Where I Cringed a Bit

A Feast of Freedom by Leonard Wibberley
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was odd.

Look, if this is supposed to be satire, it misses the mark, IMO. I expect it to be satirizing real things in the real world, the genuine state of affairs, the actual state of institutions or the actions of governments, mocking the way things are. But I don't see that. What's the point in satirizing a cartoonish version of institutions? An acerbic critique of government overreach in The Jetsons or a brutal takedown of law enforcement blunders on The Andy Griffith Show (to use 1960s references for a 1964 book) are equally pointless and unsatisfying.

The US foreign policy failures of the 50s and 60s and the various government dysfunctions are ripe targets. British, too. Maybe the author was too polite to go after genuine weaknesses and real disasters?

(You have to get pretty meta to find a way to claim that this story lands a solid punch on anything or mocks any real-world thing that needs to be mocked. At best, you can say that the story demonstrates that the native people would have been better off if they had never been colonized, that there's no good way forward once that has taken place. I'll give it that one, with reservations. I'm not sure that was his meaning or if it was just mine. Beyond that, making something out of the general incompetence of Western governments is a little funny, I suppose, but that's a pretty blunt attack.)

And if it's lampoon he was going for, well... that's easier. It should be funny. I didn't think it was funny. A few humorous lines at best. And I like the author; I was expecting it to be funny.

I really enjoyed the Mouse That Roared books. That series seemed clever and fun and on-target. This story of Pacific islanders that believe they were better off as British colonies and are forgiven for killing and eating an American vice president just wanders around any point. It's absurd, yes. It's weird. But if it makes someone laugh, I'd like to have them explain to me why. (I wouldn't, really.)

Maybe the difference in the tone of those books compared to this is in the balance of power. The Duchy of Grand Fenwick in the Mouse books is put in a position of strength, quite surprisingly, even though it's a tiny country. The powerful countries are humbled. That's the central conceit of those stories, and I thought it worked. The tiny country here, on the other hand, is at the mercy of superpowers and is left in the position of begging favors and hoping to be forgiven. It feels crummy, making the natives read like children that need a daddy, and if the author isn't actually punching down it sure feels like it sometimes.

Anyway, it's short. That's good.

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