Snowball's Chance
by John Reed
Roof Books

It seems like George Orwell has been all over the place lately, and with his centenary coming up later this year, you can bet the battle over his relevance will continue for some time. Christopher Hitchens began the festivities early when in September he fired one of the first shots across the bow of Orwell's detractors, publishing his oddly reverent apologia "Why Orwell Matters." All the usual teeth gnashing that accompanies a Hitchens publication followed, but just as the heat began to die down another powerful little book dealing with Orwell's legacy was published, albeit more quietly. In "Snowball's Chance," novelist John Reed retells Orwell's classic "Animal Farm" in which the banished pig Snowball (the Trotskyite in Orwell's novel) returns from exile as a brash capitalist intent on turning the farm into a superficially democratic, money-making franchise.

Reed swings for the fences with this book, mimicking Orwell's straightforward, didactic writing style and turning his critique of Stalinism into a critique of the blindly acquisitive nature of contemporary American capitalism, showing with a fair amount of empathy and humor that concepts of repression and freedom remain open to interpretation, despite the fact that Western liberal democracy has emerged as the only political option we have come to accept the world over. Parodying a figure such as Orwell doesn't come without some repercussions, however, and it seems that the literary executor of Orwell's estate is hardly pleased with "Snowball's Chance," claiming that it "bring[s] Orwell's name into disrepute in the US." Fortunately, the law is on Reed's side, as parody is protected under a 1994 Supreme Court ruling. The controversy has created some great press for the book with pieces outlining the fight in The New York Times, Guardian UK and The Boston Globe.

Almost buried beneath this literary haggling is a sly little novel worth reading. After arriving unannounced at the farm and assuring the morally bankrupt socialist leaders and disinterested farm animals he means no harm, Snowball peacefully wrests control of the farm by selling himself as a liberal reformist. As he sets about ushering in the new world, the old is reinvented to suit the needs of the emerging capitalist intelligensia. Animals who seem to offer the least resistance are placed in positions of power so that Snowball can control every aspect of farm life; rules handed down by the leaders of the original revolution are rewritten in a way that would make Adam Smith proud: "All animals are born equal — what they become is their own affair." The animals, so taken with the promises of heated stalls, electricity and pies (they simply love pies), give into this line of thought wholeheartedly. As other animals from the woodlands begin to hear about Animal Farm's prosperity they begin to emigrate, taking over the lowliest jobs and living in the old barn while the original farm animals begin to move to the outlying areas, letting the core of the farm become a crime-riddled slum. As the farm becomes more prosperous, Snowball comes up with a scheme to build an amusement park dubbed "Animal Fair," complete with rides, concession stands, exhibits of criminals professing their crimes and talent shows, in order to generate even more capital and expand the influence of the farm further into the woodlands.

The fair is a smashing success, and Reed does well in mimicking the contemporary state of American capitalism, but as the farm grows in size and influence, the disaffected beaver population still living in the woods begins to grow concerned that its traditional "Beaver Code" is being undermined by the growing influence of the farm. At the same time, to generate more power, the animals build what are called the "Twin Mills" and start filing lawsuits against neighboring farms to try and win control over the local water source, adversely affecting the beavers' traditional damming projects. In response, the beavers begin luring other fanatical — and suicidal — animals to their cause with the promise of the fabled "Sugarload Mountain" in the afterlife, where beavers are promised 1,600 trees to gnaw on for eternity. With this, the battle lines are drawn for a showdown between the forces who seek to keep to the ways of the past, no matter how repressive, and those who want to try and move society toward a more open, free-market system, which still curtails freedom in its own way by offering nothing more than a shiny set of vapid alternatives wrapped in promises of a happier tomorrow.

The current struggle between the American brand of western liberal capitalism and other supposedly traditional religious and cultural movements has come into sharp focus since the Sept. 11 attacks. The irony is that these movements have seen fit to use the West's own technology (the Internet, mass media, airliners and bombs) against itself. Reed captures this well in the jarring final pages of the book, in which the beavers launch their assault on Animal Fair. While the carnage is almost comical in some respects, it still touches on some raw nerves. Reed pre-empts some of the current debate over the emerging American Empire, and shows how rather than a traditional empire, the Americanized version is more cultural in nature, and this is what Osama bin Laden and others are most incensed about. These seem to be two wildly divergent worldviews that, sadly, simply cannot co-exist. In a time like ours where the struggle for the soul of world opinion and the direction of the human race has taken center stage, it's good to finally see some overtly political fiction receive media attention. It brings to mind Orwell's 1947 essay "Why I Write," in which, while discussing the great social and political battles of his day, he said: "It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects." To paraphrase Orwell again, all writing is political.

— Paul McLeary (pjmcleary@yahoo.com)