BOOK REPORT: THE PEOPLE, NO: A BRIEF HISTORY OF ANTI-POPULISM by THOMAS FRANK

Thomas Frank

Thomas Frank is an American historian, who has written several books on the current state of his country’s politics. His 2004 book, What’s The Matter With Kansas? examined the rise of political conservatism in the United States, beginning during the 1970s with the coalescing of fiscal  and social conservatives within the Republican Party, and with the rightward drift of the Democratic Party around the same time. He contends that, for its part, the Democratic Party began to differentiate itself from its Republican rivals by abandoning its traditional working class base and adopting a fiscally conservative platform coupled with socially liberal policies (i.e. pro-choice, gay rights, etc.). He examines how and why these changes occurred.

In 2016 he published, Listen, Liberal Or Whatever Happened to the Party of the People?, a blistering critique of the Democratic Party, examining the rise of the liberal elites in America and how Democrats became a party catering to the needs of the professional/managerial class at the expense of working class. From his website there is a description of his argument:

 

“A form of corporate and cultural elitism has largely eclipsed the party's old working-class commitment, he finds. For certain favored groups, this has meant prosperity. But for the nation as a whole, it is a one-way ticket into the abyss of inequality.” (Listen, Liberal interview)

 

In 2020, his The People, NO, examines a word that everyone is familiar with, and one we hear often enough on the news or read in the paper: “populism”. Today the word is used pejoratively, as a criticism of mass movements, of the rise of authoritarian leaders—so called “populists”— like Donald Trump, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Marie Le Pen of France, and so on, heads of movements and political parties with shared ideologies bordering on fascism, and whose followers hold racist or bigoted views, who are anti-modernist, anti-science, etc.

We’ve come to feel such 'populist' sentiments in society must be quickly countered by more centrist, “consensus” politics of recent decades. Populism, the current thinking goes, is dangerous to democracy and must be put down wherever it arises.

But in a fascinating rebuttal to this accepted view, Frank gives us the true meaning of the word “populism”, its history, when the word was first coined, what and who it represented, and how it has been co-opted by conservative elements on both sides of the aisle to alter its meaning to represent its exact opposite. He describes how the modern wave of anti-populist sentiment (that is, sentiment against actual populists) came about as a concerted effort on the part of right-wing strategists and politicians to destroy the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” initiatives of the 1930s (what Frank calls the great “second wave” of populism in America, and perhaps it’s heyday). Pushback from financial and corporate elites began during FDR’s presidency, of course, but the modern iteration of the conservative response began in the 1950s with a group of influential historians, Richard Hofstadter in particular, who began using the word “populist” pejoratively to refer to the mass of people (most of the population) who acted “illogically”, at the whim of their “passions”, in a wave of populist fervor,and most damningly, did not accept the need for elites and the intelligentsia to guide and manage their affairs. This conservative philosophy expanded in the following decades, with think tanks, political action groups and lobbyists increasingly pushing their agenda—namely the promotion of elite rule and business dominance in American politics.

The Democratic Party, as mentioned, began its rightward shift by adopting a similar platform of support for elite rule, with professionals and experts (drawn from the growing professional/managerial class, of course) to manage the government. As Frank so clearly describes in Listen, Liberal, “consensus” politics—that is consensus among elites from both the left and the right, and rule by managers and “experts” became the accepted political norm for both parties.

To be clear: Donald Trump and his ilk are NOT populists. They are authoritarian leaders who rule to keep their class (in Trump's case the billionaire class) in charge. These elite demagogues are the opposite of populists. They may walk like populists, talk like populists but they're not populists. A simple litmus test can tell us the difference: Who benefits from the policies, actions, and rhetoric of Donald Trump? If your answer is the working poor of America, the disenfranchaised then, my friend, I have a bridge to sell you!       

In his new book, Frank reminds us that "populism" originally was a name given to a particular political movement that arose in the early 1890s in the American Midwest, and which eventually grew into a Democratic Party challenge for President with the orator William Jennings Bryan as its candidate. Populists or “Pops” were simply members of that movement, in particular the “People’s Party” which included millions of poor Midwestern farmers and black farm-labour workers in the South, as well as white and black urban factory workers of the industrial North East. How this word, “populism”, changed from meaning a grass-roots political movement (what Frank calls the first great challenge by working people to the business and moneyed elites of America), to the pejorative it is today, is a fascinating and disturbing tale of political intrigue, backroom manipulation and brute-force politicking.

Remember that populism in America emerged in the “Gilded Age” during the 1890s, when farmers, miners, factory workers and other wage-earners were forced to eke out a living under the thumb of powerful companies and monopolies like the Steel Trust, Oil Trust etc., whose wealthy owners—the aptly named “Robber Barons”—kept a strangle hold on finance and commerce and labour organizing. Workers had little recourse to address the inequalities and abuses practiced by their employers and could do little to better their situations. Low prices for farm products were the catalyst for the nascent populist movement in the farm lands of the American Midwest, and Frank makes it clear that this was a movement concerned primarily with bettering the economic status of its members. Fair prices and wages, better working conditions, shorter working hours and so on were the main concerns of populists, and importantly, their movement was a broad coalition that tried to unite poor people of all races in a common project.

In the end, the movement failed to achieve its goal of electing a “populist” president, with Bryan losing to the pro-business candidate, William McKinley. The business lobby enlisted worried corporate leaders and the ultra-wealthy in an unprecedented campaign that saw vast sums of money funnelled into the presidential race, along with the usual voting shenanigans, illegalities and even violence, in an effort to defeat Bryan and his populist ‘rabble’. As Frank points out, this decade-long first push-back against big business had some effect on legislation, political discourse and activism in the ensuing years, notably during Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency with the exploits of the “muckrakers” who exposed illegal monopolies and business abuses at the beginning of the twentieth century. But ultimately, Bryan’s 1896 defeat sealed the fate for the “People’s Party” and its bid for power. It was the first major challenge to big business and elite hegemony on the political stage in America, but it would not be the last.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Roosevelt was elected President of the United States in 1933, and during the depths of the Great Depression he launched his great populist program, the “New Deal”, the second great wave of populism, in response to the calamity of crushing economic collapse brought about by a business community that, once again, had grown wealthy through rampant greed, speculation and corrupt business practices as it had during the Gilded Age. Their greed resulted in destabilizing the economy and bringing ruin to millions. Roosevelt, himself a millionaire, broke ranks with his class and sided with the workers, the common people, and his administration crafted policies and programs to aid them directly. Business leaders and rich elites were dragged kicking and screaming to support his initiatives, and he accomplished reforms which ushered in such programs as Welfare and Social Security. He created works programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) that saw the federal government employ millions of unemployed Americans in infrastructure and reconstruction work. He devised legislation to combat the most egregious exploitations practiced by corporate and financial elites, and he also promoted labour rights and unionism. He convinced the business community to back his proposals (for a time) by reminding them if they did not compromise with workers, listen to their striking employees and give up part of their accumulated wealth now, they would lose it all later when the population rose in revolt, possibly with socialist or communist ideologies  informing and driving their rebellion. Roosevelt and those he chose for his administration, including his vice president Henry Wallace, were the second wave of true populist politicians in America who demanded radical changes to the country’s power structures in order to help the economic conditions of the poor.   

For Thomas Frank, the word “populism” refers to a movement with a platform that focuses on the economic well-being of the multi-racial working class in America through regulating and tamping down the excesses associated with capitalism and elite exploitation through progressive labour legislation, regulatory practices, and the promotion of unionism.

"CHARGE!"

The term “populism” has been for decades now been used pejoratively to condemn social movements that ultimately threaten elite power. Liberal elites, in particular, have bastardized and distorted the term so that today most people think it refers to anti-democratic, authoritarian-led, proto-fascistic movements--the Trumps of the world. Conservatives use the term to describe 'cock-eyed' left wing movements like those of Senator Bernie Sanders. Of course, this viewpoint benefits elites on both sides of the aisle, who can then claim to be "saving democracy" from the wrong-headed masses who simply don't know their place. Frank calls such red-baiting, “Democracy Scares”, where movements that support the economic well-being of working people (and challenge the status quo of wealthy elites and the professional/managerial class and politicians that serve them), are characterized as explosions of uninformed, misguided troublemakers that threaten social stability and order. Good governance, they say, should be in the hands of those who know how to govern—namely, themselves.

Today, the two presidential candidacies of Bernie Sanders are examples of populism. Sanders' grass-roots funding, his proposals in 2016 and 2020 for universal health care, minimum wage legislation, his policies on regulating Wall Street and banking are populist platforms similar to those of the “People’s Party” of the 1890s and the “New Deal” of the 1930s. The short-lived “Occupy Wall Street” movement after the Great Recession of 2008-9 (caused by a deregulated banking system, and criminal banking practices), and the “Yellow Vest” movement in France are recent examples of populist movements.

Frank says it is important to remember that genuine populist movements are first and foremost about class. They are movements of the working poor that are formed to address economic inequalities and political disenfranchaisement. They are (to be considered truly populist) a multi-racial coalition of urban and rural workers demanding a better balance of political representation and a greater share in the country’s wealth that they, themselves, helped produce. As it currently stands in America, populist agendas are considered “fringe” politics, and populist politicians are side-lined in both parties. The mainstream consensus for both Republicans and Democrats is pro-business and elite-centric, with Democrats concerned more with “identity” politics (gay marriage, for example) which does little, in the end, to challenge elite power structures and address economic inequalities, while on the other hand, the Republican consensus is full-bore pro-business. In both parties, there is little room for dissenting views that consider the needs of the working class in America. Call them “neo-conservatives” or “neo-liberals,  these elites are for the status-quo. They and their familars are the "anti-populists" Frank criticizes in his book.

Given the severity of the present coronavirus epidemic and shocks to economies around the world, the time may be ripe for movements like the “People’s Party” to emerge once more and become forces to be reckoned with in political arenas around the world. Or it may be generational in that, as elder statesmen and women retire, a new cohort of younger politicians might emerge to take their place that would be populist in character. It is too soon to tell, but such a change can’t come soon enough.

The title of Frank’s book comes from a long-poem by Carl Sandburg, “The People, Yes!” written in 1936. It is a book-length epic that celebrates the lives of every-day Americans, showing their perseverance and pluck in the face of hardships. As Frank notes, such a poem could not have been written today--just as the films of Frank Capra could not have been made in our current, rather cynical, times. Their unabashed portrayal of the dignity and worth of everyday working people would come across as old-fashioned and cornball. 

Thomas tells us that the decades-long anti-populist attacks by elites on almost every aspect of FDR's New Deal legislation, and the Democratic Party's complicity in siding with elite agendas since the 1970s, has moved the American political class decidedly against working people’s rights and needs. According to statistics, income inequality in America today is as great as it was during the Gilded Age, which saw the creation of the first populist movement in America as a result. Such social imbalances have in the past led to the rise of fascist systems (Italy, Germany) or communist ones. In America, we can only hope that democracy (with a robust populist wing) remains in place.     

 

Thomas Frank, with a wry, Midwestern sense of humour and a sardonic wit, tweaks the noses, claps the ears and in general ruffles the feathers of elites in the Democratic Party establishment, and liberals, academics and political mandarins on both sides of the aisle. In a recent interview, he says he doesn’t know what he’ll write about in his next book. Previously, humour and satire were important tools that helped him formulate his critiques of the political class. He says it is harder now for him to poke fun and point out the ironies found in elite blind spots and illusions. It’s all well and good when you can point out that the emperor has no clothes; that’s something we can all laugh about. It’s more difficult to laugh when the emperor proudly displays his body, in all its glorious nakedness, and demands you strip as well!

The times they are ‘a changing and which direction they’ll go is a good question.

 

Cheers, Jake.

"Take heart! Just not mine."

BOOK REPORT: BREAK THE BODIES, BURY THE BONES by MICAH DEAN HICKS

[ Spoiler Alert!]
This is a ghost story, or more accurately, it is a story about how we live with ghosts. It is the story of Jane and her brother Henry, their mother, their friends and the town of Swine Hill, whose inhabitants live surrounded, and are often possessed, by ghosts. There are more ghosts in Swine Hill than people. A lot more! There are ghosts who haunt the collapsing buildings and houses, the abandoned factories and stores and businesses, the fields and orchards around the slowly dying town. Industries, commercial enterprises, restaurants, shops, malls, retail outlets, schools and churches have closed or are closing; most of the people have already left. Those that remain, like Jane and her family, can’t afford to leave, or else are too beaten-down in their lives to make the attempt, or they are haunted by ghosts and held captive by their supernatural obsessions. The ghosts are of factory workers killed on the job or those who died of cancer or drink or sadness or old age. They haunt the hallways and machinery, the shops and offices, laneways and streets, existing in a twilight world performing the same routines and functions they did when they were alive. They are the ghosts of young and old, of workers and labourers, shopkeepers and clerks, white collar and blue collar—all the dead townspeople of Swine Hill from decades, even centuries past. Often, they inhabit the living, those with whom they share a common sensibility or outlook. Some of the living have so lost their way in life that they welcome being possessed. Some ghosts communicate with their hosts, like Jane’s. Other’s live in the bones, the guts, or muscles, acting instinctually and mechanically, bending the backs and aching the joints and knees of their hosts. Some are helpful. Others are a burden or a curse, even a nightmare.

Despair and hopelessness are the very air that the people of Swine Hill breathes every day. The town is decaying, rotting to its foundations; its people have no futures. They are haunted and weighed down by ghosts, caught in a never-ending cycle of ghost-fueled obsessions and desires of their predecessors, most of whom had themselves led lives of desperation and despair. And Hicks is relentless and masterful in his ability to create a vivid landscape and atmosphere for this sad and haunting place.

 

"Swine Hill was full of the dead. Their ghosts were thickest near the abandoned downtown, where so many of the town’s hopes had died generation by generation. They lingered in the places that mattered to them, and people avoided those streets, locked those doors, stopped going in those rooms. But you might encounter a ghost unexpectedly—in the high school where Jane had graduated two years ago, curled into the hollow of a tree, hands out and pleading on the side of the road. They could hurt you. Worse, they could change you." (3)

Micah Dean Hicks

Our main character is Jane, a twenty-year old who works in the town’s one remaining grocery store. Since her childhood, she has been haunted by the ghost of a young girl. Her ghost can read people’s minds, and she delights in gossiping and revealing people’s secrets and private thoughts to Jane. The ghost is Jane’s constant companion; a burden at times, she can be capricious and petty; at other times, helpful and generous. She knows Jane inside out and often acts as a conscience and a guide. In the end, though, Jane's ghost has her own agenda: she wishes that nothing will ever change in Swine Hill, and that Jane will remain there forever. Jane's ghost must remain in the town, for there is no place else for her to go. Thus Jane, haunted since childhood,  is never alone; she has no private thoughts. Yet, she has made a kind of accommodation with her ghost, learning to co-exist with her ever-present spectral 'boarder'. It would be most  like living as a co-joined twin, I suppose, with the other knowing all your intimate thoughts and feelings. At one point, Jane says her ghost even knows her dreams. 

Henry, her younger brother, is possessed by a ghost that in life had been a scientific genius, an inventor. He uses Henry’s mind and body to construct robots and repair machinery and electronics, as well as building secret—perhaps harmful, perhaps helpful—inventions. Their mother is possessed by a ghost whose need for love and affirmation is so great that she literally burns with it. Her hot touch often injuries her children, and in desperation she seeks love in the bars and lounges of Swine Hill, imbuing in her lovers an unquenchable  need for her and then, within her embrace, she consumes them, literally burning them to a crisp!

It’s not exactly a suitable Goosebumps storyline is it? And though the main characters are teens or in their early twenties, suggesting this is a book in the "Young Adult" catagory, the themes Hicks elaborates on, and the brutal portrait he paints of a "post-industrial" American town, are equally compelling for older readers (and should be thought-provoking as well.)

Initially, I thought Hicks would use his ghost story format for humour or satire (though there is both throughout). I kept expecting Casper the Friendly Ghost, and instead I was given a horror story about a haunted town, where the living live side-by-side with the dead, most of whom are obsessed with activities, events and emotions that once shaped their lives in some significant, or perhaps dreadful, manner. Ghosts inhabit the buildings and streets, the structures and places, even furniture or possessions, or tools—anything that gave their former lives meaning or purpose or, as is more often the case in Swine Hill, had trapped them in lives of apathy, or quiet desperation and struggle. For example, a carpenter’s ghost might inhabit a tool box chucked away and forgotten beneath the basement stairs, buried in the rubble of his ruined house. His ghost might obsessively hammer and saw ghostly planks just as he once did in life, forever building that addition to his house that no longer exists. A streetcar driver might operate a car along a ghostly route, just as she’d done when she was alive. (Henry rides such a ghost car to his high school each day.) It sounds cartoonish, but Hicks' depiction of Swine Hill and its ghostly denizens is so vivid, its decline and decay so detailed, that having ghosts in the mix is not so far-fetched; ghosts are something the reader might expect to see in such a sad and lonely place.

 

Henry walked out of the school and headed down the cracked and trash-blown streets of downtown. The deeper he pressed into those shattered buildings, the more things moved in the windows or raced eel-like over the ground…An old brick building faced him, its windows blown out and staring like the hollows of a skull…Something big moved in the dark, crawling up a flight of stairs and knocking things over on the next floor. Henry followed the sound, barely able to see. (102-3)

 
So, ghosts are real. To be haunted in life is something everyone will experience at some point, and we should expect to see others who are haunted. From time to time we will live in, or move through, places we know must have ghosts. We’ll sense a ghostly presence in some of the things we make or use: in our tools, our homes and buildings, our towns. Ghosts are things we must learn to live with and come to understand, and it is important we discover how and why they haunt us. Hicks tells us we are all haunted to one degree or another but, in the end we cannot live out our lives with ghosts and expect to change and grow. We cannot remain haunted or allow the ghosts in our lives to dominate us. If we do, we will live a twilight existence, becoming grey ghosts from a faded time. Ghosts are of the dead, the past. And, as cliche and trite as this old nugget sounds: life is for the living!  

In Break the Bones, we follow Jane as she negotiates her strange family life, her work and her relationships, and her need to break free from the haunted decay of Swine Hill to find a better life for her and her family. And we witness the results of Henry’s collaboration with his inventor-ghost come to fruition with the arrival of the “pig-people” to Swine Hill. In their months-long secret project, Henry and his ghost create, á la Frankenstein, the imposing figure of “Hogboss”, the new manager of the local branch of the national pork-producer Pig City, the town’s one remaining major employer (hence the town's nickname; originally it was called Swain Hill.*) We learn Henry and his ghost (who controls Henry’s consciousness so the boy is unaware of the its activities) have created a cohort of “pig-people”, that will soon take over the running of the meat-processing plant, replacing all the humans with “self-slaughtering”, intelligent pigs, who, incidentally, all walk upright like people. (They are self-slaughtering in that, when they are no longer able to work, they turn themselves in for processing, suggesting "Pig City" has questionable labour-relations policies!)

Henry wanted to help the people of his town, who he feels are held 'captive' by the factory that, logically, should have closed long ago. Its closure would force the ex-employees to finally move out of Swine Hill and make new lives. But the logic of his ghost, in manufacturing the "pig-people" for the boy's well-intentioned purpose, has inadverteltly created what the humans see as essentially a small army of "scab labourers" who will take away their jobs. (The pigs, it should be noted, through no fault of their own, were created by Henry to run the factory; they are unaware of the effect their arrival in Swine Hill will have on its citizens.) This will lead to some difficulties.

The ghosts haunt the town and its people, keeping them immersed in lives of misery and never-ending cycles of despair and lethargy, just as the ghosts themselves were miserable during their lifetimes. For example, each day going into work Jane walks past the ghost of a man lying on the pavings outside the store's entrance who, years before, had been shot and killed on that spot: “The ghost looked at every person who entered or left the store, his face a mask of pain and surprise, and mouthed, Why?” (5) He lay there, a constant reminder to himself and all who pass him of the injustice that had befallen him when he was alive. He is one of the many ghosts in Swine Hill who express outrage or puzzlement, or sorrow for the tricks and torments life once held in store for them.

Naturally, Henry’s “pig-people” plan backfires, with disastrous and tragic consequences. Henry is killed during riots that break out after Hogboss fires all the humans from the factory. Mayhem ensues, with the pig-people in danger of being slaughtered by mobs of ghost-ridden ex-employees. Henry, now a ghost himself, does what he can to protect his creations. He also aids his sister by fixing her ghost-infested car and providing her with a robot programmed to help her in her new life when she leaves Swine Hill. In the end, Henry accepts that he has done all he can do to help those he loves and cares for; he can do no more—and that’s okay. Jane, too, by the story’s end forgives herself, saying she did all she could to reunite her family, to bring her mother and father together, and though her plans didn’t work out—that, too, is okay. She cannot continue to feel guilty, to be ‘haunted’ for not doing enough. It is true that her parents won’t reunite as she hoped, but each has discovered a way forward in their lives with the help of Jane and her brother. And Henry’s final act is to help his town by drawing away most of its ghosts, allowing those twilight spirits to move on to wherever it is that ghosts go when they leave the places and people they haunt. He does this by directing his robot to fashion a “laser display” that acts as a beacon, attracting the ghosts, like fireflies to a flame, away from Swine Hill and out into space. And there, in a place where they have no history or connections, they can finally rest in peace.

Jane drives away from Swine Hill in her (mostly) ghost-free car. She is alone with only her robot for company, for the ghost she has lived with since childhood is unable to exist beyond the town. She is leaving to start a new life somewhere else. And that is as it should be. Her parents will stay and live in the orchard with the pig-people, helping them negotiate their way in the world. They will live for a time in the gently-haunted orchards on the outskirts of Swine Hill, in a place that must seem Eden-like compared to ruins of the town. And Hicks leaves us with the possibility that perhaps someday the pig-people, by the fact of their very existence as sentient beings and by the example of how they live their lives (they are remarkably peaceful and compassionate), will be able to offer humanity a new way of thinking about what it is to be human. But their story is still new and being born, and it is too soon to tell how it will end.

Henry, having accomplished all he set out to do in his short life, with nothing left to hold him to life, looks into the void where all the dead must eventually fall. He knows it’s there, and he's afraid. “The world was thin and glassy, and behind it Henry could see an ocean of nothing waiting for him.” (289) But then his friend Bethany returns. She was another person Henry tried unsuccessfully to help when he and his then-ghost devised a plan to aid the girl to leave Swine Hill—the results of which having gone disastrously awry. But now she comes to his aid. The unforeseen consequences of Henry's manipulations caused Bethany to undergo a transformation whereby she now exists “outside” existence, outside of space and time. She is able to travel through dimensions beyond even death. Thus, Henry and Bethany also leave Swine Hill—he as a ghost, she as something else—and they journey together to distant reaches of the universe, to discover a better place to live. 

'''''  

Hicks’ novel depicts the gritty reality of dying towns and cities in today’s America**. He highlights issues of poverty, joblessness, de-industrialization, living in a capitalist society, urban decay, as well as issues surrounding immigration and bigotry (with his introduction to the town of the "pig-people", of course). His prose grounds the reader in the lives and circumstances of his characters with meticulous and layered presentations of setting and mood. Swine Hill is haunted. Its people are haunted, weighed down by generations of ghosts. It is a dying town that cannot finally die. Until it does, those remaining there cannot—or will not—move on.

The author explores themes of generational love and responsibility (what we owe the past and what it, in turn, owes us), he explores issues of racism (Jane is African-American, whose gossipping, mind-reader of a ghost-friend tells her what many in Swine Hill think of her!), as well as themes of loneliness and isolation, classism, coming of age, friendship, sacrifice and creativity. It is a richly-textured offering crafted in a landscape that is both harsh and unyielding. Yet it is a novel that also offers hope, if not for a better tomorrow, then at least for a necessary one.

The people of Swine Hill are the poor and unemployed, the disenfranchised castoffs that some would call the “losers” in society. Some may recover their lives and humanity; others will remain haunted, soon to become ghosts themselves. Hicks’ novel grasps the splintered reality of their lives and holds it up for our inspection like a broken flower. We are left haunted, yet at the same time at peace.

 Cheers, Jake.

"His name is Cruelty! He gave me life but gives me pipe-cleaner limbs!"

 

 

 

*In the Nineteenth Century, Toronto was referred to as “Hog Town” because of the large number of pork-rendering factories it had.)

**And in Canada as well. South-Western Ontario is an example where free-trade and globalization had a great impact on people’s lives over the years, with the shuttering of factories and businesses and outsourcing manufacturing and services abroad.

 

 

 

 

Micah Dean Hicks, Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, New York, N.Y., 2019.

 

 

BOOK REPORT: THE LOST MAN by JANE HARPER

G’day, mates! I thought I would write a bit about Jane Harper’s new book, The Lost Man. It’s a mystery story set in the outback of modern-day Australia, on a cattle “station” (a large land-holding) owned by the Bright family. It is the story of three brothers, living on adjacent properties, miles apart physically and even further apart in their relationship to each other. The mystery involves how and why Cameron, the middle brother, is found miles from anywhere, curled beneath the tombstone at the remote “Stockman’s Grave” site, dead from thirst. I won’t detail too much of the story because it's a ripping good yarn that is a mystery story as well as an examination of memory and the choices we make in life, and how consequences stemming from them manifest—sometimes for generations. The pace is slow, in keeping with the rhythms of the lives of its characters as they work, play and love in the harsh and unforgiving outback environment. Harper unveils truths, some that have been hidden for decades, in careful ‘pulses’ I’ll call them, that make the book something of a page-turner. For me, while she did not quite deliver in making me ‘feel’ or ‘experience’ the outback, its landscape, its climate and so on, she did provide a fascinating window into the lives of cattle herders in the grasslands and desert-adjacent locations of western Queensland.

Jane Harper

The events leading to Cameron’s death are pieced together over several days by the story’s protagonist Nathan, the eldest brother, as the family gathers at the Bright homestead for the Christmas holidays, made into a sombre affair by the mysterious death. Childhood memories play critical roles in solving the mystery, as do the unravelling of puzzles Nathan encounters and the discrepancies he notes in and around the family’s vast Burley Downs Station. I thought the story might not hold my interest because it was set on a remote ranch, with only two or three additional characters added to the family grouping. But Harper gives rich, engaging details as she examines the lives of Nathan and his younger brother Bub and the memories they recall, along with those of their mother, Cameron’s widow Ilse and her two young daughters, Nathan’s college-bound son, and Harry, the family’s long-time friend. What I liked most were the honest conversations that occurred as the characters gradually reveal truths that had for too long lain dormant. It suggested to me that, in living and working in such a land, with blistering temperatures, vast distances and gnawing loneliness to contend with, people aren’t given to idle chatter—they get to the point with refreshing bluntness!

The Lost Man is a richly rewarding read, pared down to what is essential in life and what is necessary in the relationships we have with others and the ones we love. It is a story of redemption and forgiveness as well as sadness, but it is also a story of joy and love. Well done, Jane Harper. Good on ya!   

Cheers, Jake.

 

"Can someone please plug me in? Please!"

Jane Harper, The Lost Man, Pan Macmillan, Australia, 2018, Flatiron Books, New York, N.Y., 2019.