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John-Ivan Palmer's review of Lemur Considering the world's evils--toxic air, toxic food, toxic thought--it requires an un-squeamish writer to take it on by frontal assault. In Lemur, his eighth book, Tom Bradley cooks up another dish of satire. Known for going after the world in large bites, Bradley's previous work has sunk its teeth into the American nuclear program, Chinese authoritarianism, Japanese junk culture, papal politics, Mormon skullduggery, and humankind in general. As proof of his leaving no one un-offended, he's been nudged out of every university where he has taught. For the past two decades he has lived the life of an ex-pat laugh assassin, tucked away in a volcanic mountain on the island of Kyushu. In Lemur, Bradley's satire takes a strange departure. Instead of employing his usual informed, maximalist style which one associates with Thomas Pynchon and Vladimir Nabokov, he writes here in a minimalist style more reminiscent of Beckett. "Lemur" refers to the logo of Lemuel's Family Restaurant, a junk food eatery where the protagonist, Spencer Sproul, works as a doofus busboy. As indicated by the cartoon on the cover, Lemur is a slapstick parody of capitalism that reflects the utter shallowness of contemporary culture and the non-substantial food on which it feeds. Spencer uneasily resembles the lost souls one sees every day behind the counter, "the light infantry of capitalism," entry-level conscripts into a consumer culture they will never question or understand. In what little time or capacity he has for reflection, Spencer finds a twisted self-esteem by identifying with the anti-heroes of serial killer fandom, filling his apartment and work locker with news clips and photos of every famous psychopath from Albert Fish to Ted Bundy. As if junk culture could not become more toxic, the machinery of marketing has made heroes out of these killers, with web sites, teeshirts, and memorabilia for an audience of losers like Spencer, who considers himself "a scoundrel of basic terribleness." The only problem is, he doesn't have what it takes to be terrible. Inspired by the low brainstem stimulation of the Charles Manson Official Website, Spencer fantasizes his own fame as a psychopath. He breaks into a family's home, stands over their bed with a butcher knife stolen from the kitchen at Lemuel's, and prepares to snuff them. The aftermath of this incident leads to Spencer's unexpected rise in the world of puke dining. Throw in a competing restaurant across the street, a turncoat cashier, the chauffeured restaurant critic Raleigh Standish IV, and the ludicrous Detective Furtwangler, and you have the recipe for a dish of satire swimming in greasy irony. Dumpster bums form the chorus to this recognizable dystopia of Thomas Kincaid paintings, all-Mancini radio stations, and "today's lifestyle." Spencer Sproul's fate--and ours--becomes all the more tragic for being so comically recognizable.
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