Florence of Arabia
By Shashi Tharoor
"The Hindu", Online edition of India's National Newspaper
February 13, 2005

Humorist Christopher Buckley may have established a trademark genre for himself, but his comic novel set in West Asia falls flat.

I suppose it was inevitable that an American humorist would seize the opportunity provided by two years of headlines to write a comic novel set in the Middle East. And when it turns out that the humorist in question is Christopher Buckley, whose Thank You for Smoking and Little Green Men I had enjoyed, I had to grab the book in search of some much-needed escape from the grim realities of my daily work. The title — Florence of Arabia — promised much, as did the promotional blurb on the book's jacket: "a biting satire of how America's good intentions can cause the Shiite to hit the fan". Unfortunately, that's about as good as it gets. Like an Alpinist who trips over his skis, it's all downhill from there.

A downhill read

The premise is, as one has come to expect from Christopher Buckley, a clever one: the tale of a secret mission by an idealistic State Department Arabist, the Florence of the title, to foment women's awakening in Arabia through a daring TV station that broadcasts (and reveals) the hitherto unmentionable. But its execution, like the garb of most of the novel's female characters, leaves something to be desired.

Even for an appreciative reader of his previous novels, Mr. Buckley disappoints. Florence of Arabia may be topical, but if Buckley's timing isn't off, he fluffs his lines. One has come to expect a giddily contrived plot and sharp writing, replete with witty asides and acerbic insights into the Zeitgeist, but Florence of Arabia falls flat, not even Sunni side up.

Mr. Buckley has established a trademark genre for himself: take an issue of general public interest in today's America (smoking, UFOs, the Middle East), concoct a conspiracy around it, lampoon the malevolent forces who sustain the establishment in question, and set up a sympathetic protagonist to set things right (not necessarily wittingly). If the formula sounds a little too pat, Buckley usually manages to give you, the reader, such a good time that you overlook the contrivances and enjoy the ride.

He doesn't manage it this time. Florence of Arabia manages topicality and tropicality, but suffers from a schizophrenia of tone: Mr. Buckley oscillates between low comedy and high-minded outrage, alternating lamely repetitive puns (mullahs so generously subsidised they are referred to as moolahs) with grim accounts of women being stoned to death. The same confusion of intent infects his trademark stylistic flourishes. His usually Dickensian names flop in the Middle East, as he seems torn between trying to be funny and seeming to be plausible. The result is names that sound authentically Arab but often aren't, and yet don't manage to raise a smile (Maliq bin-Kash al-Haz, brother of an Emir called Gazzy?). A Washington grandee lampooned in an earlier novel as "Prince Blandar" becomes "Prince Bawad" in this one. Yawn. The novel is set in the emirate of Matar, pronounced "mutter" (as the real state of Qatar is pronounced "Cutter"). This might be mildly amusing once, but the seventh time Mr. Buckley mentions it, the effect is strained.

The core problem is that Mr. Buckley doesn't seem to know whether he's writing a comic thriller, a satirical send-up of the Middle East, or a tract on the horrors visited upon women in that part of the world. He tries each in turn, none to good effect. You settle down to a nudge-nudge-wink-nod pseudo-history of a country called Wasabia (land of the Wasabis, geddit?) and look forward to a good laugh. But soon you find yourself mourning sympathetic characters stoned to death, and squirming at the clunky earnestness of lines like: "Do you realise how long it has been since an Arab country put something on the table other than self-pity, denial, finger-pointing and suicide bombers? For the first time in centuries, an Arab country is generating income not from oil but from an idea. In this case, that women might just have something to contribute to civilization other than their vaginas."

There's more in this vein, much of it not merely politically incorrect (which one should expect from a humorist) but embarrassingly and unfunnily so ("This is the Middle East! The cradle of destabilization, mother of all tar babies, the planet's longest-runnin' argument! Don't you understand that since the dawn of time, startin' with the Garden of Eden, nothing has ever gone right here?"). Only once in the entire book does Buckley come close to redeeming himself as a satirist — when he mentions "a television news program in which several Middle Eastern experts, each beamed in from a different city, were screaming at each other about the need to remain calm". The best of Mr. Buckley's jokes are throwaway references — a breakfast TV show called "The Thousand and One Mornings," or the suggestion that a hedonist emir might pen an autobiography called "The Seven Pillows of Wisdom". But too many of his coinages are obvious.

The obligatory scheming Frenchman is named Dominique Delame-Noir (Dominique of the Back Soul, in other words) who speaks "with the air of a rising soufflé". Much of the book reads as if it was written in great haste ("Delame-Noir grinned Gallicly.") In a good comic thriller, the laughs don't have to be plausible but the thrills must be. Yet Buckley's plot devices are so slapdash, and key developments are tossed off so perfunctorily, that it seems the author didn't even have the time to write us a good bad book.

It's a shame. Christopher Buckley is no run-of-the-spill humorist, but one with an over-educated mind and an admirably warped sensibility.

It's a pity that in Florence of Arabia he too often doesn't know whether he's writing tragedy or farce. "I'm just trying to think outside the box," a character says in one of the book's better early moments. "What box? Pandora's?" her boss retorts. If only Buckley had sprung the lid on that one, we might all have had more fun.