Painting of Samuel Beckett Bridge in Dublin by artist John Frazer
Breakfast at Cannibal Joe’s dances an Irish jig at the intersection of Jonathan Swift-like scathing satire, Eddie Izzard/George Carlin stand-up routine and saga of a lovesick, drug and liquor fueled romantic. Sound maddening? It's more than maddening, it's Jay Spencer Green’s entertaining doozy set in the city of Dublin. Get ready for spirited laughs and sombre reflections. Among the many heteroclite and gut-busting highlights, I'll throw the spotlight on the following:
Joe Chambers: Our narrator and hero is an American CIA operative managing a publishing company in Dublin as a front for the CIA. Joe was in Athens but got kicked down and out due to one false move with the wife of a European leader; Joe was married but his own wife took off with a leader of an occult religion. Why do bad things happen to a good guy like Joe, such an intelligent, perceptive, quick-witted man who is also devastatingly handsome? Well, in Dublin, Joe can at least get his hands on some good quality drugs – and he truly needs those drugs because his heart still yearns for his budding rose, his long lost wife Ellie.
Sinéad O'Shea: Joe’s assistant at his publishing house, Ms. O’Shea is Irish and single and quite the wit herself. During her interview to get the job, Joe asks her what jobs she finds the hardest and more tiring, Sinéad replies: “Anything involving independent thought. I think I’m at my best when I know what I’m supposed to be doing. That way, I can do what I’m told, get paid, go home, and forget about work. There’s a reason why it’s called a job.” You gotta love an Irish lass who can match someone like Joe serve for serve. Actually, the team of Joe and Sinéad, or maybe I should say Sinéad and Joe, is one of the more hilarious bits of the novel. Any time Sinéad popped up on the page, I slowed down to linger over each pithy exchange.
Ah, Friendship: All flavors and varieties of zip, zap, zup laced with drinking and drugs between Joe and his buddies. Yet again another fun, funny part of the novel: the waggish ways in which Joe talks about his buds. Here’s vintage Joe on a guy named Delia: “At best of times, the Irish are masters of obtuseness. Delia approaches English side on, like a winking crab sketched by a drunken Picasso.” And here’s our captivating Mr. Chambers on another pal: “Frank isn’t exactly annoyed unless it’s something trivial. He’s as cool as an Eskimo’s fart when it comes to taking lives. That’s what makes him one of Western Europe’s finest torturers.”
Dumpy Domicile: The many colorful images, metaphors and anecdotes Joe comes up with in describing Dublin will never find their way into brochures and pamphlets to attract tourists. Among my favorites: “These canals were once the pride of the city. One city councilor even proposed changing the city’s coat of arms to include a dead dog and a shopping cart. These days, like the councilor, the canals are just full of shite.”
Stand-Up Novelist: What gives the jokes their particular zing is their context within the novel’s unfolding storyline. You’ll have to read for yourself to get the full impact but let me share a one-liner, no, make that a six-liner: “Back when I lived in Athens, I was always getting shot at. Islamic fundamentalists, Marxist revolutionaries, anarchist insurrectionists, disgruntled neo-Platonists. Dublin, not so much. When was the last time you saw video footage of a kidnapped U.S. citizen denouncing his country’s use of Shannon airport for rendition flights or America’s continued deployment of tourist buses along Nassau Street or its creeping cultural imperialism? Never, right? The Irish are such pussies.”
The Stuff of Sticky Notes: Lists abound from beginning to end, enough lists to satisfy any reader’s taste, from Hee Haw lowest-denominator to the more erudite and intellectual. Two examples from the later, the list of little known facts about Bertrand Russell: On Sunday mornings, he used to make prank phone calls to Malcolm Muggeridge pretending to be the voice of God; for his Ph.D. thesis of 1904, he presented an irrefutable argument that demonstrated his own non-existence. He was consequently denied his doctorate by the board of examiners at Cambridge. - Jay Spencer Green's academic training in philosophy exerts its influence in amusing ways.
Politics: Let’s not forget Joe and a number of his buddies work for the CIA, after all. The nasty business of surveillance, sneaking and snooping are all part of the government’s game. Even the less than technically competent Irish government plays this shrouded sport, as noted by Joe when he reflects on his friend’s need to work with a bunch of fumbling Jackeens: “In Frank’s case, coordinating activities with his Irish counterparts is complicated by the fact that there isn’t really an equivalent to the CIA; no Seamus Bond, no Double-O’Siobhan. What secrets do the Irish have that are worth protecting?”
Pace: Humor is all about practice and timing. A lesson every stand-up comic and author learns, usually the hard way. Jay Spencer Green’s background includes a spat as a stand-up comic and, since he knew he wanted to be a writer at the age of eight, writing and writing and more writing, many thousands of hours writing, writing an entire stack of unpublished and unpublishable novels. But the payoff was big: Breakfast at Cannibal Joe’s is a very funny book. I truly fancy a book where I can frequently laugh out loud. I haven’t laughed as hard since I read master Russian satirist Vladimir Voinovich’s The Fur Hat last fall. And that’s really saying something as I’ve read many dozens of books since.
Language: Other than a smattering of Sinéad O'Shea’s verbal Irish shillelaghs, there’s none of that Irvine Welsh mauling of the English language into local dialects. This book is written to be read - I mean, if your literary aesthetic includes light comedy and black humor, you don’t want your readers tripping over lingo, dialect or idioms. An added kick for those who want to work their vocabulary chops, at the start of one day, Joe shares the new words he would like to learn, including: bhent – a downward spiral; swiviet – a state of extreme agitation; grutch – to begrudge; darry – to weep spontaneously or for no apparent reason. Yes, indeedy-do, these words tie in to the story as Joe is agitated, begrudges his fate and feels like weeping since he is on a downward spiral.
More Great News: Jay Spencer Green’s new novel Fowl Play, set in Manchester, England, is recently released. Additionally, the author is currently hard at work on Manuel Estimulo's Fascist Book of Everything, a novel in the form of an encyclopedia drawing on such varied sources as Don Quixote, Flaubert's Dictionary of Received Ideas, Henry Root's World of Knowledge and zombies, On a personal note, I can't wait to see if any of those zombie references are to Night of the Living Dead.
Jay Spencer Green lives his robust life in Dublin and specializes in transgressive social satire
"How many CIA operatives does it take to change a light bulb? Three. One to take out the old light bulb, one to put in an acceptable replacement, and one to fabricate the evidence proving that the old light bulb had weapons of mass destruction." - Jay Spencer Green, Breakfast at Cannibal Joe's
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