Lake Wobegon Days - Nine out of 10

 Lake Wobegon Days

Nine out of 10

Now that America – or maybe we should say Erica, given that there is a Norwegian community in Lake Wobegon that argues against the present name of the USA, taken as it is from Amerigo Vespucci, who had had little to do with the once great nation, instead of choosing the much more suitable King Eric and somehow Erica appears to be more appropriate for the country that has the leader that is the laughing stock of the world– is preparing for the next elections and the crossroads that are there, we might take some ideas, valuable information from this amusing book that looks at the different aspects of life in an ordinary town, if a fictional one at that.

We can identify in Lake Wobegon Days some of the presumptive supporters of the Very stable Genius that has brought so much shame on the USE, United States of Erica, and disillusion mixed with a little bit of glee – the under signed had thought about moving to Erica in the nineties, when he had been working for AT&T (at the time one of the top five companies in the world) and considered trading the position of Representative for Romania and Bulgaria in the calling card domain – these were the days when calling internationally cost an arm and a leg and thus provided AT&T and others with tones of money – for a regular job in New Jersey, once the Atlanta Olympics would have been over.

For yours truly it is difficult to read a book like this one and not project the characters, plot into the present and try to understand what seems to be incomprehensible, how the once brave, proud, honest, generous nation has come to cherish, though just as a minority, but still a very sizeable one, the paradigm of selfishness, arrogance, deceit, shallowness as embodied in a pathetic figure who is obsessed with his own persona, lies as he breathes, as John Kerry has said the other day ‘writes love letters to dictators and insults allies’ or Michelle Obama ‘he is not the president we need him to be and simply cannot be…and if you think things cannot possibly get any worse, I promise you they can and they will if he is elected for another four years…it is what it is’ the latter part could have been an irony in reference to what the fool said in a recent interview on the pandemic ‘it is what it is’…and he simply does not care.

Therefore this is a difficult period in that even when reading about another age, the tendency for this reader is to think about what happens now and how different the reality of the present is from that experienced by personages in this and other stories and there is another contradiction here, for there is a Lake Wobegon Effect, based on the book, that again appears to affect the Erican president more than most, if not all other people…

’ A tendency for most people to believe that they are above average in intelligence, sense of humor, diving ability, and similar traits. Although the effect arises from a self-serving bias, the widespread belief that it is mathematically impossible for a majority to be above average is itself a fallacy. If four people score 8/10 on a test and one scores 3/10, then the average or mean score in that five-person group is 7/10, and a majority are above average. The term was introduced by the US physician John Jacob Cannell (born 1948) in privately published reports in 1987 and 1988, commenting on the fact that all 50 US states reported elementary school results above the national average. Also called the Lake Wobegon fallacy. Also (mis)spelt Lake Woebegon and Lake Woebegone. Compare unrealistic optimism. [Alluding to Lake Wobegon, ‘a place where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average’ in a radio show entitled A Prairie Home Companion, created and hosted by the US writer Garrison Keillor (born 1942) and described in his novel Lake Wobegon Days (1985)]’

The novel is not just jocular though – even if the idea of Erica and then the associated changes, anthem which will refer to it and not America will stay with the under signed and somehow it feels right for the Very Stable Genius and the cohorts that adore and worship him and are likely to come to Washington and on the streets of their country once the fool will have lost the election – Insha’Allah – trying to overturn the results with mob power, just as they invaded the Governor’s office in Michigan, calling for violence against the impressive Governor Gretchen Whitmer, when nothing happened to them, though they had outrageous fire power, but when peaceful demonstrators were in the path of the goon who wanted to take a picture with the bible, they were gassed and attacked by various government forces…

One of the stories from Lake Wobegon that stayed with this reader refers to the poor boy who is sick, then his condition becomes even worse and they have to attach the very loyal dog that he has to some sort of improvised wheel chair that the dedicated animal drags around, until his wretched owner dies and then the dog would not abandon the grave, till the point where he comes to the house barking mad, trying to tell the family something and then when they see that he wants them to get to the cemetery and keeps howling at the grave and he tries to dig up, they use shovels and what they find is terrifying – making yours truly think of Edgar Alan Poe, where he has read for the first time about the people who have epilepsy and other conditions and in the old days could be buried alive – which is what seems to have happened in some places in our parts and then when they would discover the skeletons in a different position, they would call them the Undead and thus some of the vampire stories would be generated…the boy had been buried alive and when he woke up tried desperately to escape this monstrous fate.

For some other intriguing and often hilarious chapters of the book, there would be the experiences of the Bethren, a religious group – in fact groups and the appalling fact that most evangelicals vote with the liar, philanderer, cheat is again prominent – that rejected the other denominations and were so ‘humble as to be ridiculous’ and the children, including the narrator, would be very embarrassed by the precepts, preposterous rules and incidents generated by this extreme fait…in one episode, this family goes to the restaurant, where the prices seem outrageous – indeed, as a rule, they never pay for something that you can do at home and in better circumstances – and they are horrified when the waitress comes to ask if ‘they want something from the bar’ and the father thinks she might consider him, or the way he looks, as one who indulges on a regular basis, unfamiliar as he is with the custom, indeed, the rule, of restaurants where employees are supposed to be obliging and offer services, drinks and they are there to promote drinks, and to make visitors buy as much as possible, only when the mother is also asked about drinks, this becomes a House of Sin, it is beyond the wildest imagination and insult…how can she think she could ask such a thing and debase the serious, God fearing woman…they depart in haste and disgust…