Pierre shoots and misses in satire of American life

As a satire about a school shooting in a small Texas town and the ubiquitous, vulture-like media coverage that follows the event, DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little will probably be seen in years to come as an anomaly -- not because of its potentially "edgy" subject, but because of its perplexing and undeserved praise.

Pierre's story is told from the point of view of fifteen year old Vernon Gregory Little. Already a quiet, unassuming outcast in his hometown of Martirio, Texas, Vernon finds himself in a jail cell after his only friend, Jesus, kills eighteen classmates before committing suicide himself. Hungry for revenge and fuelled by a growing media circus, the people of Martirio condemn an innocent Vernon, causing him to flee to Mexico where he is caught, extradited, and sentenced to death.

Released to overwhelmingly positive reviews early last year in the U.K., Pierre's first novel managed to win not only the coveted Man Booker Prize but the esteem of the notoriously "snarky" and trenchant British book press as well -- no easy to feat to be sure.

But when Vernon hit U.S. shores later in the year on a wave of impressive hype (for the book world, at least), its reception was less than welcoming, with most American critics slamming Pierre's award-winning work. In a fierce attack on the book, the New York Times' Michiko Kakutani felt it necessary to use the word "inane" in her review. Twice. In the same sentence.

As a testament to the inner-workings of a fifteen year old boy's confused, angry, and sex-crazed mind, Vernon God Little is passable, sometimes even astute. But as a satire of American culture and media obsession, the novel is laughable at best.

Even though DBC Pierre claims to have lived in Texas and Mexico until he was twenty-three (he also claims to be a former con-artist who stole money from friends and family to finance a drug addiction), his novel is unfamiliar in its setting and often just wrong when it comes to the people he satirizes. Every cop in Martirio is fat and inept, and each teacher and therapist is a pederast. The reporters who come to cover the Martirio tragedy are conniving snake-oil salesmen. Vernon's mother and her circle of friends are dumb Texan hausfraus who wear muumuus, watch Court TV, and babble endlessly about failed weight-lose strategies while stuffing their faces with fried chicken. At one point a character actually exclaims "Do' gone'it."

Obviously Pierre is working from a broad palette here, and sometimes broad does work with satire -- more than one critic mentioned Swift and Rabelais when reviewing the book -- but Pierre's characterizations go beyond broad to merely ridiculous; even his stereotypes have stereotypes.

The only fully-fleshed character in the book is Vernon himself, who you can't help but love as the lone voice of reason in the post-shooting madness. Vernon's voice is somewhere between Huckleberry Finn and Holden Caulfield. His narrative alternates between contempt for the stupidity of the world he sees around him, with an optimistic assurance that, like a movie, everything will turn out all right, and an obsession with fart jokes and cotton panties. Pierre does manage to pull off this balancing act between Vernon's lighter side and the grim reality that faces him. Unfortunately, Vernon himself has nothing particularly noteworthy or interesting to say about the world. His greatest epiphany during his troubles is this: "Where TV lets you down, I'm discovering, is by not convincing you how things really work in the world." Even television does a better job at ridiculing itself.

What's most absent from these pages though is the sting that accompanies good satire. At no point while reading about Martirio, Texas will you feel like Pierre has scored a point against the idiocy of America or managed to tear away the patina of our media-obsessed culture with his deft, searching craft, or that he exposed a raw nerve that shocks us all so sufficiently that we rethink our very existence as Americans. Mostly what you will get is fart jokes.