t is a time of new weather and stuff. Sean Murphy's new novel about people we are told we are going to love features an America where gravity doesn't work right anymore, nor does time. Any reader who wishes to know why is in the wrong book, because A Time of New Weather is a spoof, man. It is seriously uncool, man, to pester the author, who may be as lovable as the people he tells us we are going to love. In this wacky wacked-out America, a private corporation called TAC (short for The America Corporation) has bought the American government—we are not told how—and has taken over, dismissing the boneheaded Spud Thompson, longtime president, who may have had a role in The Hope Valley Hubcap King (2002), which (I am breaking the publisher's vow of silence by revealing this) the current novel is a sequel to. TAC—one of whose slogans is "Ride the Wave of the Future: America!"—begins to privatize the country.
Shocked and surprised by the way the world is turning, the heroes of A Time of New Weather—and what a wacky crew of misfits they are!—decide to take decisive action. They congregate from everywhere, comical oldsters, superannuated circus performers, antediluvian commune dwellers, hangers-on, lovers and lovables every one, all 10,000 of them. They plan to stop a budding war between Corporate America and the rest of the world by packing themselves by the 10 into 100 secret, identical trucks—each almost scraping the ground because each boasts an identical customized low chassis, each truck covered with identical graffiti picturing the Virgin Mary—and driving all the way from Louisiana through South America to Antarctica, where the war is being held, and where they will shame the opposing armies right there on the battlefield, whose precise location (I guess) has been public knowledge for several weeks.
To get some sense of how original its author seems to think this all is, a quote is perhaps a good idea. Here's the whole wacky crew as they drive through Texas:
They must have created quite a spectacle to the inhabitants of the towns they passed: one hundred identical cargo trucks low-gliding their way across the plains, airbrushed Virgins-with-children peering out from their sides, and an occasional Joseph looking on with a perplexed air at these parched, tiny towns that surely were in need of salvation. And many a farmer or labourer, glancing up to see them pass, must have wondered if the kingdom had not arrived at last, in the most American way possible: by highway. Although what they made of the last truck, painted over ... with an enormous Elvis, legs cocked and finger pointing up toward Heaven, remains a mystery.
Plotless and passive-aggressive
There is something peculiarly passive-aggressive about the nudzhing here, something uneasy in the way we are asked to clap hands along with the author as we labour through this lame passagework, which occurs 284 pages into The Time of New Weather, far enough into the book for any reader to realize that while Murphy knows he knows his characters are inherently lovable, he isn't too sure his readers have gotten the point yet (but the book is almost over). "They must have created quite a spectacle," he muses at us, lest we forget; "many a farmer or labourer," he confides, may be so shocked and bamboozled by the sight of painted trucks that they think the Kingdom of Heaven has arrived; and the sight of a painting of Elvis, he concludes, will affect them more than he (Sean Murphy) durst try to put in words at all.
And suddenly the reviewer receives—from what heavenly outhouse remains a mystery—a vision dump: It is of the Christopher Walken character in Blast from the Past (1999) just as he emerges from the fallout shelter after 35 years underground and gets his first sight of America: For a moment or two there, he might have been surprised to see a painted Elvis on a passing truck. And if he got to read The Time of New Weather, he might think it entirely probable that when its young protagonist, Buddy Le Blanc, runs away to join a circus there would still be a circus in 2010 or so to run away to. He might have been gobsmacked by the Zen Lite aphorisms Buddy's father, Bibi Brown (I think he must have done time in the previous volume), nudzhes us with: "If you're going to be successful at being human, you'd better get comfortable with confusion." Or "We must be willing to let go of anything—even the luxury of our own fear." Indeed, if The Time of New Weather had been written back when Richard Brautigan seemed cutting-edge to nice people, back when Callahan's Bar was nothing more than a mite in Spider Robinson's eye, it might have seemed to have had a point to make, might have seemed to have lacked nothing but a story to make that point with.
Because, in the end, the problem with The Time of New Weather is not simply the staleness of its take on America, nor the antiquatedness of its gear (TAC tracks the cast through cameras which, "already in place in various locations throughout the neighbourhood, whirred quietly [sic] as they tracked relentlessly" etc). In the end, the problem is an almost complete lack of story. Young Buddy, who has an inexplicable capacity to engender good luck at certain times, runs away from home, makes lots of friends at the circus, finds his long-lost Dad, spends a lot of time in Callahan's Saloon, languishes in a state of puppy love for Rhonda, who turns out to be related to him (it is one big happy family in the end) and wanders towards South America. Offstage, vile TAC (after issuing dozens of Gilbert and Sullivan decrees) vanishes in thin air. The gravity burps and time slips, which are forgotten about for dozens of pages at a stretch, are finally forgotten about for good. And we are left with one belatedness-challenged author in a vacuum telling us we'd better love him, love his words, love his cast, love his love for wacky old humanity, love his love for the world itself, or else.
