OOF

In Witherspoon’s novel, a writer catalogs the outrage that met the impending publication of his latest book.

Strobe Witherspoon, who shares a name with the author of this novel, is soon to publish a new book, FLOTUS: A Memoir, a satirical account of the first lady’s journey to fame. (FLOTUS is clearly inspired by Melania Trump’s life, though neither her name nor her husband’s is ever mentioned in Witherspoon’s account.) Strobe’s book dramatizes the first lady’s rocky marriage to her presidential husband, his “deviant sexual behavior,” and a possible plot on his life in which some speculate she was involved. The response to the book—even before anyone has read it—is frenzied. Some interpret Strobe’s work as thinly disguised nonfiction and theorize that the writer, once a CIA analyst, is drawing on classified information. A boycott of the book is organized, a chapter is leaked, and journalists dig deep into Strobe’s troubled past in pursuit of information that might discredit him. Initially, his publisher, VITAL Books, vigorously defends him but then shows signs of wavering. Witherspoon’s eclectic work effectively documents the feverish public reaction as a “compendium” of the “Online Outrage Fiesta,” or “OOF,” which gives the novel its title. He tackles a broad spectrum of media, including comically scathing excerpts from tweets, podcasts, blogs, and even academic journals investigating “infodemics” and “discordant narratives,” and he also keenly exposes the ways in which Strobe, the character, is implicated in his own online assault due to his obsessive attachment to public life. However, the format, though inventive, can become repetitive and somewhat exhausting—something that even the author seems to concede toward the end of the book: “Congratulations to those who made it this far. Or should I say condolences?” Nevertheless, this is an innovative literary experiment that supplies a thoughtful commentary on the “discourse virus” of our age.

A strikingly original book that astutely captures an era of division.