Has Anyone Seen My Toes? by Christopher Buckley

Published by Simon & Schuster on September 6, 2022

The fear of dementia probably strikes most people as they age, at least those who have a mind they would miss if they lost it. On the theory that humor conquers fear, Has Anyone Seen My Toes? could be a therapeutic read for older readers who wonder whether they should end their lives before they forget the combination to the gun safe.

The nameless protagonist is a writer. He’s staying in a small community in South Carolina, the location of his disastrous movie about patriotic prostitutes during the Revolutionary War (a movie that still sells well in hotel pay-for-views). He’s gained weight during the pandemic. In fact, he put on so much weight he can’t see his toes when he stands on the scale and his I-phone no longer recognizes him (he believes the phone is fat shaming him).

The protagonist’s behavior is becoming increasingly erratic. His wife complains when he sits in the dark at night, prepared to shoot moles that are ruining his yard (he suspects her of siding with the moles). He has started a screenplay that turns out to a version of the movie The Eagle Has Landed, substituting Roosevelt for Churchill. He is certain that he has seen attack ads in an election for coroner, but his inability to recall his conversations about the ads with the candidates suggests that he is suffering from the onset of dementia.

On the other hand, a different sort of mental disturbance might be to blame, one that counts paranoia among its symptoms. The writer is convinced that Putin is trying to sway the coroner’s election and that only he can thwart Putin’s dastardly plan. At the same time, he’s certain that the mortician running against Putin’s favored candidate has been burying people alive. It’s no surprise that the writer visits a psychiatrist before the story ends.

Has Anyone Seen My Toes? is a novel of digressions that magically add up to a plot. The progtagonist is always looking things up. We learn obscure details about Gone with the Wind, Carl Reiner, and celebrity deaths. We learn that Donald Sutherland’s tongue is periodically ravaged by parasites. We learn the etymology of several fun but useless words. We learn about writers who committed suicide. We learn the many reasons why the protagonist (like me) has never been able to force himself to finish reading Proust’s unbearably dull Remembrance of Things Past (or whatever they’re calling it these days).

It might not be politically correct to build a comedy around dementia (or any other disease) but Has Anyone Seen My Toes? is awfully funny. And no spoilers here, but maybe the writer’s problem isn’t quite what it seems. In any event, confronting the fear of dementia with humor might be the best approach to mental health, given the failure of expensive but profitable drugs like Aduhelm.

While the novel’s focus is on the fear of dementia, its humor is wide-ranging. The writer pays $7500 a year for a concierge doctor because, for that price, the doctor won’t hassle him about his bad habits. Christopher Buckley makes fun of the South, “where people start driving at fourteen and by eighteen are competing in NASCAR.” He mocks plantation tourism and its tendency to overlook the slave quarters.

Buckley also has fun with Trump and the far right. The doctor responds to COVID by prescribing whatever drug Trump has most recently mentioned. The writer goes along with it, although he would draw the line at “injecting Clorox or shoving a lightstick up my ass.” And when the writer takes the 5-word memory test that Trump regarded as proof of his genius, he comes up with a 5-word phrase from his screenplay, possible proof that he is even more demented than the last president. Quotations from Mein Kampf illustrate how American propagandists on the right are following Hitler’s advice: tell bold lies, repeat them endlessly, appeal to emotion rather than reason, and wait for weak minds to bow to your authority.

Buckley’s political humor scores bullseyes because he aims at unmissable targets. For the most part, however, the story is apolitical. The pandemic, with its toilet paper shortages and spreading bellies, is the source of familiar humor. By giving his protagonist an addled mind, Buckley takes the story a step or two beyond the familiar, sometimes reaching toward the absurd, but he never has to reach far to get a laugh.

RECOMMENDED

Jeeves and the Leap of Faith by Ben Schott

Published by Little, Brown and Company on October 13, 2020

Jeeves and the Leap of Faith is Ben Schott’s second homage to P.G. Wodehouse. It is, I suspect, the first Jeeves novel to end with a cliffhanger. The hanging question involves romance, and for once the question isn’t how Bertie Wooster will escape an impending engagement. In fact, Bertie deftly avoids romantic entanglements throughout the novel, with the able help of Jeeves.

As fans of Bertie Wooster well understand, nothing good comes of having an English aunt. They are given to arranging unwanted marriages and scolding, reacting to poor displays of posture and manners with swift correction and responding to tardiness with “What time do you call this?” They live in a place of their own invention where standards are kept and stations are known. Bertie plainly does not occupy that realm. At Oxford, Bertie was more admired for night climbing than for scholarship (night climbing: a sport involving the scaling of old buildings that school administrators wish to discourage despite its venerable tradition). In the present, Bertie banters with his friends at the Drones Club, gambles on unlikely competitions, ponders crossword clues until Jeeves suggests an answer, experiments with hangover cures, haggles with Jeeves about clothing and wallpaper choices, and does his best to avoid being productive.

This book has more of a plot than the typical Wodehouse Jeeves novel, in that Schott focuses part of the story on Jeeves’ role as a clandestine agent of the British government. Fortunately, the plot does not distract the reader. The Wodehouse books were, like Bertie Wooster’s life, delightfully aimless, and Schott again captures Bertie’s essence. Still, as a service to the government, Bertie does impersonate a man of the cloth (making rather a bungle of the prayers) and tests his night climbing skills, culminating in a leap between buildings to which the title alludes.

The novel takes us to the racetrack in the hope that the Drones Club (with the help of Jeeves) can pay its back taxes with a well-placed bet. Other eventful moments largely involve romance (or the lack thereof). Bertie conspires to avoid the latest match contrived by his aunt while various friends and enemies pursue a confusion of women, including a maid who is apparently an old flame of Jeeves. The same aunt has been trying to convince Bertie to discharge Jeeves, so another scheme must be concocted (with Jeeves’ help) to avoid calamity. A diamond heist lurks in the background.

Schott has given intense study to Wodehouse and his characters, as is evidenced by the extensive notes he appends to the text. For the casual reader, it suffices to understand that there is little distance between Schott’s version of Bertie and Jeeves and the originals as crafted by Wodehouse. The writing style and dialog are much the same, as is the flavor of the stories. The plot, such as it is, is light and silly and full of the digressions that characterized Wodehouse’s work.

The Wodehouse novels are celebrated as some of the best comedic works of the first half of the twentieth last century. I suspect that most Wodehouse fans can’t get enough of Bertie and Jeeves. Thanks to Schott, the Jeeves well has not yet run dry.

RECOMMENDED

Year Zero by Rob Reid

Published by Del Rey on July 10, 2012

The alien members of the Refined League share a superior aesthetic sense, at least when it comes to art, architecture, fashion, interior design, and stained glass -- everything, in fact, except music, the one realm in which humans rule.  Aliens who have unwittingly pirated Earth’s music have discovered (as have myriad American college students) that the Copyright Damages Improvement Act is “the most cynical, predatory, lopsided, and shamelessly money-grubbing copyright law” ever devised in the history of the universe.  They owe the music industry pretty much the net worth of every planet.  Unfortunately, the aliens’ solution to the problem is even more draconian than the law itself.  It’s up to a young copyright lawyer to save the world.

Making fun of lawyers is easy, particularly the self-serving lawyers who think you should pay a royalty every time you hum the theme from Welcome Back, Kotter.  As suggested in Year Zero, the scorched earth approach to music piracy benefits law firms while harming everyone else on the planet, including musicians.  The music industry and its pet politicians are equally tempting targets, as are reality tv shows, trendy Manhattan restaurants, and celebrities (or wannabes) who indulge the desire to live life publicly via Twitter and other social media organisms.  Rob Reid skewers them all.

The bottom line is that Year Zero is funny, although quite a few of its laughs derive from silliness.  The aliens have access to superheavy metals and, music lovers that they are, have given them names like metallicam.  The atmosphere of a planet is identical in composition to Drakkar Noir.  One alien species resembles a vacuum cleaner.  And so on.  The narrative also takes well-aimed shots at Microsoft (Reid is clearly a Mac user).

The text is riddled with footnotes.  Most of them are amusing but the more informative notes reveal hard truths about the music industry and its suicidal, thought-deprived executive decision-makers.  Reid’s incisive and insightful takes on music piracy are a must-read for anyone with an interest in the subject.

Year Zero has a definite political point of view.  Rabid fans of Orrin Hatch are unlikely to enjoy the novel.  Highly placed music industry executives and partners in law firms specializing in intellectual property are equally unlikely to enjoy its stinging criticism (associates in those firms, on the other hand, will probably get a kick out of its accurate depiction of young lawyers as fodder that fuels the money machine).  Readers who don’t make their living extorting ridiculous sums of money from college kids who download songs illegally are likely to appreciate the novel’s humor.  The story provokes more chuckles than belly laughs, but as light comedy, Year Zero worked for me.

RECOMMENDED

Sweet Reason by Robert Littell

First published in 1974

Robert Littell has made a career of writing excellent espionage novels. Sweet Reason, his second novel (after The Defection of A.J. Lewinter), is a departure from that niche. This 1974 novel is a war story, or more accurately a war comedy: not as outrageously funny (and not nearly as profound) as Catch-22, but in the same satirical vein, and funny enough.

The U.S.S. Eugene F. Ebersole, a rusty, leaky, dilapidated destroyer commissioned during World War II, is dispatched to the Vietnam War by mistake. The novel takes place during the first three days after its arrival at Yankee Station. On Day One, the crew mistakenly sinks a junk (the captain proclaims a military victory and recommends himself for the silver star) and the destroyer plows into a downed jet during a rescue attempt (the pilot "was probably dead anyhow," the captain muses). Day Two begins with a Congressman boarding the destroyer for a photo op. To make sure the Congressman gets on the news, the destroyer finds a target to shoot at -- with unfortunate results. On Day Three, the sonar operator thinks he's spotted a submarine and the captain gives orders to sink it but ... well, you get the idea. Meanwhile, anonymous typewritten messages from "The Voice of Sweet Reason" appear, complaining of racial segregation aboard ship and urging the crew not to maintain the ship's engines or to fire its guns: a plea for mutiny that some crew members embrace.

The humor in Sweet Reason is amusing more than laugh-out-loud funny and the characters are a bit one dimensional despite the backgrounds Littell invents for them. As an indictment of war's folly or of career military officers, Sweet Reason succeeds, but only in a rather obvious way and not as well as other novels that have covered the same ground. The ending is a bit over-the-top. While Sweet Reason is an easy, sometimes entertaining read, Littell was wise to stick to espionage novels, where his authorial abilities are more triumphantly displayed. (If you want to read Littell at his best, you should try The Sisters, a novel that tells a grimly serious story with a wonderful comic touch.)

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Adventures of the Artificial Woman by Thomas Berger

Published by Simon & Schuster on April 27, 2004

This thin novel skates into a guarded recommendation because of its amusement value.  Ellery Pierce makes robotic contraptions that a movie like Jurassic Park might use.  Having had little luck with women, he uses his talent (and workshop) to craft one of his own design.  Perhaps he made her too well, because she has little use for him while pursuing a fleeting career in Hollywood (rising to the pinnacle before crashing to the soaps) and then running for the presidency, on a write-in ballot no less.

The concept of an artificial partner, designed to give the creator what he (or she) wants without all the hassle of an actual human being, has a certain comic appeal,.  The robot rejects the creator's dominion, behaves with vexing independence ... a cute but unoriginal concept.  Unfortunately, Thomas Berger does nothing new or meaningful with the idea; worse, he makes the artificial woman into a political bimbo, a robotic Chauncey Gardiner.  At its best moments, the novel delivers some chuckles; it aggressively fails to do anything else.  A novel like this could illustrate the superficiality of basing judgment on appearance or offer insight into relationships between real men and women.  Berger instead opted for a simple, unimaginative story that is intermittently funny.  Take it for what it is if you choose to take it at all.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS