STEPHEN MARCHE WROTE one of the most ingenious novels I have read in recent years, Shining at the Bottom of the Sea (see post of July 2, 2008), a novel in the form of an anthology of the literature of an imaginary country. It was a normal-length book, but provided some of the satisfactions of an old-school multi-generation historical novel, without the months of immersion (the months of immersion can be pleasurable in their own way, I realize).
The Next Civil War is also a knuckleball, not-exactly-a-novel kind of novel. It has settings, episodes, and characters from what could have been a set-in-the-near-future fiction about the red state vs. blue state divide turning into armed conflict and secession. Integrated with the novelistic elements, though, are more journalistic sections summarizing the research Marche (a Canadian) did into the United States' growing self-division.
Given the preponderance of what-might-soon-happen novels to be about climate change or (in my youth) nuclear destruction, it was refreshing to read a book based on an entirely different variety of anxiety. The journalistic sections were skillfully presented: informative and well-focused.
How one finally feels about a what-might-soon-happen novel, though, depends not on its execution but on how credible one feels the prediction is. This prediction...I think not. The United States will certainly not break up into the four countries Marche presents in a map on p. 219, at least. The terrible events he imagines--the standoffs, assassinations, breakdowns of order--well, maybe. But our polity has great reserves of resilience, too.
Things feel slightly more stable after the 2022 elections. The fever has not passed, I know, and it could be goaded back into a rage again. And I know there is always going to be a part of the population ready to kill to achieve a White Christian U.S.A. But I think the greater part of the country is more sane than that.
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