The victory of Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential elections caused a shock in white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant America. The rich and powerful watched with horror as the White House housed an African-American and, supposedly, Muslim president. From your point of view, Democracy was based on three pillars: capitalism, weapons and low taxes. Questioning or weakening that triad endangered the American dream.
The teacher, essayist and novelist Amy Michael Homes (Washington DC, 1961), rated by The New York Times Book Review As “the best portraitist of contemporary depravity,” she has composed a joyful and shocking fable about the conspiracy organized by a group of influential businessmen, politicians and intellectuals to establish an authoritarian and populist government in the United States.
At the head of this plot is the Big Fish, a potentate with serious family problems. His wife, Charlotte, is a suicidal alcoholic. Dissatisfied with her life, she explores new experiences, such as sex with women and smoking joints. Her daughter Meghan ignores an important secret whose revelation will make her question whether her father’s ideas are the most appropriate for America or perhaps the reason why violence and inequality have become endemic evils.
“I am rich and I am proud of it,” proclaims the Big Fish. Meghan can’t hear those words without experiencing deep existential pain. The epic that she has heard since she was a child seems to her to be the figurehead of an increasingly less credible farce. The very expensive school where she is admitted is disgusting when the students use the word “prostate” in an essay, but her father spits blasphemies when he thinks that “a black man is going to fuck his wife in the White House”. Meghan only appreciates truth and honesty in nature, because she “does not pretend, she just is.”
However, nature is vulnerable and human beings desecrate its innocence at every moment. When Meghan goes for a walk with her horse Ranger, she comes across a badly injured doe and her fawn. She thinks the police will be able to help her, but one of her officers unholsters her gun and shoots her twice. Terrified, the fawn flees and Meghan deduces that cruelty is the law of the universe. God does not exist. Life is just chance and our species has added two new calamities: ambition and stupidity. Knowing does not empower. It only makes you more miserable.
The Big Fish is unable to alleviate the suffering of his wife and daughter. Egocentric, narcissistic and weak, he conceives that he has taken on a sacred mission by setting in motion a conspiracy. He thinks that The greatness of America lies in its cult of power and money. Since this idea cannot be sold to the common man, it is convenient to wave the flag of freedom to attract public opinion, ensuring that limiting the sale of weapons, universalizing healthcare and protecting the rights of minorities are ways of attacking rights. individual.
The Big Fish and his accomplices call themselves the “Eternal Men”. They can’t stand the thought of losing privileges. They prefer to set the country on fire and trigger a civil war. Charlotte doesn’t care about politics, but she does care about getting older. She is approaching sixty and has discovered that there is no turning back. Meghan still doesn’t think about her old age, but she has come to understand that the world can be a scary place.
Apparently, money helps to cope with the harshness of the world, but the Big Fish has proven that it does not help to solve domestic problems. Pain is more powerful than the largest checking account. His wife and his daughter no longer hide their hostility and he has no friends, only people who work for him. His daughter doesn’t want more things. He just wants to be listened to and no longer believes in the values she has instilled in him. She can’t stand the powerful men of his father’s generation, misogynists, racists, convinced that $10,000 is enough to buy anyone’s loyalty.
Meghan’s disappointment does not affect her father, who continues conspiring to change the course of history. Despite Obama’s victory, there are hopeful signs: the consumption of opioids and antidepressants continues to grow, and there are more and more suicides. The flock is self-destructingbecause he suffers large doses of frustration and fear.
Homes has outlined an irreverent satire on the decomposition of affections in an unsupportive and narcissistic society
If, in addition, they are made to believe that a wave of terrorist attacks could be unleashed, people will feel vulnerable and demand leaders with an iron fist. The conspirators estimate that by 2026 the feeling of insecurity will be widespread and the population will accept losing rights and freedoms to regain peace of mind.
AM Homes has outlined a disturbing dystopia, especially when The possibility of a Trump victory does not seem far-fetched. He has not limited himself to speculating about the political future of the first power. Furthermore, he has written an irreverent satire that describes the decomposition of affections in an increasingly unsupportive, narcissistic and immature society.
His portrait of old powerful white men It is a masterpiece of irony. It raises laughter, but it also chills the blood. Much more human, Charlotte and Meghan fight against their inner emptiness, searching for meaning in their existence. Homes introduces a soap opera note when telling the story of Meghan, a teenager who has grown up ignoring her origins, achieving a perfect balance between the tragic and the melodramatic.
The Revelation is an intense and disturbing novel, but its comedic tone helps to endure the anguish produced by the acidic portrait of political and economic power. You don’t have to try very hard to notice that the work hides a grim warning. The United States is a business meritocracy that tramples on the weakest, but with Trump at the helm its authoritarian tendencies could be exacerbated, placing the country on the brink of a social fracture.
Everything suggests that the conditions are being created to reproduce the putrid atmosphere of McCarthyism. AM Homes does not write to be loved more, but to make people uncomfortable. Hence he published in 1996 The end of Alice, starring a pedophile and free of moralizing sermons. The real world is full of abysses and Homes has taken on the task of exploring them.
The revelation should perhaps be titled The prophecy, as it anticipates a nightmare that could happen. Meghan’s awakening and Charlotte’s rebellion are the only signs of hope in a story with echoes of 1984, A happy world and Fahrenheit 451. The plot against America that he told us about Philip Roth in 2004 it could be consummated – according to Homes – in 2026, but now its leader would be a perverted narcissist named Donald Trump.
