LONG PIG

by Jon Stephen Fink ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1996

Continuing to show the nervy, offbeat wit first seen in Further Adventures (1993), Fink here tackles a more ambitious subject--the power of televangelists and the commingling of commerce and religion--with far less success. Fresh from USC business school, entrepreneur Alex Berry has product ideas galore but no money. When plans for the ""Odo-bag,"" a portable sachet in a variety of scents, wither beneath the scorn of a potential investor, Alex comes back to earth, latching onto the design for a miracle machine: a down-home processor capable of turning compost into feed, paper into fuel, waste into fertilizer, and, most importantly, raw ingredients into sausage--all by using interchangeable parts. Named the Humpty Dumpster, it catches the eye of evangelist Jim Tickell, who has a reputation not only for wildly successful fund drives for his TV ministry but also for divine inspiration in picking business ventures. Poised to take over a rundown pig farm, JT sees in Alex's idea just what's needed to make another commercial killing, so the two become partners. At first the Dumpster and Hummingbird Farm sausages exceed expectations, but a critical sales pitch goes awry at a Sacramento revival meeting when carelessness causes pig feces to be ground into sausage sampled by Iowa pig farmers, laying them low. Meanwhile, JT's erratic behavior has so estranged him from his wife that she sleeps with Alex, and when an earthquake swallows the farm, JT vanishes, too, leaving Alex to take the heat for the tainted sausage. In time, Alex recovers enough to marry JT's now ex-wife and start a family, but fortune will smile less benignly on JT. Complex plotting and a detailed treatment of fundamentalist tenets make for heavy going, but they also create a provocative tale, leaving little doubt that this is a writer to be reckoned with.

Pub Date: April 1, 1996

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 324

Publisher: Jonathan Cape--dist. by Trafalgar

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1996

Categories: FICTION