From San Diego Writers Monthly publishes California Writers,

California authors, new writers, offering readers info on how to get published, from literary agents, writing coaches, San Diego editors on editing, self-publishing how-to, publishing chap books and short-run books, book doctors, ghost writers, San Diego authors events, interviews of writers, book reviews, free readings, book signings, free stories, online fiction, poetry workshops, free novels, free essays, free ideas, science fiction, humorous stories, rants, funny essays, copywriting, freelancing info, and musings about living on this lonely planet circling a lonely star.

A Mind Bruising Work of Staggering Incompetence,
by David Boyne
copyright 2003 All Rights Reserved

A decidedly cranky review of
Heart of a Pagan: The Story of Swoop
A Novel by Andrew Bernstein
ISBN 1-889439-29-0
The Paper Tiger
http://www.SwoopTroop.com
http://www.AndrewBernstein.net

Andrew Bernstein,
Swoop's Creator

The hero is named Swoop. Swoop is a basketball player. No, wait, my mistake: he is "the greatest athlete in the world". How Swoop arrived at this mountaintop while still in high school is anyone’s guess. Why Swoop mysteriously chooses to play basketball for a middle-of-everything University in a middle-of-everything town called Hoppo will become clear—sort of—should you read that far.

The narrator is named Duggan Claveen. He is one super smart guy, who happens to attend a middle-of-everything University. He makes sure to tell us right away that he routinely gets up "two-and-a-half hours before the start of classes" so he can enjoy some quality time communing with his buds, Descartes, Aristotle, Plato and Locke. But wait—for all his intellectual muscle, and being the son of a doctor to boot—our narrator is, dare I say, crippled. He has a congenital physical impairment. This causes him to limp. He has some emotional limps, too, which might explain his choosing to be the trainer (yes, the trainer) of the University’s basketball team, where he can surround himself with muscled Adonis-like men who he then fixates on while continually offering the reader such elegant, psychologically twisted and one-dimensional descriptions of these athletes as "plodding Clydesdales," "Neanderthal from Texas," "long arms and red knuckles that scraped the floor."

This is our narrator. But do not fear for him, because our trustworthy narrator will serve as a specimen demonstrating that super-human physical exercise under the tutelage of "the greatest athlete in the world" will clean up any mess.

The story? Hmmm. I think it’s a love story, between Swoop and Duggan. (Oh! Strictly and precisely Platonic, of course! Think of it as the love story between Peter and Jesus, rather than between the Magdalene and Jesus, but like, only if Jesus and Peter were Ancient Greek dudes, but then without all that buggering schtuff. Get it?)

No, wait. Here’s the real story: Swoop’s mission.

The real reason "the world’s greatest athlete" has come to hopeless Hoppo (or is it hop-less Hoppo?) is—to proselytize. Yes, our hero Swoop is on the same sales mission as any Mormon on a bicycle, priest telling ethnic jokes at a Chamber of Commerce dinner, or Imam haranguing a packed Saudi mosque: Swoop is collecting souls. Oh, but not for his personal use. He’s collecting souls so that he may set them free.

And this basketball-playing entrepreneur has himself a sure-fire American product, second only to instant weight-loss programs: a new religion. This book is the story of Swoop aggressively branding and marketing the new religion he has cobbled together from sanitized Pagan mysticism, sanitized Greek mythology, sanitized Robber Baron moxie, and good clean Objectivist morality.

Ah, just what the world is dying for (dying from?). Another religion. Another crusade. Praise Swoop, and pass the ammunition.

Swoop and his "Swoop Troop" have the requisite ruthless moral megalomania of any successful messiah and apostles waging a crusade. They are masters of the most primitive and effective glue for all collectivism: the bellicose belief in Us Against Them. You are with us, or against us. (Gee. Where have I heard that one lately?) You are a believer, or you are an infidel. (Gosh, I’ve been hearing that one a lot lately, too.) And if you are not with us, you are less—less than we are, less than you should be, less than fully human.

Of course, some people still resist. The fools. Resistance is futile! They know not Swoop’s First Commandment—"Heroes do not permit their quests to be thwarted."

So when some angry, hate-filled fanatical Christian religious wackos burn a cross on a true believer’s property—some angry, hate-filled fanatical Swoopian religious wackos burn a basketball on a church’s property. Silly schtuff? Or the same philosophy followed by some angry, hate-filled fanatical Muslim religious wackos who hijack and crash commercial airliners to incinerate thousands of infidels?

Of course, Swoop has setbacks. After all, every hero needs schtuff to overcome, yes? So when "the world’s greatest athlete" is injured (whoa! could it have been an 'inside job', a be-tray-al!?), one of his acolytes (who happens to be "the world’s greatest surgeon") flys out from Big Bad New York to little Hoppo and performs a super-human medical miracle.

Alas, the medical miracle only goes so far. Now Swoop has to really show the schtuff he is made of. And he shows his super-human will—by exercising. And exercising. And exercising. Until, at long last, the re-buffed hero reaches the Big Game, single-handedly wins the Big Game while hopping on one leg (I’m not making this up), and firmly establishes a beachhead—somewhere in the cornfields of the American Midwest—in his religious war.

Heart of a Pagan is a ridiculously conceived and badly executed novel.

I would not wish my worst enemy into these cornfields.

>>Back to top<<