Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel. Lunatics.
New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2012.
As reviewed by Ted Odenwald
This novel’s title could refer as easily to its collaborating authors as it does to its protagonists. If a humorist author/columnist pairs up with a Saturday Night Live writer, the joint effort is certain to break the boundaries of believability and reason. There is no chance for “the willing suspension of disbelief.” There is, instead, the immersion into the hilarious escapades of two mutually hostile and equally inept characters, whose ill fates cause them to collide in a laundry list of threatening situations.
Barry and Zweibel appear to have engaged in a tandem creative game of “Can You Top This?” Each author, speaking in the voice of his respective character, deals with an outrageous situation, appears to resolve it, but then ups the ante by thrusting his antagonist into a more complicated problem. The give-and-take escalates as the characters become entangled in plots far beyond their understanding. This pattern is interrupted occasionally by NBC anchorman, Brian Williams, whose crisply written commentaries prove to be invariably and comically wrong. Basically every action in this novel is sheer lunacy.
Philip Harkman, Zweibel’s character, leads a simple life. Mild-mannered and generally reasonable, though somewhat self-righteous, he owns a pet store and officiates soccer on weekends. His counterpart is Barry’s character, Jeffrey Peckerman, a foul-mouthed ignoramus, whose claim to fame is his work as a “forensic plumber.” His stubbornness and obtuseness invariably get the pair into trouble.
Their conflicts begin at a soccer game when Peckerman disagrees violently with an offside ruling made by Harkman. Later, Jeffrey mistakenly enters Philip’s pet shop expecting to purchase wine (one of Barry’s humorous absurdities, for the pet shop is called “The Wine Shop”). Fearing an attack, Philip grabs a stick. To protect himself, Jeffrey grabs and runs off with a cage containing a lemur, Philip’s prized possession. The plot thickens as Philip tracks down Jeffrey, takes the lemur, which in the confusion has grabbed a woman’s insulin pump. In a ridiculous comedy of errors (surprise!), Philip inadvertently winds up with the pump in his car—and the lemur being held hostage by the woman. In good faith, Philip pursues her to the George Washington Bridge, emerges from his car at the toll booth, brandishing the insulin pump—only to be mistaken for a terrorist trying to explode a bomb.
And that all occurs in the first 40 pages of the novel. From there Philip is involved in “the slowest low speed chase” in NYPD history and the accidental tasering of an officer by the lemur, resulting in the wounding of a helicopter pilot. Jeffrey and Philip are held and interrogated by true terrorists, led by “Fook,” disguised in a Chuck E. Cheese costume. When the bumbling “heroes” can’t supply any useful information, they are bound together in a suggestive position and left in the Central Park Zoo to be eaten by bears. Young hoodlums, attempting to torment Philip and Jeffrey, wind up being the bears’ victims. T.V. news reports the following headline: “Terrorists in Pervert Sex Zoo Massacre.”
Panicking, the two men scam their way onto a Caribbean cruise ship, which turns out to be “clothing optional.” In order to blend in—-well, they are recognized anyway by a husband-wife team of “shark/lawyers,” who threaten to expose the “terrorists” if they do not agree to let the lawyers represent them. Philip dives overboard to rescue “a beautiful, naked nun”—and washes ashore in Cuba, where his knowledge of spider bites saves the son of a rebel. Hijacked by the female lawyer, the cruise ship docks in Cuba, where Jeffrey is whisked off to join the rebels, who expect the infamous pair to lead a revolt against the Cuban regime. A rescue by a U.S. Coast Guard undercover unit, an accidental defeat of the Cuban defense forces, a distasteful escape from a mini-submarine, a temporary escape on a cargo ship, and another abduction—this time by pirates–, an inadvertent beaching of the ship, leading to tons of bananas feeding Mogadishu’s starving poor—all of these whacky events are packed into this novel. Harkman and Peckerman’s exploits end as they are transported in a wooden crate, which is mistakenly delivered to the Republican National Convention, where Donald Trump is seeking the presidential nomination. But guess who winds up being the surprise nominee? Philip! And of course, his counterpart becomes the Democratic Party’s nominee.
From the beginning of their misadventures, these bumbling “lunatics” have been totally misunderstood. They are hailed as world heroes—“Fantasmas de la Noche,” ghosts of the night. Brian Williams lionizes them: “Philip Harkman and Jeffrey Peckerman, the now legendary international masterminds with an uncanny ability to show up in critical world hot spots at exactly the right moment, perform some seemingly impossible feat, then vanish….” Williams admires how “…executing the kind of exquisitely planned, split-second operation that has become their trademark, they essentially dismantled the world’s largest terrorist organization.”
Certainly Lunatics should be labeled as a kind of escapist literature—escape from reality, from probability, from reason, and from sanity. The novel comes across as a concerted effort by two hilarious writers to carry us off into a preposterous world of confusion, bumbling, and laughter.
Ted Odenwald and his wife, Shirley have lived in Oakland for 43 years. He taught HS English at Glen Rock High School for all of those years plus one more. Now he is enjoying time spent with his family, singing in the North Jersey Chorus and quenching his wanderlust. Ted is also the Worship Leader at the Ramapo Valley Baptist Church in Oakland.