Modern life, a motive for murder

At the moment, in America, there is an almost murderous rage against the president among a certain kind of people. Or so I understand. I haven’t been to any documentary screenings, pop concerts or book publication parties lately. Nicholson Baker -- the mischievous and obsessive author of such deliberate, even obscene, provocations as “Vox” and “The Fermata” -- it seems, has. In his newest fiction, “Checkpoint,” he takes two of that certain kind of people and puts them in a Washington hotel room. From the phrase “almost murderous rage,” Baker subtracts, for dramaturgy’s sake, the word “almost.” The first protagonist intends to assassinate George W. Bush. The second is appalled at the prospect -- appalled, that is, at the prospect of the first protagonist being shot by the Secret Service and of himself losing his job and going to jail for conspiracy. “The country has no need of this service,” says the more reasonable type of a certain kind of people. And then they -- as their kind do -- talk for more than 100 pages.

What to call them? They aren’t leftists. Their critique of the capitalist system doesn’t go beyond, “I mean, are you really trying to tell me that you’re going to kill George W. Bush because Wal-Mart is ugly?”

“It’s a contributing factor, it really is.”

I won’t call these characters liberals. An American can be described by all five definitions of liberal in the third edition of Webster’s International Dictionary without quitting the GOP or even getting next to John McCain. The characters in “Checkpoint” are the self-appointed and self-important champions of all good opinions and progressive, reformist ideas. In 1884, they were known as Mugwumps. Today perhaps they should be known as Smugwumps. One is tempted to call them “Ben and Jerry,” and Baker almost does. They are “Jay” and “Ben” -- pals since high school, now about 50, and more (Jay) or less (Ben) losers.

Jay is crazy in the way that is celebrated by contemporary entertainment and culture.

JAY: We’ve lost every war we’ve fought. Winning is losing. We lost the Second World War.... We bombed all those places.... [T]he crime of it began to work on us afterward, it began chewing on our spleens and rotting us out inside....

Ben is paralyzed by moral conflict in the way that is celebrated by writers about contemporary entertainment and culture.

BEN: You want this wastebasket of a man to become a martyr?

“Checkpoint” is presented as a transcript of the conversation that Jay and Ben are recording for no discernible reason except to let the author off the hooks of omniscience and point of view. The effect is of reading a play, specifically “Waiting for Godot.” The stark set is provided by the semi-luxury hotel room. (“JAY: You know that you can almost see the White House from this window?”) The tramps are, in this case, bums of the intelligentsia. (“BEN: You haven’t been teaching at all? JAY: That kind of ended.... BEN: I co-teach an honors seminar every spring.”) And much time in “Checkpoint” is spent waiting for room service.

Room service eventually comes. On the whole, Baker improves upon Samuel Beckett’s work. Baker’s jokes will make people, rather than theater majors, laugh.

JAY: No, this time, this war, that he imposed on the world, when the whole world said no to him so CLEARLY, in the streets, in every country, this war that he forced on humanity -- this war will be avenged!

BEN: Okay, but first, how about we get a bite to eat.

Baker’s absurdism is more poignantly absurd. Jay’s murder weapons include “radio-controlled flying saws” he bought from someone he met in a bar and “homing bullets,” which, if placed in a box with a photograph of the person to be shot, will “seek that person out.”

Furthermore, the worldview that Baker demolishes for the audience is much broader than that held by Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon. And the nonsense, rather than being labored, is produced simply by airing the thoughts that a certain kind of people have.

JAY: You know, I’m starting to see now that all the totally off-the-wall conspiracy theories, all of them are true. It’s not just that Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor ... you’ve got AIDS developed as part of those germ-warfare experiments in Africa, those monkeys that escaped.

BEN: Jumping species, well, yeah, there’s some evidence ....

JAY: That’s definitely CIA. And then there’s the whole thing where we dropped bombs full of bugs and germs on the North Koreans....

Jay destroys the Weltanschauung by following logic to its logical conclusion; Ben, by refusing to.

BEN: Well, what about Dick Cheney? Are we going to kill him, too?

JAY: We certainly should.

BEN: He’s smarter, he’s more corrupt....

JAY: But what do you mean, “we”? That’s what you said: “Are we going to kill him?”

BEN: Yeah, well, by “we” I mean “you.”

Baker, in what seems to be a thought experiment, gives Jay anti-abortion principles: “Hey, this is a vulnerable innocent creature and we can’t just suck it out of its burrow and let it die on a steel tray.”

Ben responds, “I really don’t want to debate this with you. It was better when we were talking about assassination, honestly.” Meanwhile they’ve both ordered peppercorn steaks.

Ben parries Jay’s reasoning with therapeutic suggestions. “Why don’t you ... write all this down? Just for your own personal clarification.” And, “You know what you need? ... A dog. A puppy.”

Jay bemoans a thing that bothers Smugwumps even more than the Iraq war: suburban sprawl. Ben considers whom to blame: “What was the demonic force that did this to us? What cabal was it?” But then Ben plants a logic bomb of his own, an infernal device constructed of democracy, freedom and responsibility.

BEN: Okay, but the truth is we did it to ourselves.... Most people like driving around all day. None of this was the result of George W. -- it’s the result of millions of tiny individual decisions.

JAY: Yeah, but sometimes you reach a point where you realize that millions of tiny individual decisions are condensed into one man.

Jay and Ben don’t hate the president, they hate us all. It’s a chilly glimpse at how the self-appointed and self-important champions of all good opinions have worked havoc, from Robespierre to Pol Pot.

Let me insert a thought experiment of my own. Imagine a scene set awhile ago, when there was a rage against a different president among a certain other kind of people. Call the protagonists “Ann Coulter” and “Bill O’Reilly.” Put them in a hotel room (a truly luxurious one). Hmmm, they don’t appear to be discussing whether to kill Bill Clinton. And certainly not when there’s so much fame and money to be had with the fellow alive.

But “Checkpoint” was not written to salve Bush political advisor Karl Rove’s conscience or mine. Baker introduces real horror into the silliness. Again improving on Beckett, Baker has his Pozzo character, Bush, bring factual suffering onto the stage instead of the symbolic chattel, Lucky. At the end of the Iraq war, a family trying to reach safety in their car was attacked at a checkpoint by American soldiers with grenades and rifles. Jay recounts reports of the mother saying, “I saw the heads of my two little girls come off.” Jay cannot get this out of his mind. Neither will the reader be able to do so.

But this mainspring of Jay’s vengeful obsession isn’t revealed until Page 102. By then, Jay and Ben have made themselves out to be such fools that readers are left as puzzled by the dramatic intent of “Checkpoint” as they were back in college, by “Godot.”

Or not. Baker doesn’t seem to want us to see Jay and Ben as fools because they reject Bush, all his works and all his empty promises. Rather, they are fools because they can conceive of no better means of rejection than mystical pistol slugs and puppies. Baker will be accused of fostering terrorism by that certain other kind of people. But -- not to disappoint Ann, Bill and the rest of my ilk -- “Checkpoint’s” message is more like something about champions of progressive, reformist ideas becoming involved with local and national politics, getting out the vote and so on.

Thus, the grand, cryptic artistry of “Godot” eludes “Checkpoint.” No matter. Baker is still better than Beckett. “Waiting for Godot” needs a punch line. Baker provides one for “Checkpoint” with a skit based on a dopey old folk song -- one the reader can practically hear Jay or Ben singing in the shower.

Among Jay’s peculiar murder devices is a quotidian object he got in a hardware store to help him smash through the windows of the Oval Office. It has a heavy head and a sturdy handle. At the end of the book, Ben convinces Jay that, if they take the photograph of Bush that’s been in the box with the self-guided bullets and place it on the hotel bed pillow and strike it with this tool....

JAY: HHHHHHHRRRRRRAAAAAAAGH!

[Flump!]

BEN: And again?

JAY: RRRRRRRRAAAAGH! [Flump!]

BEN: Okay, okay. Wow. So how do you feel now? Any better?

JAY: No, I don’t think so. Well, maybe I do. Actually I do feel a little better. Whoooo! Heh heh heh.

If I had a hammer, indeed. *