Famed director Stanley Kubrick enjoyed the quote by American novelist William S. Burroughs, “A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what’s going on.” Bentley Little fittingly paraphrases the adage early in his satirical tale of social tyranny, The Association. Though many critics have stated that Little’s work threatens–on one too many occasions–to break the rope upon which our disbelief hangs, such commentary overlooks the conceit which the author is presenting as he provides us with a succinct critique of bureaucratic corruption posing as the innocent, benevolent supervisor.
Barry and Maureen escape their hectic California lives and relocate to the sleepy gated community of Bonita Vista, Utah. However, to their dismay, their local homeowner’s association proves to be more demanding, and exponentially more insane in its expectations of its residents, than any faction of urban America ever fathomed being. Will the couple cut their loses, suffer the financial consequences, and run while they still can or will the distraught couple attempt to usurp the injustice of the residential board and its members?
Literature is process of fictionalizing the real world. As such, exaggeration allows for an artist to condense his or her meaning into a more terse form so as to make it–not only more readily digestible given that the factual, real world facets have been eliminated–but also more potent in its affect. Thus, to say that the extents and lengths to which Little’s homeowner’s association goes is too great, that such dissipates any anxiety that has been accrued, is dismissing the metaphorical import of the text.
Equally essential to the value of a work of art is the time in which it appears. Not entirely irrelevant to Little’s themes is the note that Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” premiered amid the McCarthy hearings as the playwright attempted to align the similarities between the insanity of the Salem Witch Hunts and the unjustified persecution of anyone which the conservative senator could label a Red. Likewise, temporal and historical observations are vital in order to garner a true appreciation and understanding of The Association for Barry and Maureen’s dilemma–a self-contained world in which the leaders, whose role it is to protect them, are paradoxically their greatest threat–echoes what many cite to be the problem with life in post-9/11 America. Barry spends a large portion of the novel conjecturing and attempting to discern whether his homeowner’s association is guilty of crimes which he has heard rumored and, later, witnessed firsthand. Yet, as soon as Barry’s loyalty begins to waver, much like the relationship between Winston Smith and Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984, he is reassured by the homeowner’s board that its primary concern is his best interest.
Little’s conflict serves as a segue for the author–not only to satirize the current political administration in America, the same one which told us, repeatedly and verbatim, that there undoubtedly existed WMD, thus necessitating our need to spend billions of tax payers’ dollars and thousands of lives on a war effort–but to examine the methodologies and practices that go into groupthink, mass manipulation, and the creation and implementation of self-interested legal contrivances. What results is not unlike contemporary society in which free speech, personal choice, and individuality are sacrificed for a greater sense of security.
However, The Association’s rub is that Barry and Maureen aren’t given the opportunity to select one over the other as the latter is inflicted upon them. It is with this that Little arrives at the crux of his work for we watch as, even within a democratic society, favors are granted, opposition is thwarted, and the powers that be spare no expense to–not only retain control–but expand it at every given (and forced) opportunity. This is perhaps why some readers begrudge the novel for we, understandably, sit uneasily as we witnesses the couple’s earnest attempts at playing along as they obey the current regime in the faint hope of making their lives livable. Yet, much to our and the characters’ chagrin, the contrived rules inevitably contradict themselves, thus forming a “Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t” situational Mobius strip replete with the instructions that one always remain, however absurdly, on the inside perimeter.
Unlike most narratives wherein the villain is oftentimes more intriguing than the hero, Little accomplishes the seldom achieved task of fashioning a truly abhorrent antagonist. The homeowner’s association cannot, even by the wildest theorizing, be defended as the author masterfully aligns his readers with his protagonists. It is with this, along with a continually mounting sense of ominous presentiment and peril much like Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, that The Association not only genuinely frightens, but actively engages the reader as we eagerly anticipate the downfall of the titular malevolence.
More rigid critics might cite Little’s unequivocal resolve of whether or not the association is responsible for the atrocities witnessed within the novel as unjustly depriving the audience of potentially rewarding speculation. However, given the author’s agenda–to examine how tyranny is created and sustained by way of moral and social façades–to do otherwise would create a whole other narrative, one which the writer obviously didn’t intend.
However, there are grievances to be had with the novel. The medium by which The Association is constructed is structurally autobiographical. Aside from the opening dedication which hopes that the author’s son never has to be part of a homeowner’s association, our main character is a horror writer. Nevertheless, Little is to be commended for noting that his real-life horror is just that and, hoping to alert others to the fact, fictionalizing the experience in order to reach a wider audience yet, especially during the formative stages of the central conflict, we sense that the author is merely transcribing his past tortures. Secondly, and perhaps an unfair criticism, due to their subjective genesis given Barry and Maureen’s select setting, the nightmarish scenarios contained within The Association are not as dominating as the absolute tyranny witnessed in Little’s comparable text, the divinely executed The Store. That said, and lukewarm and justifiable critiques aside, Little uses the ruse of a horror writer to posit self-referential quips in order to save time by way of readily substantiating what would otherwise skirt the edges of implausibility. With the mere wry utterance by Barry that “Such and such is something which would appear in one of my novels,” Little deprives his audience of the due respect of fleshing out the situation at hand. Also, a seeming cross to be bore by many, many horror writers is carried once again by Little in that his extremely moot, largely unsatisfactory conclusion breaks narrative fluidity. With this, the novel’s finale becomes overbearing as Little imparts several last-minute didactic metaphors which had been, hereto, wryly cast with consistent subtlety.
What makes Stephen King’s Cujo far more terrifying than It is the fact that the former’s crisis could, and undoubtedly does, occur to average, everyday citizens. The threat of a rabid canine is a legitimate one that, though it might not be something which readily preoccupies our waking hours, is nevertheless more logistically foreboding than the purely imaginative fear of an evil, shape shifting clown who resides in the sewers. That said, Little’s novel is vastly more psychologically devastating than King’s frothing dog for his central menace–an organization which is above the law, is unrelentingly corrupt, and sets its own rules and regulations–to all too timely, if not frighteningly accurate.
Bentley Little’s almost perfect satire upon bureaucratic and social tyranny sends unnerving reverberations through its reader on a psychological as well as philosophical level. In the tradition of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (sans the comic lunacy), Franz Kafka’s The Trial (without the long waiting line), George Orwell’s 1984 (with the addition of an overriding metaphor), and William Burroughs entire canon (without the sci-fi), The Association is a scathing critique by way of legitimized paranoia during a time when such rings eerily close to home. If nothing else, Little gives a whole new meaning to fighting one’s way up the social ladder . . . .
-Egregious Gurnow
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- Interview with Actor Nathan Baesel (Behind the Mask: ROLV) - January 22, 2015
- An Interview with Bentley Little - January 22, 2015
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- Fearful Meditations: An Annotated Bibliography of Studies in Horror Cinema - January 22, 2015
- I Can’t Discuss Glen Morgan’s New Film, [Censored] [Censored], Because Liberty Counsel Says It’s Rude: Race, Religious Tolerance, Ethics, and Aesthetics and the 21st Century Holiday Horror Film - January 22, 2015
- Roger Ebert’s Bloody Ax: An Examination of the Film Critic’s Elitist Dismissal of the Horror Film by Michael “Egregious” Gurnow - January 22, 2015
- Defending the King: An Examination of Academia’s Reaction to Stephen King Being Awarded the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters - January 22, 2015
- Zarathustra . . . Cthulhu . Meursault: Existential Futility in H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” - January 22, 2015
- The Evil - January 18, 2015
