Shelf Life — Scott Dickensheets: ‘Big Trouble’ an enjoyable, book-length novel

Friday, Oct. 1, 1999 | 9:43 a.m.

Scott Dickensheets' books/magazines column appears Fridays. Reach him at 990-2446 or dickens@vegas.com

I read Dave Barry's new novel in four hours, about twice the time it took him to write it.

My cat did not appreciate this book, "Big Trouble" (Putnam, $23.95). As I lay on the couch reading, he tried to sleep in a curl on my chest, but my laughter kept dislodging him -- if you were here, I'd show you the claw marks on my chest (well, maybe not). I'd like to report my cat's thoughts on the matter, but I do not possess the powers of a Dave Barry, who, among other business in "Big Trouble," delves into the mind of a dog named Roger.

Barry has already established himself as lightweight champeen of the world, with a shelf-load of funny books to his credit, mainly collections of humor columns that appear in otherwise humorless newspapers, some of which have the words "Review" and/or "Journal" in their titles.

But while some of those volumes undoubtedly contain fictional elements, made-up scenarios, composite characters, flights of fancy and stuff that didn't really happen, "Big Trouble" is, in fact, his first outright novel.

Barry is the sort of writer who throws everything into a book, including the kitchen sink, then goes outside looking for something else he can cram in. "Big Trouble" is set in Miami, depicted here (as it is in the novels of Barry's South Florida compadre Carl Hiaasen) as a sinkhole of official corruption, casual amorality, class striation, heavily-armed lunacy and everyday surrealism.

Onto this ripe ground Barry marches a cardboard battalion of stereotypes, archetypes and undeveloped characters. Hit men, ad men, arms dealers, cheap gunsels, gung-ho feds, buffoonish cops, a snake, a poison-skinned toad, a dog mistaken for Elizabeth Dole, some goats, likable teenagers (that's how you know it's fiction), the dumb, the demented, the decent (a few) ... I'm sure I'm leaving something out ... oh, yeah, and a portable nuclear bomb ... Whew!

His narrative pedal always to the metal, Barry can't slow down to flesh out his characters. Their interior lives are little more than zippy comic skits. His preferred method of demonstrating a character's emotional complexity is to have him wet his pants in fear or surprise.

Because into any novel a little plot must fall, the characters cross paths in an escalating series of comic-violent encounters. They don't matter. Some people get shot, drugged, beaten or dragged to their deaths by heavy luggage. Doesn't matter. Still others fall in love. Doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that everything provides a spark for Barry's patented one-liners. A few chosen at random:

Of a participant in a barroom brawl, he writes, "Snake ... could take a bat to the head better than most ..." One teen boy "had great contempt for any sound system that was not loud enough to stun cattle." Every page has something like that.

In other words, this ain't literature. This isn't on the same continent as literature. It is a 255-page Dave Barry column.

Nothing wrong with that.

Ours, after all, is a very serious world full of solemn books about topics of great weight and import, and sometimes it all starts to curl up on your chest like a huge, heavy, hairy cat. It feels good to laugh that sucker off.

Reading list

"Dune," by Frank Herbert, Ace: With no warning or explanation -- not even an explanatory book jacket blurb -- Herbert's sci-fi classic has quietly reappeared in bookstores in a new hardback edition. As it was first published in 1965, I can only surmise that this is a 35th anniversary edition timed to the year 2000.

Once an avid fan of science fiction, I stopped reading it ages ago. I won't belittle the genre's fans by saying I outgrew it; I simply drifted away.

"Dune" is the exception.

Its classic status is richly deserved. The main and even secondary characters are finely etched, deeply felt. The settings are convincing; you never raise an eyelid at the implausibility of Herbert's creation. The writing is detailed and supple, yet keeps things moving. (Erase from your mind David Lynch's sorry film version.)

Set thousands of years in the future, "Dune" is the story of Paul Atreides, son of an aristocrat, who is stranded by clan warfare on the desert planet, Dune. His mother is a priestess of a secretive religious-political order, the main goal of which is to manipulate bloodlines to produce a savior figure.

As Paul is adopted by the planet's indigenous people, "Dune" becomes a multilayered story not only about people, but about religious fanaticism and messiah worship, man and nature, man's own nature. Although it takes place largely on one planet, the novel is galaxy-wide in sweep, with a huge cast and a universe hanging in the balance.

Newsweek, Oct. 4, 1999: From science fiction to fictional nonfiction. Newsweek excerpts Edmund Morris' controversial "biography" of Ronald Reagan, "Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan."

I use the quote marks to suggest the fuzziness Morris introduces into the sober precision of political biography through the use of a dubious device: creating fictional characters -- including a fictionalized version of himself -- through which to refract his subject's life.

In an accompanying interview, Morris jauntily defends his startling ploy as an "advance in biographical honesty." It gives substance to the otherwise unarticulated prejudices of the biographer. "... By giving the narrator flesh, as it were, I make the reader more aware of the fact that this narrator's opinions aren't necessarily fair." Morris makes it clear the fictionalizing doesn't extend to anything Reagan or other historical figures say or do.

Judging by the 10,000 words Newsweek cleared space for (the book was scheduled to hit shelves this week), "Dutch" promises to be an absorbing, insightful and gracefully written account of the 40th president. No surprise. Hired in 1985 as Ronnie's official biographer, Morris had amazing access to his subject, his papers and aides.

He resorted to his quasi-fiction strategy, he says, because, after gathering all that data, he still found his subject too elusive for the butterfly nets of standard biographical practice.

If nothing else, his strategy has had at least one salutary effect on the book -- I can't wait to read it, which wouldn't be the case with a more conventional biography. Unless it was written by Dave Barry, of course.