Summer Reading

George & Martha

by Karen Finley

Verso, 108 pp., $15 (paper)

If you know performance artist Karen Finley's work at all, you probably suspect that the title of her new book, George & Martha, doesn't refer, except metaphorically, to the father and mother of our country. Its more immediate referent is Bush, George W., and Stewart, Martha, who, at the novel's start, are culminating their years-long affair in a cheap hotel during the Republican convention, on the eve of Stewart's incarceration. George gets boozed up, coked up, and diapered; Martha decorates their hideaway and throws a tantrum over being served from a plastic glass. But mostly, they trade abuse and act out their mommy and daddy issues: "He always turns into Baby George whenever we squabble. Like a helpless infant, whose demands and frustrations need to be met now," states Martha. "I seethe into a paternal patrol mode, which excites yet frightens me. It's part of our erotic chemistry, irresistable to both of us. Like mother and son? Nothing new here." George & Martha started as a play and benefits from the close attention to dialogue that form demands, enhanced by Finley's typically astute comic asides ("Honey, I hate to disappoint you, but I'm not the kind of guy who reads," says George). The sleek prose belies the improvisational quality we associate with Finley and highlights her ability to inhabit celebrity and expose its core pathologies, in which we all participate, if not revel. While the specificity of setting and time could date the book, Finley's brilliance – her prodigious talent at synthesizing silliness, classical and modern tragedy, pop culture, and psychology into resonant, funny, casually transgressive dramas (performed and written) that lay bare the core of our national identity – is much harder than it looks, and may well be as historic as any George or Martha. Either way, it's a good thing.