clownfucker by Snedwick P. Philebius
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Bread and Circuses

Snedwick P. Philebius is the Robert ["Woody Allen"] Zimmerman of their generation.

Perhaps, Dylan stated the obvious when in 1965 he sang "even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked".

Yet, who would have guessed how degenerate things could get since then?

Bread and circuses were once a distraction from the main game of commerce and politics.

Now, capitalism is all about generating bread, and politics has become a circus.

Clown Time's Not Over, It's Only Just Begun

In today's world, corporate executives and politicians alike have become clowns.

These times call for a man or woman of courage, someone who will point out that the emperor is wearing no clothes and even the clown sometimes must have to stand naked.

And, readers, Snedwick is that man or woman.

[From now on, I will refer to Snedwick in the gender-free plural, because surely talent of these dimensions could not be encapsulated in a singular mortal being of just one of the three available sexes.]

Erotically Attracted to a Protracted Tract

Not only is Snedwick a cultural critic of great perspicacity, they know how vital erotica has become to the cultural and political discourse of today.

"Clownfucker", as the name suggests, is a political and erotic thriller, a philosophical and fibromuscular tubular tract that Snedwick uses to penetrate the vagina of cultural modernity, work its way through cervical resistance and unblock the neuter uterus of morality, decency and popular taste.

From Here to Internity

Of course, today's metaphorical clown requires an intern, or better still, two interns, who ironically take it in turns, so to speak, to caress and pull him through his anti-hero's journey.

In Snedwick's capable hands (and, indeed, their own), Alice and Traci are today's equivalent of the aptly named Mona and Fiona of Richard Condon's "The Vertical Smile", an hilarious novel and precursor to "Clownfucker", which I can't recommend highly enough.

The Pubic Yearning of Erotica

In the political satire "The Public Burning", Robert Coover, like Dylan, damns Richard Nixon and the culture of corruption that surrounded him.

I can think of no greater compliment to pay "Clownfucker" than to say that Snedwick's genius is to add to Robert Coover's important work the pubic yearning of various sordid private enterprises.

All the Presidents' Mien

However, just as much as Coover, Snedwick's work reveals what really goes down in public office (not to mention public offices and orifices).

And it didn't stop with Tricky Dicky.

Ultimately, Snedwick's contribution to literature is that it adds a little comic Pecker (or a comic little Pecker) to the earnestness of Woodward and Bernstein, with some vital help from the Deep Throats of Alice and Traci.


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