Book review: ‘Against the Country,’ by Ben Metcalf

washingtonpost.com ^ | Dec 30, 2014 | Ron Charles

[Berlin_Freeper]

The publisher describes Ben Metcalf’s “Against the Country” as a “gift for fans of Southern Gothic and metafiction,” which sounds like a final exam question for Venn diagrammers. Having survived this mind-numbing rant of a novel, I only know that it’s a gift I would not open again.

And yet I entered these dark woods eagerly. For many years, Metcalf was the literary editor of Harper’s, where he published some of the finest writers in the world and, a few times, offered his own essays in that magazine and in the Baffler. They were remarkable performances: angry, erudite pieces delivered in a comically pompous voice that mocked its own pretensions. In 1998, his hysterical assault on “that shallow and putrid trough we call the Mississippi River” opened with the line, “I proceed from rage.” In 2006, he attracted notice (and opprobrium) for an essay that considered the legal and moral complications of expressing a hypothetical desire to kill President George W. Bush with his bare hands.

In that same essay, he wrote, “Literary taste does not seem to have advanced much . . . and I assume is still arrayed so as to engage only the weak-minded and dull.” It was a comment calibrated to flatter readers who knew he was kidding and not kidding,

[Berlin_Freeper]

Journey the mind of a BDS.

Or not.

[TBP]

Oh, I thought it was a book about Obama.

[marktwain]

I thought is was a book about the Deep State, the Media and the Democrat party!