Word: brinkley
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They named their foundling David Brinkley and taught him the meaning of goodness. When he grew up, he became a tough New York reporter. But underneath his not-so-mild-mannered facade, he was the greatest superhero of all, vulnerable to only one substance: Cronkite. And Brinkley was alone. All the other superheroes were dead or useless. Snoopy was missing in action after the Red Baron finally shot him down. Wonder Woman was working for Ms. Magazine. Captain Mantra was in a suburban sanitarium, after swearing off the use of his superpowers when he witnessed the death of his sister...
...Brinkley, the protagonist in Robert Mayer's comical novel Superfolks, was sinking into complacent and oh-so-comfortable middle class, middle age life on Swansdown Island, a "suburban pocked" retreat outside New York. Beneath his happily married, proud-daddy exterior, he was helplessly wondering why his superpowers were inexplicably vanishing...
...uses the plight of the aging comic-book hero to parody most of what characterizes America and everything that makes up New York. Shortly after the novel begins, chaos strikes the bankrupt Metropolis. The unpaid and overworked police force have resigned en masse and looting, rape and murder pervade. Brinkley, watching football, curses his bookie and tries to ignore the city's crisis until the fateful thought strikes him, "Is it a conspiracy?" Needless to say, it is. And Brinkley plunges into a crisis of conscience. Should he leave the repose of his suburban home, his loving wife, his comfortable...
Like any red, white and blue interplanetary alien, Brinkley opts for what is right. The book recounts his exploits as he searches for the root of the conspiracy. Is it the Mafia, the Russians, or the Texas oil millionaire? Could it be--gasp...
...politics, values and mores. But the reader is never quite sure when Mayer crosses the line between humor and conviction. The angels in Heaven bustle about designing portable restrooms, and manna and nectar refreshment concessions for the up-coming gala bimillenium. ("We're expecting millions of tourists," Mary tells Brinkley.) The bumbling corruption of Soviet-American disarmament negotiators and the CIA's school for assassins are cleverly ridiculed, but the caricatures contain more than a morsel of truth. Yet the whole "message," if it is indeed a message, is almost too absurd...