Straight A's

I recall with vivid clarity receiving my Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery scores and learning I was bound for a career in the law, or in the seminary, or in the manual labor field. I don't recall if the results indicated I was a strong candidate for any kind of military work, but the general sense I received was if the military really wanted me, they would have predicted that I'd become a spy, or an international jewel thief, or at least a small-arms dealer, and not a lawyer, preacher or knee-bender. The ASVAB wasn't the last standardized test I took -- the GRE was -- but it was the one I found most creepy: Why did the military need to know what my skill set was? Anyone who has filled in a Scantron mandated by the government likely has felt that similar feeling of oddness -- why, exactly, do we need to be standardized?

Of course, in these trying times, when we live our lives constantly in the wake of some calamity or another, government intrusion into our existence has become not merely the grist of conspiracy theorists, but a daily front-page occurrence, growing exponentially worse each day as another threat is revealed, to the point John Ashcroft seems like a kindly uncle, comparatively speaking. In what can only be called a satiric protest novel, John McNally explores this very intrusion in his vibrant, funny and downright anti-Bush second novel, America's Report Card.

It's clear even on the first pages of the book precisely what McNally is about to deliver. His dedication is to "America's Iago, Ann Coulter, for rewriting history to suit her own nefarious purpose." The polemics run thick through McNally's novel and the reader will either embrace his skewering of President Bush, evangelical Christianity, the war in Iraq and other platforms of the GOP, or they will immediately flood Amazon with reviews calling for McNally to be deemed an enemy combatant. This is protest fiction through and through, which means McNally likely doesn't care about those who find Coulter to be truthful, the war in Iraq to be just or our president competent. It's a stance that takes guts in this day of O'Reillyness, and to large degree McNally succeeds.

At the center of America's Report Card is Charlie Wolf, a 23-year-old film school graduate of the University of Iowa who takes a job grading America's Report Card, a yearly standardized test given to kids from K-12 in order to do whatever those tests are meant to do -- track intelligence? Produce handsome bar graphs to compare against other First World countries? Enable the U.S. to find potential spies, international jewel thieves and small-arms dealers? It's a meaningless job meant to satiate Wolf for the summer while he ostensibly figures out the rest of his life alongside his Russian girlfriend, Petra. Soon, though, Wolf figures out odd things are afoot in the process of grading these tests, particularly when an acceptable "right" answer changes moment to moment in an effort to find "consistency," and his relationship with Petra ends abruptly when she leaves him -- and the state -- with an Indian co-worker.

In the middle of Wolf's depression, he encounters the test of one Jainey O'Sullivan, whose dissatisfaction with life -- her art teacher may have been killed for creating a bit of scarecrow art that at first blush appears to be Osama Bin Laden, but is actually President Bush in disguise; her brother has found God and a peephole into her bedroom and an affinity for Megadeth; her father is in prison for nearly killing her gym teacher; and her mother is ghost -- permeates through the essay portion of her test and into Wolf's mind. She needs his help, Wolf determines, and the fact that she happens to live in the same city as Petra and her new love doesn't hurt.

What ensues is a look into paranoia -- perhaps justified paranoia, it turns out -- and also a searing indictment of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq (with a brief sideline into abortion rights, too) done in a fashion that slashes between broad satire and sad reality, as it traverses through the summer of 2004, a summer where Charlie would fall into a bizarro world and Jainey would be forced to confront what it means, in essence, to be standardized:

"When I'm older, Jainey thought, I'll look back on this summer and think, oh, that was the summer everyone was beheaded Š Instead of the world stretching itself back into shape it was in before 9/11, it had begun to balloon out to the point of nearly bursting."

Plenty of novels have used 9/11 as an image or a plot point and, by and large, they've failed on a grand scale (none worse that Jay McInerney's The Good Life), but it's to McNally's credit that he never allows for sentimentality to creep into his satire. And though at times the novel does devolve into silliness, it is the blunt force of McNally's clear dismay with the state of world affairs that allows for the gallows humor he specializes in to shine through. America's Report Card won't win over those 33 percent who still think George W. Bush is the savior, but that's why God created Ann Coulter in his image.

America's Report Card
John McNally
Free Press
288 pages