Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2005/08/26/guns_lesbians_and_guillotines.php

Guns, Lesbians, and Guillotines

Friday, August 26, 2005

Christopher Buckley's Florence of Arabia is a Pandora's box of unintended consequences in Western-Middle Eastern relations, replete with guillotines, an exploding camel, a lesbian scandal, and even an unexpected romance. Inspired by the actual life and murder of feminist Fern Holland, Florence of Arabia is the story of the misadventures of an idealistic American who is convinced that women's liberation is the key to Middle Eastern stability.

As the tenth in a line of novels, Florence of Arabia, like Buckley's previous political commentaries, is hilarious, but this time on a topic where hilarity seemed unfeasible; beheadings, religious extremism, and oppression of women isn't exactly the ideal comic material. This new approach to the Middle East is refreshingly un-politically correct and the satire is sharp without being bitter. None of Buckley's characters escapes his witty irreverence or his delight in displaying his extensive knowledge of his subject matter through thinly-disguised caricatures. The fictional nation of Wasabia is reminiscent of Saudi Arabia, the religious fundamentalist Wahabis are evoked by Buckley's "Wasabi" sect, and the shadowy corporation funding Florence's revolution is the Waldorf, rather than the Carlyle Group. Prince Bandar (bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz), the actual Saudi ambassador to the US, is probably less than amused by Prince Bawad (bin-Rumallah al-Hamooj), his oppressive fictional counterpart who inadvertently launches Florence's crusade for gender equality when he beheads his wife (her crime: driving a car).

State Department agent Florence Farfaletti's proposal is to stabilize the Middle East by exposing the women to Western culture through TV-Matar, a satirical version of Lifetime with soaps mocking religious zealots and patriarchal extremism. Quickly rejected by the State Department, Florence's mission is taken up by a mysterious "Uncle Sam" with unlimited funds and access to intelligence. With her hand-picked, motley team of a phobic gay man, a shameless PR hack, and a seductive operations man, Florence jets to Matar—pronounced "mutter," and conveniently rhyming with Qatar. While neighboring Wasabia is the Middle East's premier "no-fun zone" (unless, of course, your idea of fun is torture), Matar is a "veritable oasis of tolerance." Between the government-established pleasure island "Infidel Land" just offshore and the placated "moolahs"—mullahs referred to as such because of their ample salaries—Matar's relaxed atmosphere provides the ideal headquarters to launch TV-Matar's Middle Eastern revolution.

While TV-Matar is successful in sparking a revolution, the conclusion is not one of US triumphalism. In fact, Florence is far from being a celebration of Western policy because everything goes wrong. The state of affairs in Matar is bleak until Buckley intervenes with a few transparent plot devices to sew up his numerous loose ends. Florence's tidy recommendations to solve the complex geopolitical hostilities have unpredictable outcomes, building on the stereotype of the American as a naive idealist whose optimism is endearing yet impractical. Buckley is aware that his fanciful suggestion is in discord with the serious nature of his subject-matter, acknowledging in an interview that TV-Matar "may sound like a far-fetched proposal but it falls into the category of wouldn't you like to be in charge for ten minutes." TV-Matar's tactic is to use humor, albeit dark humor, to highlight the ridiculousness of fundamentalism, an approach that parallels Buckley's own technique as an author.

Europeans, particularly the French, don't escape unscathed by the standard criticisms either. Buckley deftly, and appropriately, draws attention to the colonial origins of the Middle East's conflicts. Referring to such fictional sources as Let's Put Iraq Here, and Lebanon Over There: The Making of the Modern Middle East, he recounts the role of European bickering in Matar's creation. According to Buckley, Britain designed the borders of Matar with the sole purpose of irritating the French by denying their ally, Wasabia, access to a saltwater port.

The French are singled out as obstructionists who have actively sought to exacerbate tension between the US and Wasabia. The US is not alone in botching foreign affairs, "Did not France have her own proud history of screwing things up? Look at Algeria, Vietnam, Syria, Haiti—Quebec—all still reeling from their days of French rule. Clearly, France was ready and eager to show the world that she, too, could wreak disastrous, unforeseen consequences abroad, far more efficiently and almost certainly with more flair than America." In Florence, the French agents seek to wreak this havoc by fueling the ambition of royal siblings and attempting to counter-manipulate American assets.

The underhanded dealings of the French agents combine with the aggressive response of the Wasabi theocracy to produce an explosive situation. When things get too heated, Uncle Sam unannouncedly withdraws his support, abandoning the mission in order to conceal his involvement. Florence discovers that Uncle Sam was representing the Waldorf Group, an organization comprised of economic and political muscles who had been profiting from their questionably intimate relations with Wasabia's oil dynasty.

The most resonating conclusion Buckley leaves with the reader is that the unintended consequences of foreign involvement in the Middle East are immense. Nothing turns out as planned. In the land of fiction, of course, the chaos created by foreign intervention is neatly resolved by true love for Florence and stability for the Middle East. The take-home message obviously is not the happy ending, but rather the chaotic intermediate that exposes the mutation of Western policies in face of the complex religious and ethnic tensions existing in the Middle East. These issues, transcribed onto the conflict over oil-wealth at the level of nation-states, create innumerable competing loyalties and agendas that are not easily directed by foreign intervention. The challenges the West faces today in Iraq are positive proof of this importance.

Florence is a fun, easy read, however a lack of depth prevents it from being a meaningful critique. It is an entertaining, thought-provoking book—it is just that the thoughts that it provokes are not original. Buckley focuses his satire on clichéd targets: the bumbling American idealist, the French obstructionist, the religious extremist and the corrupt wealth that supports him. While its twists and turns are engaging and creative, to say the least—a staged assassination in a race car explosion, a gazelle-hunting helicopter, and a sexual jihad—the plot falls short of striking any new depth.

Buckley relies largely on witticisms which, admittedly, are very clever and make for a good read. However, if his intention was to make a more lasting commentary on the state of affairs in the Middle East, his one-liners and creative plot are disappointing. Trite caricatures and tired criticisms are hardly a substitute for insight.