Anyone who has watched Craig Ferguson in action on the Late Late Show program has probably viewed his opening monologue with a mix of awe, befuddlement, and confused hilarity, not to mention a few “tsks, tsks” as well. Here, Ferguson can take a simple idea (“I went to the dry cleaners today”) and quickly pull the audience down Irony Boulevard, where it meets the fork between Sarcasm Place and Satire Court, and then continues to Chuckle Circle and the Comedy Gold Memorial.

He is, as they say, a cheeky bastard, which is high praise for a Scotsman. With his debut novel Between the Bridge and the River [2006 Chronicle Books, 332 pages] he goes further than his CBS censors would allow, with a bawdy, blazing satire that will equally offend everyone, including dwarfs possibly.

Ferguson takes on American society and conservative Christians with aplomb, mocks professional victims of all stripes, and chews up the pages with shots at selected groups of all persuasions, regardless of religion, nationality, culture, and orientation. That is to say, he’s genuinely hilarious throughout and if you find yourself seriously offended, you will need to have your sphincter adjusted.

The novel is a story of self realization as illustrated through the lives of four people especially:

1. Fraser, a Scotsman, Protestant, a bit of a conniver and lay-about, later host of a semi-religious thought for the day show on television, who undergoes psychoanalysis with an imaginary Carl Jung, and transforms his life through a sex scandal and the resulting aftermath.

“You are a perfect patient for me,” said Jung, who had appeared this time as a beautiful young English actress named Emily. “You are the totally dual entity. You are an amoral boor with the potential for sainthood. An intellectual moron. An atheistic priest. Plus I don’t really get to choose my patients these days. I can only treat people who dream about me. You seem to do so on a regular basis. Can you explain that?”

2. George, a fellow Scotsman, raised Catholic, married, one child, who has a crisis of health and faith and transforms his life by falling in love with Claudette, a Frenchwoman with karma to burn.

“Stay way from me, I am death,” she told him in perfect English. George thought for a moment. “Then I’d expect you’d be more than happy to help me light a cigarette, Oh Dark One.” “I mean it” she snapped. “So do I,” said George. “If you are Death you could take me now and save me a lot of pain.”

3. The brothers Saul and Leon, who come from nothing to become televangelists and stars, powerful and depraved, filthy rich though emotionally poor, and serve as stand-ins for the larger American culture.

From the moment they had been born, their DNA contained a combination of madness and showmanship, so it was inevitable that Saul and Leon would have ended up in Los Angeles, the home of the attention seeking spiritually disenfranchised. In the years that they were there they plowed the depths of greed, insanity, and nihilism, which is to say that they participated fully in the civic activity of Beverly Hills, their chosen parish.

Ferguson satirizes religious movements, Hollywood, the sexual politics of our day, and more as the book comes to a head with a final confrontation somewhere in Alabama during a religious convention. In between, he explores different avenues of life, the road not taken and the question of "what if it were."

Between the Bridge and the River is ultimately about the search we go on throughout our lives, whether it be for self fulfillment through religious belief, the accumulation of material things, the thirst for power, the lure of greed, or conceivably, the search for connection and love.

It’s that last part that makes Between the Bridge and the River something beyond just a cynical take on the hypocrisy of religion, the stupidity of man, and the weird things people do to each other. For inside the cheeky bastard heart, Ferguson can also be something of a romantic and the love affair between George and Claudette is not only about redemption for the characters, but the hopefulness and joy that is described within the pages whenever they interact is also an attempt by Ferguson to also say something good and positive about the human spirit. And he succeeds in writing two characters that the reader is drawn to pull for.

Between the Bridge and the River succeeds more than it fails. With so much going on between the characters and around them, some of Ferguson’s existentialist riffs get a bit bogged down in the details, and a few of the transitory bits seem rushed. But the book is flat-out hysterical in spots and much of what Ferguson observes about the human condition is spot on (three stars).

Sources
www.chroniclebooks.com
www.cbs.com/latenight/latelate
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5326669


Recommended: Yes