The last time a US president and Nicholson Baker appeared in the same sentence, the subject was sex: In 1998, Kenneth Starr discovered that the world's most famous intern had given Bill Clinton a copy of Mr. Baker's erotic novel "Vox."But this time around, the subject is violence: Baker's upcoming novel, "Checkpoint," is about two men in a Washington hotel room arguing about whether to assassinate President Bush.A work of literary fiction, it carries Michael Moore's case against Mr. Bush to extremes that the partisan moviemaker has never dared approach. It may also be the most specifically articulated argument about killing a sitting US president ever published by a major commercial publisher."Checkpoint" reads like an attempt to exorcise anger at Bush's international policies, but in a phone interview from his home in Maine, the author says, "No, this is a book about the rage and sadness of war, and about the moral consequences of war, boiled down to a conversation between two people. I want readers to think things through. Sometimes a novel is the best way of making that happen."Thousands of popular novels are published every year based on fictional or real-life crimes, but in the current atmosphere of heightened national security, Baker's dramatization of a fact-based argument about killing Bush could be seen as incendiary. But does that make it illegal?Threatening a president's life is a violation of US law, and Secret Service agents will show up on the doorsteps of people who, even casually or in jest, make a statement about killing the nation's commander in chief.But the US courts also protect free speech and the press. In a 1969 case, the US Supreme Court said speech that advocates violence or illegal action could not be suppressed "except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.""You have a substantial right to create fiction no matter what the subject matter," says David Greene, executive director of the First Amendment Project, a nonprofit advocacy group. "But it's slightly complicated when you're talking about threats against the president. If this were an author who was less acclaimed, you'd find him at a minimum being checked out by law enforcement. This Justice Department is more likely to investigate something like this."FBI and Justice Department spokesmen refused to comment on Baker's book or to indicate if officials were investigating it."Checkpoint" had been scheduled to appear Aug. 25, just days before the Republican National Convention in New York, but this week Alfred A. Knopf pushed the book's 60,000 first printing up to Aug. 10.The 115-page novella is framed as the transcript of a conversation between fictional characters Jay and Ben at a hotel a few blocks away from the White House in May 2004. Jay claims that he wants a record of his motives for killing the president later that day "for the good of humankind."The two men apparently haven't seen each other for several years. While Ben has been enjoying some success in life, Jay has lost his job, left his family, and grown obsessed with President Bush's actions in Iraq. He often sounds mentally unbalanced.Through much of their conversation, Jay recounts real stories lifted from news reports about the horrors endured by Iraqi civilians in both accidental and deliberate military encounters. The book's title comes from a particularly gruesome tragedy in April 2003 when US soldiers at a checkpoint near Najaf opened fire on a family of 17 Shiites. Eleven of them in their 1974 Land Rover, including six children, were killed.Jay's argument swings wildly from an insane rant to caustic political analysis. Though most of his weapons - Bush-seeking bullets and a giant uranium ball - are clearly delusional, his final plan is pedestrian and deadly. While largely agreeing with his friend's recitation of Bush's sins, Ben struggles to calm Jay and get him to abandon his illegal plot."There are really strict legal standards on what constitutes a threat, and certainly a fictional conversation between fictional characters - it's almost impossible to imagine that that could rise to the level of a legal threat against the president," says Larry Siems, director of the Freedom to Write Program and of international programs for the PEN American Center. "Characters in novels don't kill presidents."But, he notes, "there have been encroachments recently on the terrain of creative freedom that are connected with people's fears and anxieties."We know the Secret Service has visited high school classrooms where students have produced art that has made reference to violence. The whole atmosphere has shifted enormously."The Supreme Court has been very clear about the rights of authors to write whatever they want so long as they are not intentionally inciting imminent violence, according to ACLU president Nadine Strossen. She says, however, that under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, "Mr. Baker wouldn't know and he wouldn't be able to find out if he's under surveillance. And anybody the FBI asks about him would be forced to be under that veil of secrecy."Baker, meanwhile, said, "I'm trying to let the book do its own talking as much as possible.”http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0730/p1...
-Background-I grabbed this book off the shelf as I was on my way out of the fiction section of my local library. My reason was simple: the cover art was appealing, the length (115 pgs) meant a quick read, and flipping through the book, the narrative structure used was interesting. I didn't bother to look up the author or research what this book was about prior to leaving the library. So on a whim, I checked out the book, came home, and a little over an hour after starting it, I finished it. -Story Overview-A man has decided to assassinate the President of the United States. Before going through with it, he convinces a friend to come to his hotel room and hang out, under the vague pretense of "needing to talk to someone." When it's revealed what the man wants to do, the friend tries to talk the man out of it. The remainder of the novel is the back and forth dialogue between the man explaining why he would be justified in carrying out this assassination attempt and the friend trying to convince him not to do it.-Story Excerpt-(below is an example of dialogue, but it's also a sampling of how this entire book is structured)Jay: Old Navy's good. Target's good.Ben: And the shop windows in New York City- we can be proud of those; can't we? I mean, are you really trying to tell me that you're going to kill George W. Bush because Wal-Mart is ugly?Jay: It's a contributing factor, it really is.Ben: That's just plain screwy.-My Review-So what are my thoughts?Perhaps it's best to describe what the process of reading this was like for me. About thirty pages into the book, I set it down and thought to myself, "I'm pretty sure this book is just a vehicle for the author to express his personal views about the Bush administration. I could be wrong, though. I mean, early on, it's made clear that a guy wants to kill the president. And, the man does somewhat randomly bring up his friend's vintage camera he's brought along. Maybe there's an interesting plot-twist coming up, with the camera serving as a 'Chekhov's Gun' of sorts. Might as well find out if this story is going anywhere..." Spoiler belowWhile reading the remainder of the book, I discovered that nothing happens. The President remains safe and sound, with the ending revealing that the friend convinced the man to not go through with his plans. My opinion is that this book was indeed a vehicle for the author to put out an opinion. But what is the why behind that opinion? That was the question I found myself asking after finishing.Is this book a satire, with the author intent on drawing certain Bush Administration opposition as caricatured stereotypes ? Or, should I read this book as a a straight forward declaration of the atrocities of the Bush administration? Perhaps this book is a character study, with the author using this novel as a means to explore what goes through the mind of a person who is capable of assassination. This way, the reader can better understand the grey nature of these individuals? Maybe, just maybe, the author wanted to write an entire novel with just dialogue between two characters, and the story and characters exist to be in service to this story telling device.Who knows? I guess the author does.I walk away from this book feeling unsatisfied. Yes, I finished it. Yes, I took the time to write out a long-ish review. So why the two stars? I'm still not sure of the why of this book. If the author did intend to write the book for one of the "whys" I listed above, he did a very poor job. So if I remove the thought-provoking elements from my review, that just leaves me with "did I have fun reading this?" No. No, I did not. This was a boring book with no humor, a poor story, joyless characters and an anti-climactic ending. Sitting on my bookshelf, there are at least two dozen other books that I would rather read. From time to time, I scoop up a random book and read it to expose myself to new authors, ideas, characters, and perspectives. I find mixing in new authors I'm not familiar with into my book rotation pays off for me. Whether I end up liking the book I read or not, I walk away having gained something. It's for this reason, as well as the fact that I did finish this book, that I'm giving two stars instead of one star for this book. I did learn something.Does reading my review make you intrigued and maybe even a little curious to read this book yourself? I suggest you go ahead and read "Checkpoint," then. If you believe that after having read my review that you'd prefer to avoid the book, I can't say I blame you.
What do You think about Checkpoint (2005)?
Baker is a fine writer, but he seems to have let emotion get the better of him here, because this book is nothing but useless polemic. There was no attempt to persuade the reader with any well thought examples and counterexamples, out of which some sort of synthesis might occur. Rather, there was just one guy, who was a pretty obviously a complete nutjob and not someone anyone would be inclined to pay much attention to, yelling at another guy who doesn't say anything much other than, "Well, *that"* sounds like a crummy idea. Are you crazy?" As such, it came across as not as a piece of persuasive writing so much as a 120-page long list of harsh criticisms about the current administration (GW Bush, for those of you reading this in 2009 or later, after Bush and his minions are thankfully long gone), all of which you've either heard before or could think of yourself. There was no illumination, just the feeling that Baker was vomiting onto the page. In short, pretty much a waste of time.
—Laura
I want to give this book a slightly higher review, but I know rationally that part of that is due to anger....After reading A Good War is Hard to Find (which I still recommend to anyone and everyone), I've been seething. Outwardly - against W. and the great cogs of war. Inwardly - aginst myself and the part that I play in the cycle of violence and destruction around us. In other words, basically feeling conflicted and empty.This is a book of dialogue (much like Vox) in which two people discuss the political quagmire that this country has found itself in, but primarily, about a possible assassination attempt on the president.While it does a good job of putting forward a personal diatribe on the situation every one of us has allowed to build around us, it doesn't accomplish what Vox did, in my opinion. That is, it doesn't present us with valid, true characters and a deeper understanding of human nature.To me, it felt like this could have been presented as an essay. Maybe less people would have read it, though, and learned some of the frightening facts about the Bush/Cheney dynasty that are thrown into the story. I agree with what a couple of others here on Goodreads have said in that it feels more like a rant than a novel. I definitely did not feel that it was a bad read, at all (and it is a very quick read), but I didn't feel that it was a masterpiece, either.
—Craig
A dialogue between two acquaintances/friends reveals Jay's obsession with politics and his desire to assassinate the president. Ben tries to talk him out of it. Jay records their conversation for posterity. I loved Nicholson Baker's books Vox and The Fermata. I did not love The Everlasting Story of Nory. Checkpoint started out kind of slow for me. I didn't bother to read a synopsis before jumping into it, so I didn't really know what to expect. Then it started to scare me because Jay sounds like someone I know - someone obsessed with reading about conspiracies and politics on the web. So things became a bit more compelling after that. And Jay had some warped rationalizations for why Bush had to die, as well as reasons for why Democrats and their stand on abortion has turned the US into the nation that it is today. It's extremely short, and although it's not his best, you can finish it up in an hour or two and it may make you think a little (although, now that the elections are over, you may be ready to slip back into the blissfully unaware state as far as politics are concerned - and I don't blame you). Nicholson Baker hasn't been disappeared or anything as a result of this "conversation" he's written, has he?
—Arminzerella
