THE FRUITED PLAIN: Fables for a Postmodern Democracy

While Kernan's memoirs and literary criticism have garnered praise, what he presents here is disappointing and, in places, unreadable. Kernan, a scholar of English Renaissance satire, constructs fictional portraits based on John Steinbeck's Joad family, inserting the Joad descendants into a variety of modern-day scenarios: on college campuses, in therapy, on the New York art scene. In 10 episodes, he explores such American themes as family, justice, sex, religion, television and academia. Many of his numerous targets are already pockmarked: Sam Donaldson's hair piece, Monica Lewinsky, political correctness, SUVs, body piercing. Kernan claims that American attention, wild and spirited, is not often arrested by understatement and subtle wit, and must instead be targeted with cannonballs of exaggeration and overstatement. But he betrays a lack of confidence in his audience by stating at the outset that his narratives should be taken as "rude satire" and occasionally inserting a discussion on the nature of satire into his tales. His characters are mere vehicles, and where the ideas are fresh and potentially humorous—in a segment on research into politics as a disease, for example—they tend to be obscured by rambling swatches of dialogue and overpowered by the curmudgeonly tone of the narration. The firmest impression the reader may be left with is that literary expert and literary practitioner are not necessarily one and the same. (May)