AS THE ROOSTER CROWS EARTHIAN OKNESS INCREASES
by Richard John Stapleton
In this novel, an ordinary man gets invited to a series of conferences about saving the world.
As this “experience and research-based” book opens, a man named Henry keeps getting persistent emails from a mysterious organization fronted by Dr. Rout Logger telling him he’s been randomly selected to participate in an unusual series of meetings. These emails are offering Henry $5,000 per meeting to attend a string of group discussions about the survival and well-being of life on the planet. Henry attends the first of these meetings in Louisville, Kentucky, where he learns the leader of each session will be determined by spinning a copper rooster called “The Truther.” The organization behind these sessions is convinced that if humans don’t make “significant changes” in their “feeling, thinking, deciding, and behavior” patterns, the survival of Earth might be in jeopardy. The purpose of the gatherings is to increase human “Okness” in order to prevent this catastrophe. Stapleton kicks all of this off with a preface in which he mentions that “transactional analysis” movements like “I’m OK—You’re OK” and “Life Positions” will be central to his book. He, amazingly, also advises readers unfamiliar with such movements to look them up online. He then proceeds to lecture for 350+ pages. Only nominally is this work a novel; there are no distinct characters, no plot, and no dramatic arcs. Each “Okness” meeting kicks off with a spin of the rooster and then immediately settles into paragraph after paragraph of Stapleton himself, under the paper-thin veneer of his cast, examining “Spaceship Earth” and all the troubles besetting it, from unemployment and the erosion of the middle class to Trumpian politics and climate change. Many readers will find much of the speechifying sage and intriguing with plenty of rich, thought-provoking details. But those coming to this novel for a story will be disappointed.
A smart but rambling series of discussions on everything that’s wrong with the world today.