A Review of Fool
Fool begins with the warning that it is a very bawdy tale, but only means to entertain. It gets one out of two right. Bawdy it is. Much more than bawdy, actually. More like vulgar.
The fool (diminutive Pocket, Lear's "Black" Fool) tells the story of King Lear (sort of), cribbed from Shakespeare's play, but told from the Fool's perspective (again, sort of). It's a hash of historical contradictions, geographic anatopisms, and linguistic inversions that don't matter a damn anyway because no one can take this book for anything but an extended off-color joke by an increasingly desperate joker (or fool, if you will) who, in the end, delivers what becomes a rather tiresome and distinctly unfunny monologue that loses its freshness faster than Drool, the Fools dim witted Sancho, can mount an inanimate object (not to give away too much of the plot's action).
The fool is vulgar, obscene, sexist, inane, vainglorious, unsentimental, foul mouthed, snide, lubricious, cozening, crude, downright unabashedly nasty. And them's his printable qualities. The story bulges, no, overflows, no, oozes with variations on the f-word and every conceivable variant, synonymous derivative, and slang deviation. A linguistic gutter rag, as it were. A bindle of foul mouthed maunderings meant to entertain and, for a time, does. Unfortunately, once you get the gist of it (excuse please), you have nowhere to go, and neither does the story. It doesn't take long for it to fall back on the same tired linguistic devices used as a substitute for what? Narrative inventiveness? Plot development? Characters? These are beside the point. The point seems to be the linguistic zest, which is reprieved so often that it soon becomes, like poor Tom on the heath, flaccid.
The story of King Lear is told, of course, in a way, but obscured by interventions from Macbeth's witches (with a sitcom twist), but, once again, who cares? It really doesn't matter. Less than a story it is more like the world's longest, and eventually dullest, dirty joke. The characters lose interest because they aren't really characters but alternative voices for the Fool, much like his puppet stick Jones. The book is really just a monologue that goes on much too long to continue amusing, like a teenager practicing profanity to make his friends laugh and elders scowl. Most people, having better things to do, will just give it a pass.
The "story" is a self-described "black comedy." But that's giving it too much credit. More like a standup routine gone long gone. At some point when you realize the originality was used up in the first couple of chapters, you stop laughing. The characters, such as they are, are stereotypical objects whose doings rather too unimaginative, even for a long joke. I suppose the author aims to get a laugh out of some putative tension between the "real" Goneril, Regan, Kent and Lear and these vaudeville cardboard standees, but it doesn't work. The resolution to the story is predictable and outrageous, but tiredly outrageous. More a failed rant than a comedy. Comedy implies too much character, structure and actual wit.
To be fair, there are brilliant moments, mostly brilliant linguistic moments. The author displays an unparalleled aptitude for profanity. And the evil portrayed in Lear, and his familial neglect, are original touches, but these pieces of ingenuity are overshadowed by the Snidely Whiplash portrayal of Edmund and the sisters with their tired sexual tropes. In fact, the book is more like an extended, off-color cartoon than anything else. Or one of those comic books (I mean, graphic novels) where the same art work is repeated panel after panel with slightly varying riffs on the same essential dialog. If you like that sort of thing, have fun. This is the book for you.
Pocket, the book's one original
creation, needs to be sympathetic enough to keep our favor, something he
just manages, but hip enough not to care, or at least not seem to care,
which doesn't work so well. The tension between these ideas is really the
only thing that keeps the reader going. And many won't make it to the end.
If they do, they will think of the book as little more than a verbal
exercise, a twice told joke. It grows old fast, and gets no funnier in the
repetition.
