Comic Relief In Two Political Adventure Novels
As we take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them, we also have to laugh occasionally at our current political scene. I’ve done this by publishing two satirical novels about contemporary politics, PRYME KNUMBER (Amazon, GoodReads), and a sequel, BERNIE WEBER AND THE RIEMANN HYPOTHESIS (Amazon).
They are set in Washington, Milwaukee, and Yale. Some of our classmates appear as characters.
In both novels, Bernie Weber, a young, Milwaukee-based math genius of humble background, is chased by villains trying to force him to reveal his solutions to two unsolved problems in Mathematics, which could be used for cryptology (and breaking same). In PRYME KNUMBER, Bernie is chased by the CIA, led by Yalies, to get his formula for immediately finding the prime factors of any number, no matter how large. In the second book, he’s chased by the Chinese Ministry of State Security for proving the Riemann Hypothesis. Yes, I know that neither has occurred in the real world. Bernie’s solutions involve some artistic license by the author.
This is equal opportunity satire. Some of you commented in response to my post about my Gubernatorial campaign in Wisconsin by agreeing with me. Others viewed my language as excessively partisan. To set all minds at ease, here are some excerpts from my novels that needle both political Parties:
- “Mayor Snears [Madison Democrat] had once been on the outside, a Medusa-haired, Willie-Wash activist with a nest of Marley dried-cloth snakes on his head. He ran against the last mayor, branding him a corporate stooge. He won. But once in office, Snears had committed treason. He started to wear ironed shirts. He got a haircut. A hotel wanted to expand. Instead of tanking it instantly, he said he’d study it. Now he had another Medusa-haired, Willie-Wash Marley wannabee with righteous dreads blasting Snears as a corporate stooge. Squeeze from the FBI sting might save his lying corporate ass.”
- “They had recently returned from the Republican State Convention, a gruesome minuet of dark money, black-ops Androids and Stepford wives, dancing to the Muffled Screams from the Basement Opera by the great Russian composer, Vladimir Putin.”
- [At the convention for selection of Democratic delegates] “You see we got a problem here. We only got room for three Caucasian Males from Milwaukee. Only three for all of Milwaukee? One of them’s the head of the teacher’s union. The other’s the head of the public employees. We need message on the third. We got a guy who says he’s a bear hunter. Gives good Second Amendment. Any pictures of you with a dead animal? What kind? Anything. Not really. You’re not LGBT, are you? Not really. You got any Indian in you? Not really. Right. Ok. I see you’re a blue-eyed gentleman. They’re recessive, you know. You got any brown eyes in your family?”
- “He’d been assigned the impossible job of recruiting and fielding new Candidates for the Republican Party. If he picked one who was a sociopath, character assassin and thief, he lost the independents. If he didn’t, he lost the base.”
- [At speech by Democratic Mayor of Milwaukee] “And I feel for the less fortunate in our society. I hear the groans of the poor.” I had started to fall asleep. I forced my eyes open. “What did he say?”, I whispered to Frank. “He feels the groins of the poor,” Frank whispered back.
There is much to laugh at whatever your political persuasion. You’ll also get a laugh at the scenes set at Yale and reflections from some of the older characters about Yale from the ’60s. You may even recognize some of our classmates, despite my thinly disguised aliases.
Thanks all, and see you at the 50th.
Matt