SWAMP STORY (May 2, 2023)
By Dave Barry
Simon & Schuster, 320 pages.
★★★★
Dave Barry is a funny man, a talent he wields by writing id-driven broad humor. Like old-time comics such as Henny Youngman and Rodney Dangerfield, he throws one thing after another at us until we chuckle despite ourselves. Swamp Story is another tale set in one of Barry’s favorite lampoon targets: Florida.
As the title suggests, Swamp City is set in the Everglades. If you’re thinking alligators, snakes, and sinkholes, you’re on the right track. Add gold hunters, eccentrics, con artists, lovable losers, and lawlessness and you’re well on your way. There’s something about isolated spits of land abutting sinking mud, marshland, and deep water that make them refuges for the socially marginal. That’s where we find Phil and Stu trying everything to eke out a living, including hiring themselves out for children’s birthday parties. Only a besotted divorced guy in need of money like Phil would dare to show up for a Frozen-themed party armed only with an over-sized Dora the Explorer head. Let’s just say that it didn’t go well except on TikTok.
Meet Jesse Braddock, who plays the role of the beautiful golden girl who made bad decisions. She grew up in Connecticut comfort, rebelled against her parents, and ran off with a guy they warned her was a jerk. Now she has a baby, Willa, is living in the Everglades, and boyfriend Slater really is a jerk. He proves that by being more interested in shooting video of a giant python wiggling toward Jesse and Willa than in chasing away the snake. No wonder she likes to walk paths through the Everglades to get away from him and his crazy friend Kark. In one trip, she happens upon something that might be linked to a legend of buried Confederate gold. If only she had known she was being stalked by Billy and Duck Campbell, two rednecks, who plot to force her to show them where she found it, beat her up (or worse), and make off with the gold.
Now meet brothers Ken and Brad, the owners of Bortle Brothers Bait & Beer, a business begun by their father and uncle. To say that it’s out of the way and was an idea whose time never came understates matters. It’s one of those eclectic general stores that dot the American landscape where you stop in hope of lunch, glance at the décor and decades out-of-date dusty merchandise, and decide all you really need is gas and a soda. Phil’s Internet notoriety gives Ken an idea. After reading about Michigan Melon Heads–diminutive humanoids with gigantic heads who are rumored to be fierce–Ken convinces Phil to spray paint the Dora head, creates a film crew, and launches a hoax. He uploads deliberately blurry videos to suggest that Melon Head Monsters have migrated to Florida. Before you can say “‘Glades Man,” the handle for the shirtless and brainless Slater, 8.3 million people have seen the clips and curiosity seekers pour into the area and stop at Bortle Brothers.
The plot thickens and so does the cast. Patsy Hartmann was once a star TV reporter for Miami’s Channel 8 until a younger anchor forced Patsy out of the limelight. Guess who is tapped to go to the Everglades to cover the Melon Head story and stay for the annual python roundup? There is also Andrew Pletzger, an egoistic real estate developer; Eric Turpake, an attorney as crooked as a Bortle Brothers fishhook; an obese former University of Florida football player and purveyor of drugs nicknamed Pinky; U.S. Secretary of the Interior Whitt Chastain, who hates the outdoors; and python wrangler DeWayne “Skeeter” Toobs, who arrives for his interview on a runaway airboat and with his “emotional support boar” Buddy. Danger abounds in the Everglades, perhaps none as ominous as a crime gang led by Kristov Berliuz.
What could go wrong? Throw this many offbeat people into one small part of swamp and the sky’s the limit. In the hands of Dave Barry, though, even danger is a subject for absurdism and cheap laughs. His Florida makes Texas seem like a bastion of choir boys by comparison. Aside from occasional off-color language and comeuppance to those upon whom we’d wish it, though, Barry prefers belly laughs to distress. We laugh along with him because we know that he knows that everything is meant as a big goof, not high art.
Rob Weir
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