2021-04-22
A disgruntled insurance claims adjuster concocts a get-rich-quick scheme using trained apes in Carter’s comic novel.
William Malone, aka “Turk,” dreams of leaving his job behind and becoming independently wealthy. His get-rich-quick scheme, which he calls the “PPP,” or “Primo-Primate Project,” involves teaching chimpanzees to work digital sales registers. This premise sets readers up for a ruthless exploration of the inanities of contemporary life. Unable to afford his child support payments to Liz, his ex-wife, and sinking deeper in debt, Turk wryly notices that “the more he borrowed, the more credit card offers he received”—a commentary on the American debt economy that pushes him into various side gigs, such as insect breeder for local bait shops and private sanitation worker, and to embezzle money from his insurance job in order to finance the PPP. However, Carter doesn’t just offer readers a hapless Everyperson in these pages; he gives Turk dimension by making him a self-help disciple with delusions of grandeur. Turk depends on the teachings of Felix Frankfurter, a dead rock star whose music and posthumous writings guide Turk’s everyday actions; for example, he uses the word plethora in work correspondence because he views the word as nonconformist and “obscure enough that many people would not know what it meant.” The presentation of Turk’s misguided belief in his own superiority (plethora isn’t that uncommon a word) effectively allows readers to laugh at him as well as at the foibles of American society; over time, though, Turk emerges as an effective antihero, which keeps the novel’s critiques from feeling didactic.
An often funny satire of the excesses of the free-market ethos.
