Is Everybody Nuts: Relevance Today

Once you get to the wedding it's worth the trip.

This very short excerpt is from my novel Is Everybody Nuts?

Spam Peckerpaw (Sam Peckinpah) the film director, and Schreve McBean (Steve McQueen) famous actor, search for the man in red robes and a giant rubber ball that blew up their World War 2 movie set.

I wrote this novel in 1973 and kept it typed in a box for 40 years.

(I sent a letter to the CEO of Putnam, one of the big publishers of the day, telling him he could make money off this book and I wanted someone to read it. A typical tyro mistake, but every writer makes them. He called me and wanted to know how I got his name and address. I told him I went to the library and looked him up in a corporate CEO book. It had been simple, really. I wondered how he made it to CEO. He guaranteed me someone would read it. The box came back a year later squashed flat with tire marks. So much for the visionary attitude of publishing at the time. Ha-ha. So it stayed in the box.)

Without realizing exactly what I was doing, I wrote something that fits in society just as well today as it did in 1973. No one gets any slack in this satirical novel. Republicans, Democrats, rich and poor, psychos, misfits, perverts, racists, criminals, police, and general boneheads all get the same treatment. 

This very short chapter describes the modern day hardcore Liberal movement.

Chapter 86 

Spam Peckerpaw gathered his film crew on the ruined set. 

"And you're sure it was the guy in red robes?" 

"Yep," the German soldier said. "I saw him plain as day with my binoculars."

"Good," Peckerpaw said, pacing back and forth. "I knew somebody would find them."

"What are we doing?" Shreve McBean said. "I'm hungry."

"Hungry," Peckerpaw said. "This film is for America. This film will show those glory-seeking young kids what it's like to see intestines hanging from trees, to see brains exploding, to see blood flying everywhere, to see pus gushing from empty eye sockets. 

"This film is for our America. This film will bring to those murder-happy young punks our beliefs that killing is senseless, that violence is something sick and perverted, that there is nothing pleasant in seeing a man getting holes punched in his body. Fuck the money we make. Fuck the fame we achieve from movies. It is our duty to America to promote love and peace throughout the world. We can allow nothing to stop our necessary task. I have spoken."

The entire crew cheered except Shreve McBean. "I just said I was hungry."

Peckerpaw raised his arms. "Now that our duty is clear, we must go forth in the name of peace and non-violence to find those fiends who have sabotaged our epic film."

"What do we do when we find them? " a German soldier said.

"We kill the gaw-dam bastards," Peckerpaw said. "Let's move."

"Something doesn't make sense," Shreve McBean said, as he followed Peckerpaw across the field.

Is Everybody Nuts?