THIRTEEN ALBATROSSES

If Robert Penn Warren had ever been turned on to hallucinogens, he might have produced something like this fantasy of a mad southern autodidact who runs for governor of Arkansas and finds just enough lunatics to bring him to the threshold of victory.

Real-life characters (the author among them) are mixed into this stew of fiction and fact, which simmers at a nice slow pace in Harington’s roundabout narration. We start from the little Ozark hamlet of Stay More (When Angels Rest, 1998, etc.), home to the polymath pig-farmer Vernon Inglenook. Made rich at an early age by the razorback hogs his family for generations has turned into the succulent Inglenook Hams, Vernon has been able to devote the better part of his life (i.e., the afternoon and evening parts, once the hogs had been slopped) to a systematic program of self-education. Moving from A to Z, he had already mastered art, chess, finance, medicine, and oceanography by the time he reached politics. Not content with skimming Locke and Hobbes, he decided to test their theories by running for governor against the odious incumbent, Shoat Bradfield. Although he has no political experience and quite a few political liabilities (not the least being a common-law marriage to his first cousin Jelena Inglenook), Vernon puts together a first-rate campaign team (known to the press corps as “The Seven Samurai”) that manages by hook and crook to bulldoze him through the primaries and to the Democratic nomination. Vowing to “extirpate” handguns, tobacco, prisons, schools, and hospitals from the state if elected, Vernon presents one of the strangest campaign platforms ever seen. Are there enough madmen—even in Arkansas—to get him into office? Let’s just say that it all comes down to absentee ballots in the end.

Wild, weird, and wonderful. Harington should send a copy to Al Gore—then disconnect his phone.