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It has been only two years since the first serious 9/11 novels appeared, and already this genre-unto-itself has progressed from drama to melodrama to farce.
Exhibit A: the most peculiar of all the new terror tales, Clifford Chase's debut novel, Winkie.
Winkie is not a teenager plotting to destroy the Lincoln Tunnel but rather a teddy bear, a mangy 81-year-old stuffed animal of indeterminate gender passed among generations of Chases.
When a boy (yes, named Cliff) tires of Winkie, the bear mysteriously manages to hop off a shelf, break a window and escape to the forest.
Just as oddly, Winkie gives birth to a cub, only to see the newborn captured by a bomb-building woodsman who's part Unabomber, part Timothy McVeigh.
Winkie arrives at the hermit's cabin to save the cub, but the terrorist, who is surrounded with explosive devices and plans for attacks, has had a heart attack.
Finally the clueless feds arrive, only to mistake our beloved bear for a dangerous, transgender teddy terrorist.
Following are 9,678 counts of murder, sedition and filthy sexual activity.
Chase might have a funny Saturday Night Live sketch here, but it isn't a novel.
His surface-deep satire strikes only the obvious one-note: In these terror-fueled times, the bumbling FBI might mistake a bear for bin Laden; the bumbling Justice Department prosecutes the case like the crime of the century; the bumbling media cover the bald farce as reality. Even Jay Leno cracks wiser than that.
But if Winkie falls short as satire, it also fails as fairy tale. Yes, Winkie is a stand-in for the dreams we discard in the rush to adulthood.
But Chase's prose is overly cloying: "If only Cliff loved him like before, with the old fervor, Winkie could be happy being a toy forever."
When Chase isn't overplaying the cute card, he's obsessed with bodily functions. He even finds the potty humor in Winkie's unexpected and painful childbirth.
Forget about childhood loneliness and the war on terror. What really fascinates Chase is what a bear does in the woods.
Winkie
By Clifford Chase
Grove, 240 pp., $16.95
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