 2011, 12:10
  In reply to is-occupy-wall-street-being-overhyped I would say that as a teenager who was more interested in traditional culture than the counter-culture, I…
- Bill Keller and Occupy Wall Street by: admin
  October 17, 2011, 14:34
  Bill Keller's throwaway line dismissal of Occupy Wall Street in today's New York Times irritated me to no end. It's a sign that end times are upon us when…
- Comments on Paul Krugman's "Panic Among the Plutocrats" by: admin
  October 10, 2011, 22:16
  The New York Times, this morning, would not accept my comment on Paul Krugman's column "Panic of the Plutocrats." When I submitted there were none. A couple…
- Labor and Literature « Commentary Magazine by: admin
  September 6, 2011, 21:29
  Labor and Literature « Commentary Magazine. The neo-conservative humanist? D.G. Myers, writing in Commentary this week on the subject of Labor Day, says…
- One and Done? - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com by: admin
  September 4, 2011, 12:46
  Yes, the President would have been wise to throw the game in 2008, but we would have had Hillary in his place. She was lick spittle to Bush his entire…
- Rod Lurie Remakes Peckinpah’s ‘Straw Dogs’ - NYTimes.com by: admin
  September 3, 2011, 12:35
  Rod Lurie Remakes Peckinpah’s ‘Straw Dogs’ - NYTimes.com. What is the purpose in revisiting the theme of Straw Dogs with a remake? I can think of only…
- Literature Brings the Physical Past to Life - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education by: admin
  August 22, 2011, 13:54
  An excellent article, Scott. I can remember when I was a teenager, we had a family friend who was getting his doctorate in literature at Yale. We had a…
- Bachmann to Obama: Forget the Debt Ceiling, Lower the Debt, Christian News by: admin
  July 30, 2011, 23:18
  Commentary on Michelle Bachman's blindness of recent history concerning taxation and deficit spending.
- The Weekend Interview with Bill Gates: Was the $5 Billion Worth It? - WSJ.com by: admin
  July 25, 2011, 09:08
  The Weekend Interview with Bill Gates: Was the $5 Billion Worth It? - WSJ.com. In this recent article in the Wall Street Journal the writer inserted the…
- On "Wall Street’s Euthanasia of Industry" (Michael Hudson) by: admin
  July 20, 2011, 20:48
  My take on Michael Hudson's views on Obama
- Mannerism in Literature and the Foxification of the Public Mind by: admin
  July 17, 2011, 11:40
  An essay on cultural elitism and false populism.
- Stream of Consciousness, Stream of Pee by: admin
  July 10, 2011, 20:49
  Why I cannot read stream of consciousness literature
- On Krugman: Corporate Cash Con by: admin
  July 4, 2011, 15:05
  A rant on corporate responsibility.
- Commentary on The Smith Myth « Three Pound Brain by: admin
  June 10, 2011, 23:00
  the holy trinity of fiction writing
- Comment on SF Signal: The Emptiness of 'Literary Fiction' and the Stereotyping of Genre Literature by: admin
  June 10, 2011, 21:42
  A literary writer argues addresses the distinction between genres and argues for a new paradigm.
- Rule by Rentiers - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com by: admin
  June 10, 2011, 19:31
  Rule by Rentiers - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com. Le plus ce que ca change, le plus ce que ces le meme chose. The only thing that will set this country…
- Blowin’ in the Idiot Wind by: admin
  April 10, 2011, 00:53
  The co-incidence of these two pieces struck me as particularly interesting for what they say about the boomer generation. Blowin’ in the Idiot Wind -…
- The Passing of a Fine Young Writer by: admin
  August 13, 2010, 13:51
  I was shocked and saddened this evening to learn of the death of a fine young man I knew all too fleetingly on the net. I came across the work of Chris Al…
- Literary Fiction: Dead or Alive?
  August 5, 2010, 07:50
  Literary Agent Nathan Bransford, poses the the question, "Is Literary fiction losing its place in the culture? In my experience, literary fiction has always…
- Beattie's Book Blog by: admin
  August 1, 2010, 08:40
  Beattie's Book Blog. On the Booker Prize long-listed book The Slap. "It's also unbelievably misogynistic, and I say that as someone who loves Flashman and…
Category: On Craft (11)
- What Happened to Standards of Excellence? by: admin
  January 16, 2012, 19:41
  I'm all for raising standards of excellence, in ethics, politics, morals, education. Especially standards of excellence in writing, which is what I attempt to…
- Comments Please. by: admin
  January 13, 2012, 21:59
  Here is a paragraph I recently wrote into my novel. What say you all? Is it a darling that needs to be killed, or kept? In the darkest part of his heart he…
- What is Meant by the Writer's Voice? by: admin
  July 31, 2011, 23:05
  On voice in literary fiction.
- On Point of View by: admin
  May 28, 2011, 22:58
  Believing that limited choices foster creativity, I decided to tell my entire tale from single character's point of view. Using the illeistic third, rather…
- More on "Mating." by: admin
  May 12, 2011, 12:29
  Norman Rush's 'Mating' sends my BS detector soaring. A sure sign of amateurism in fiction is the info dump, in which the author loads the reader up with…
- Thoughts on Norman Rush's "Mating" by: admin
  May 2, 2011, 12:10
  I've been reading Norman Rush's Mating, a national book award winner, and for a book that purports to be so learned, this passage in particular struck me as…
- The Great Canards of Creative Writing by: admin
  September 29, 2010, 07:27
  Write What You Know Having read reams of online slush, I have labored through numerous manuscripts that give the lie to the principle of Write What You…
Category: The Writing Process (6)
In which an obscure novelist writes about the thinking behind his work.
- Done. But is it Literature? by: admin
  January 15, 2012, 17:59
  I feel like I've finally finished my novel, Banana Republican Blues. The aim was always to write a farce that would pass as Literature. I've been…
- Comments Please. by: admin
  January 13, 2012, 21:59
  Here is a paragraph I recently wrote into my novel. What say you all? Is it a darling that needs to be killed, or kept? In the darkest part of his heart he…
- The Value of a Well Made Thing. by: admin
  November 23, 2011, 07:56
  One of the points I make in my book, Banana Republican Blues lies in following passage: Eddie spent his night in jail pondering his situation and composing…
- Comment on Frank Bruni's column 11/13 by: admin
  November 13, 2011, 20:18
  Gall in High Places - NYTimes.com. Having spent three years in Italy, I think it is safe to say that Berlusconi got away with it because he embodied the…
- To Plot or Not to Plot | The Art & Craft of Writing Creatively by: admin
  June 6, 2011, 19:33
  In response to the following post from Terri Giuliano Long, I've always felt I did my best work when either writing in a creative frenzy or writing to discover…
- On Point of View by: admin
  May 28, 2011, 22:58
  Believing that limited choices foster creativity, I decided to tell my entire tale from single character's point of view. Using the illeistic third, rather…

Generated by Table of Contents Creator v1.6.4.1
by Mark Beljaars