Look at the cover of this book. Just look at it. Could you find a more patriotic dude if you tried? Tight denim jeans? Check. Torn American flag t-shirt? Check. T-shirt tucked into belted jeans because while patriotic freedom fighters might roll rough, they don't roll reckless? Check. Throw in a leather wristband and a digital watch and you've got the ultimate American, circa 1987.
If you want to get an idea of how corny and out-of-date something like Cory Doctorow's super-hip young adult novel, Little Brother, is going to feel in 23 years, just read Tom De Haven's USSA. A tiny howl of teenage rage against adults who don't understand cool stuff like awesome concerts by gnarly rock bands and peace, it takes place in a bombdigity version of 1996 where everyone dresses like it's 1985 and happening teachers say things like, "Let's finish up our discussion of All Quiet on the Western Front, now shall we?"
It may be 1996 in America but instead of being obsessed with the "Macarena" or listening to "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls, everyone is obsessed with the recent military coup that put a bunch of right-wing hawks into the White House. It's not the year Tupac died, it's the year freedom died. Awesome imaginary rock bands like Murder of Crows and Billy Panter aren't allowed to play their totally tubular concerts anymore, and right-wing Tea Party types watch everything you do. USSA stands for the United Secure States of America - a country taken over in a military coup when Pentagon hawks decided that the president wasn't being tough enough on America's enemies. Could it be a prescient warning about our current political climate? The sole Amazon review for the book thinks so, "I allways thought the premise of this series was a bit far-fetched but now with Patriot Act 1&2 being a fact of life I get why this series made me feel worried back then!"
Me too!
I'm about as left-wing as you can get and so you'd think that a liberal nightmare like this would chill me to the core with its Hitler's Youthy Young Patriots, its red-eyed robot sparrows, and its rallies for freedom broken up by exploding birds. But no, what shook me the hardest is how ugly the fashions of the future are. Just check out this description of the stool pigeon substitute teacher who shows up one day:
*"He wore a dark gray unconstructed jacket, a white shirt, and a skinny black leather tie."*
When the ladies dress up they put on "cola colored jeans and a yellow jersey," they wear "not much but some" make-up and their hair…oh, their heavenly hair. When it's not held back in a pony tail with a piece of yarn it's "brushed silky" so that it "bounced when she moved."
You mean, like this?
Fortunately, fashion is a double-edged sword and it can also serve as an important plot point. The true heroes in USSA all just happen to wear "a tiny gold earring" in their left ears. Here's the first time we see the book's illin' rebel icon:
"He was wearing old jeans and a faded denim jacket that was studded with buttons that all said No, with double exclamation points. In his left ear he wore a tiny gold earring."
Back in middle school I was always confused over which ear meant you were gay but these days Wikipedia clears that right up:
The left ear was reserved for piercing by straight men and a pierced right ear signified that one was gay. It is similarly held that among homosexual men, an earring in the left ear signifies a dominant partner or "top" and the right a submissive one or "bottom."
So the heroes of this book are all straight, or at least dominant partners or "top." Although I'm not sure how dominant someone who wears a jeans jacket studded with buttons is.
But what this book lacks in fashion sense it makes up for in tension. And I don't mean suspense, I mean actual stress. Eddie, the main character, narrates the story and it reads less like the diary of an American hero and more like the first person monologue of a school shooter. He gets stomach cramps when people talk to him, his head aches all the time, his guts twist and squirm, and he lives in a state of absolute paranoia, terrified that everyone around him is a spy or an informer.
In chapter two, he wakes up, goes to school, gets a new teacher, and attends English class. Here's the internal damage:
He sees a jeep: "Usually I'd see it and something would twist inside me and I'd clench my teeth, which wasn't a great idea since I had a couple of small cavities and they hurt when I did that."
A former friend wants him to come to a rally: "‘That's none of your business,’ I told him, beginning to feel tight across the chest."
He looks at the former friend: "I hated his guts. But I felt bad about it."
Someone tells him that the shirt he's wearing is not permitted at school, but it turns out that it is: "I felt a spark of panic." Then, after getting the all-clear on his wardrobe, "I started wishing I hadn't worn the stupid thing."
The new teacher takes attendance: "I started biting on a knuckle and bit so hard I almost broke the skin...I don't know what I felt exactly. Queasy, like."
The English teacher asks questions about the themes of that week's reading: "He had small piercing eyes, that could really make you feel uncomfortable."
He looks at a classmate: "I felt like belting him, honest to God."
He thinks about the political situation: "I was giving myself a headache and a stomachache and my fingers hurt from being clenched so tight."
All that's needed is the next door neighbor's dog telling him to kill for Satan and we're suddenly reading The Daily Diary of the Son of Sam. It could be mistaken for characterization but every character in the book gets the same treatment. Later, his homeslice Mike plays basketball in gym class:
"In gym, Mike was on my basketball team and he played badly, as usual. But what was new was how hard he fired his passes. Like he didn't want you to catch it, he wanted to kill you with it. He threw the ball like a crazy person. That goon didn't know how lucky he was. Mike could've creamed him in two seconds flat.
He'd been doing akido since sixth grade."
You know who else has been doing akido since sixth grade?
Steven Seagal.
USSA ends on a cliffhanger. Someone has just recorded over Eddie's favorite Murder of Crows cassette tape and his gut twitches and writhes like a snake with a broken back as his head pounds, and then…the book ends. The back pages promise 3 sequels, but I've heard hide nor hair of them. Which is too bad, but I guess some things are just too awesome to exist in this fallen world of ours and, like a third season of Steven Seagal: Lawman, they will only ever exist in our dreams.