Jacob Traum, a retired high school social worker, has no illusions about who he is, describing himself in David Forbes’ first novel, Broken Land Dreams, as a “brooding, grumpy, white male lefty Boomer” with a Brooklyn attitude. He’s disillusioned, yes, but he has ample reasons for his disaffection: His wife Maya recently left him; COVID is raging; ambulance sirens blare 24 hours a day, seven days a week; and Brooklyn has gentrified so rapidly that he feels like he’s mired in an upscale nightmare.
In the midst of this, he’s visited by a futuristic, shape-shifting “hired power” named Xen Kohen, referred to in the novel as XK, who takes Jacob on a romp through Hell. In this incarnation, Hell is an underworld populated by rats who bear an uncanny physical resemblance to some of the 20th and 21st centuries’ most despicable people, among them, Elon Musk, Rudolph Giuliani, and Ayn Rand (here renamed Eelong MuskRat, Ratty Ghoulani, and Ayn Ratnd).
As Traum explores this subterranean world, he gets up close and personal with the racist, sexist, homophobic, classist, and transphobic Right-wing. He’s also schooled in the ways an ascendant MAGA-like movement is aided and abetted by Fux Fake News, The RatPublicans, the CorpoRat Executives, Government AutoRats, the Billionaire Dark Money Oligarch PlutoRats, and Rat Boy Militias.
Subtle it’s not, but clever wordplay and smile-and-laugh-inducing puns, punctuated by dozens of provocative quotes from influential literary, political, and philosophical luminaries, give the book a kaleidoscopic quality.
For his part, Jacob wants to do something to fight the Right and, along with three progressive-leaning, but alienated middle-aged white men – The Brooklyn Codgers – and a group of six diverse students that Traum mentored before retiring, a plan to reclaim the borough (and maybe even the entire country) from conservative forces emerges. The group’s agenda includes multiple issues, but it starts with education, contesting planned book bans and lessons that sugarcoat US history. They then take on ideological positions that celebrate disinformation and reward greed, selfishness, competition, and bullying.
What’s more, as their ingenious fightback plan emerges, a bit of magical realism enters the mix. There’s a Dogen Potion, named for the Zen master, and magic Anti-Google Goggles that give wearers the ability to see people’s insecurities and understand why they find the Right so alluring.
“They turn to rats in the absence of a well-organized democratic left that could expose and counter their lies, delusions, meanness, and criminality and fight for a decent society for all” Forbes writes. “They indulge their lower selves by blaming others: Immigrants, women, gays, people of other races and cultures. To assuage their profound fear, they find the rats’ false promises for security appealing and comforting.”
The Broken Land extends compassion to these folks and simultaneously suggests ways to resist and challenge their beliefs. It’s an interesting, redemptive juxtaposition. It’s also an entertaining read. Indeed, the book is not only a call to resist fascism, authoritarianism, and oligarchy, it’s also a praise song for Brooklyn and a love letter to the borough’s Botanic Garden, Prospect Park, and complex, multi-hued and multi-gendered people.
Broken Land Dreams By David Forbes
301 pages, $15 paperback; $9.95 kindle
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