As always, Connie Willis blew me away. Inside Job is a thoroughly enjoyable novella about a magazine writer who exposes psychics and mediums (apparently not "media").But it's basically an homage to H.L.Mencken! What student of the 1920s wouldn't love it?
A spiritualist in Hollywood starts channeling the spirit of H.L. Mencken, a notorious skeptic of all thing nonscientific. The magazine writer, with his drop-dead gorgeous assistant, sets out to prove it's all fake.
Willis' brilliance shines through with the ending. She makes a reference earlier on to the fact that Mencken left the Scopes trial early, before Clarence Darrow famously cross-examined William Jennings Bryan on the stand, and that he never got to see the end of the trial. Throughout the story, the question is, why would a modern-day medium channel Mencken, of all people? Why not the usual Cleopatra or Alexander the Great? The answer, in the last few pages, comes from a schoolroom in Tennessee as well... the debate over intelligent design! There's still a lot of unfinished business there ...
Loved the irony!
1 comment:
I just finished this one and absolutely loved it. Grinned the whole way through!
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