| Beach Reading - It's Tourist Season |
by Candice Fulton
"...rapacious developers, confused but well-meaning protagonists, a motley assortment of sleazebags, endangered species (animal and human) and guerrilla environmentalists."
Tourist Season By Carl Hiaasen
When the time comes to stretch out under a palapa, toes in sand, coco loco close at hand, and reach into the beach bag for a novel, there are a few things I like to find between the book covers. Humor is good. Dark humor is even better for the perspective it lends. Mystery is satisfying. Maybe a certain sassy irreverence, to magnify the pleasure of being away from everyday concerns. And edgy characters who could be huddled around a table in the bar behind me, conspiring in hushed voices, or prancing down the beach, unaware of their impending fate.
As you can imagine, when I can find all of these things in one author's works, I feel like I've won the literary lottery. My own favorite jackpot is Carl Hiaasen.
Hiaasen, once an investigative reporter, now a columnist for The Miami Herald, a non-fiction writer and novelist, will never be in Oprah's book club. Let's just say that political correctness is not his strong suit. His novels are populated with rapacious developers, confused but well-meaning protagonists, a motley assortment of sleazebags, endangered species (animal and human) and guerrilla environmentalists. His venue is south Florida, but his message translates to any remaining tropical paradise where crocodiles still lounge, baby turtles require rescuing, idyllic beaches are threatened, and dolphins are held in captivity.
If you haven't yet found Carl Hiaasen, lucky you: he's written a bunch of novels, all gleefully bizarre. I suggest reading them in chronological order, or as close to it as you can. His first and perhaps darkest novel is Tourist Season. Subversive and hilarious, this book is a purge, propelled by the author's rage at the greed that is paving the everglades, and at the clueless tourists (in really tacky clothes) who encourage it. (Trivia Break: Jimmy Buffet's song "The Ballad of Skip Wiley" was written in praise of the environmental outlaw who is a main character.)
Don't stop there--next comes Double Whammy, where we meet the memorable Skink, former governor of Florida, madman of the mangroves with a stable moral reactor core and a skin as ragged as a loincloth after a hurricane. He reappears in Native Tongue, a scathing satire of Florida theme parks tempered by a hefty dose of silly. (Rumor has it that Hiaasen's secret dream is to be banned from Disneyworld-I, for one, am amazed that this book didn't do the trick.) Skink slides out of the swamp with his snake-on-a-stick in several of Hiaasen's novels. I'm always delighted to meet him again, as he is the guy who made me ask myself the question, "How can you be in love with a man who eats roadkill?"
If you're craving more, step up to the smorgasbord: Skin Tight, Strip Tease, Stormy Weather, Lucky You, Sick Puppy, and a new one due out in January 2002 called Basket Case.
Hiaasen's unclassifiable fiction is usually found in mystery sections, as there's always a murder or two. Or five. It's not typical crime fiction, with clear borders between right and wrong. His heroes find themselves sucked into ethical whirlpools where civil disobedience, even outright lawbreaking, surface as weapons of last resort against boneheaded corruption and environmental destruction.
Hey, I like the occasional personal growth book as well as the next guy. But every now and then, we all need to get away. If you're ready to take a break from global concerns to cheer for ragged rebels and accidental outlaws, to escape to a world of dark hilarity where idealism flourishes, albeit wrapped in cynicism; if sometimes you get really really ticked off at what's happening to our natural world in the name of progress-pull Carl out of your beach bag, sit back, and get ready to rock and roll.
October 2001
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