New Book Alert: Lakshmi and The River of Truth: A Fairy Tale For Adults by Paul Chasman, Illustrated by Jerry Kruger; Fantastic Funny Seriocomic Satire Fantasy For The Modern Era
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: There are times when real life is so bizarre and strange that satire is almost unnecessary. All the satirist has to do is let the people or the situation speak for themselves. Sometimes the situation is so obvious that all one has to do is change names around and even the least intelligent of Readers could make the obvious connection.
Satires could often be microcosms of their own society's problems so reading or watching the satire gives Readers and Viewers an idea of what the concerns were at the time and sometimes parallel them to modern issues. Jonathan Swift's mock essay, "A Modest Proposal" suggested that a way to solve Ireland's famine problems was to eat the children. The film Dr. Stranglove or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb used double entendre and parody military lingo to portray the Arms Race as nothing more than a measuring contest between men in charge of the superpowers to show off their umm virility.
The film Network not only satirized television in the 1970's but became a pretty good precursor to what exploitative entertainment could be seen today. Charles Dickens humorously made fun of institutions such as Chancery court and the educational system by portraying those who go through them as witless fools bound to a system that doesn't work.
Works like MASH, Catch 22, and the movies The Great Dictator and Duck Soup make fun of war and those who promote it. Using a childhood fantasy like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Phantom Tollbooth gave Lewis Carroll the freedom to mock Victorian etiquette standards and protocol in the former and Norman Juster the ability to make fun of willing ignorance and to promote an appreciation for learning in the latter. And where would be without shows like Saturday Night Live to make fun of the news week after week?
These satires make us laugh and see how ridiculous some situations and people really are. We laugh and we may nod our heads and understand the real point that they are trying to make. Sometimes we get mad and want to fight against the system. But first we laugh.
To the satires of the past, we can add Lakshmi and The River of Truth: A Fairy Tale For Adults by Paul Chasman with illustrations by Jerry Kruger. It is one part fantasy adventure in which a young woman travels to an enchanted land and encounters people and beings not unlike those we encounter every day. It is also one part savage biting satire that throws shade at many people and events that these dream figures represent.
Lakshmi Jackson is having a dream. (No seriously, the book never tires of telling us that this is definitely a dream.) She dreams that a character called Virtuous Liar (a walking oxymoron) tells her that she needs to find the River of Truth. Well since this is her subconscious and she has nothing better to do, she sails on the Boat of Bob to search for the River. Along the way, she meets a lovable dog called Special Ed whose only goal is to have his head scratched and catch balls that Lakshmi throws. She also meets various other strange characters with eccentric ideas. However, to reach the River, Lakshmi must avoid the dastardly Mr. Bigly, an orange skinned con artist who runs this Dream World like a failed business, uses all the buzz words to keep his supporters happy, sucks up to and admires dictators, and his supporters practically deify him. (I can't imagine who he is can you? I'm sure the answer will Dawn-OLD on and TRUMPet out at me.) Bigly's biggest supporters are a group called Mark Question and the Question Marks, conspiracy theorists who spread libel and wacky theories that make Bigly look good. (Hmm another one whose real life counterpart is very Questionable. I would take a guess but they probably wish to remain ANONymous.) Yes, it's that kind of book.
Chasman clearly had a lot of fun with the fantastic and satirical aspects to the book. Lakshmi is named for the Hindu goddess of luck and prosperity and seems to meet with some fortunate luck along the way. Of course, since it's her dream, she can control it.
Even Chasman's constant repetition of Lakshmi being in a dream is delightfully skewered so Chasman could hand wave plot inconsistencies like Lakshmi going from one place to another in record time and not giving a set up for some characters who just appear out of nowhere. It's a dream so the illogic is very logical.
In one chapter, Lakshmi's legs stretch and she suddenly grows to reach the clouds in the sky. Another passage features the third person narrator, well Chasman, telling us that "time" is not a concept in this world and that events can take place in seconds or years. Some characters ruminate whether they are characters in a book and are being jerked around by an author for his amusement. (Good question, Chasman!). I haven't seen an author have this much fun playing with time, spatial dimensions, and fourth wall breaks in a fantasy landscape since The Thursday Next Series by Jasper Fforde.
There is one plot point towards the end that could cause the Reader to question the reality surrounding the dream. It could be something that Chasman neglected to mention previously or it could lead to the whole thought of whether Lakshmi was really traveling in this dream world and the narrator's insistence that it was a dream could be a Strangely Specific Denial. It could lead to where the dream ends and reality begins. It's the one part where the thought, "Relax it's only a dream" may not work or even be necessarily 100 percent true.
Then there's the satire. Even travels to fantasy worlds are mocked because of Cashman's insistence that the book is simply a dream. But what stands out are the parallels of various characters between the dream world and the real one experienced by the Reader. There is the Hospital for the Ironically Challenged where people who don't get irony, humor, and satire are treated. However, the pompous doctors there don't seem to get it either. One doctor goes into a long paragraph in which he cautions people to use brevity and to not monopolize conversation while of course talking for a long time and monopolizing the conversation. These chapters make fun of people who judge others by standards that they themselves cannot fit into. Think of all the times when someone says that a person who gets offended needs to "get a sense of humor" and then they themselves are easily offended when they are being made light of.
There is The Classical Orators League, an organization whose members deliver speeches that are almost entirely quotes from someone else. When Lakshmi gives a moving speech of her own, the members are impressed but dismayed that the speech was hers alone. These passages mock those who hide behind intellectuals, artists, and other influential people of the past claiming to speak for them and refuse to think for themselves or formulate their own opinions.
One of the best chapters takes place in the Metaphor Hotel in which everything is a metaphor that stands for something else. Various paintings like Van Gogh's Starry Night, Wood's American Gothic, Mona Lisa, and Adam and Eve wax poetic about their own symbolic meaning. Many characters disagree about the various meanings behind things such as whether Moby Dick symbolizes man's hunger for God like powers, Ahab's desire to dominate nature, ambivalent nature towards spirituality, or ambiguity towards sex. Lakshmi is bemused when the proprietor asks if a hotel room symbolizes "security of a mother's womb, a prison, one's inner psyche, or spatial design." ("It represents a place where I can get a bath and a good night's sleep," Lakshmi quickly remarks.)
Besides being a former English major myself who is often guilty of over analyzing art and literature, what I found most enjoyable about this section is how it makes light of the desire to find hidden meaning in everything. How when we try to analyze something, we don't stop and appreciate what it really is, a beautiful piece of art, a classic book, or a comfortable bedroom. This chapter is foreshadowed in the introduction where Chasman imagines a conversation between Freud and Jung over the analysis of dreams and Freud uses his "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" quote. Sometimes an object is just what it is, no more no less and finding metaphor gets in the way of appreciating it.
Chasman however saves the most fun satirical bite for Mr. Bigly and his followers, particularly The Question Marks. The parody is so obvious at times that this Reader sarcastically said, "Too subtle" more than a few times. For example there is a moment where Mr. Bigly actually shoots someone in front of his followers and they justify his reasons behind it even though the person was innocent and just in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is based on the real life Mr. Bigly's assertion that he could "shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and get away with it." (Who would follow a man like that? It staggers the I-MAGA-nation.)
Of course, the Question Marks are avid conspiracy theorists and they trot out a certain theory involving a ring of Others (liberals, POC, anyone who isn't them) allegedly doing unspeakable things to children in the basement of a pizza parlor without any real evidence of such a crime. (The PIZZA GATES are open wide for speculation.)
Then there is Sophia Wise, a woman who rivals Bigly for leadership but whom the Question Marks shriek comments about her personal life and insist that there is something fishy in her emails. (I searched HILARY-ther and CLINT-yon for her real life KAMALA- HARRIS-ons but have come up short.) Like I said, sometimes real life is so bizarre you just have to let it speak for itself.
While humor is present there are some darker aspects towards Bigly's hold on his followers. When she first meets them, Lakshmi sees that they are standing on their heads. Why? Well because Bigly told them to and ignoring the advice of doctors, medical experts, scientists, researchers and their own common sense, what Bigly says is good enough for them. There is also a time when Lakshmi herself is swayed by Bigly and takes part with the other Bigly supporters in a violent defense of their Orange God-figure. (Oh heck, Chasman is satirizing the MAGA response to COVID and the January 6 Insurrection!)
What is scary is not so much what happens, but how a seemingly innocent person like Lakshmi can get swept up in propaganda and other people's words. It's easy to be on the outside and point at how foolish others can be easily swayed. It's harder when we learn that we are just as susceptible as anyone else.
At first I thought that it was strange that this dream world, this biting savage satire of modern times would leave out the Internet and Social Media, such important touchstones in our times. But then the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the Dream World is like the Internet. In fact, Lakshmi and the River of Truth could be one giant metaphor for the world seen through the guise of social media. Think about it, it is filled with know it alls, pseudo intellectuals, conspiracy theorists, and people who like to argue, harass, and threaten more than come together to share common interests. Those are often the voices that speak the loudest and can often skewer what is real and true. Lakshmi's search for the River of Truth could be our desire to look beyond the shouting, the name calling, the propaganda, the cult mentality, the harassment and find what is honest, real, and true. Sometimes it's difficult to find the real nugget of Truth underneath all of the noise but this journey suggests that the find is worth it.
If I'm wrong, then I would like to book a single room at the Metaphor Hotel please…. Yes, yes it symbolizes a place of security from the outside world and an inner sanctum for deep thought…Ocean view preferably….Yes, it symbolizes a journey into the subconscious….
