Ad Man in the Game of 2046: Synopsis
Setting
Ad Man in the Games of 2046 makes poignant social commentary by using the device employed by Anthony Burgess in A Clockwork Orange. The novel projects contemporary American values and current social practices to extreme conclusions, to show their absurdity. Thus, in 2046, the working class speaks in a crude English dialect that segregates it from the ruling elite. America’s unionized military engages in ecocolonialism. Driving is outlawed, but roads remain crowded.
But the social commentary is subtle and transparently integrated into the larger tale. Above all, Ad Man is a story of one person’s fundamental humanity asserting itself above inhibiting institutions.
Story
In the year 2046, baseball and pretty much the rest of America is Disneyfied. Stripped of any higher purpose and meaning, institutions serve as mere shallow entertainments. Gab Darby, the story’s protagonist, thrives within this degenerate culture. He is the baseball super-star who owns the game’s pinnacle title, The Slugger. He plays bare-chested, with the insignia of commercial sponsors – advertisers – tattooed onto his neck, arms and torso.
But leaders of the country’s political elite vilify Darby, smearing him in a media ploy meant to divert attention from an embarrassing, military misadventure. Instantly the Slugger’s fortunes reverse. The fallen idol must flee for his very survival. As a fugitive, he finds solace and shelter inside a quirky American subculture.
The subculture consists of immigrants from the nation of Bortinca. It happens to be the same country that entangles the American president and her cut-throat political advisers in a small but politically damaging, colonial war.
Within this milieu, beset by his former benefactors and abandoned among an alien people who do not understand him, Darby struggles to re-establish a personal identity and recover his self-worth. The novel traces his journey from defrocked hero to, ultimately, a kind of compromised fulfillment through his sacrifice in combat – against the U.S. Army. Along the way, Darby fails to reconcile with the shattered family he must leave in America. He bungles his efforts to fit in as an ordinary citizen in Bortinca. Still, he finds loves. He finds admirers and supporters who recognize the innate nobility that enables him to overcome – though sometimes just barely – damning circumstances. In the end, that nobility must assert itself profoundly for Darby to achieve ultimate redemption.
Written as a fast-moving, third-person narrative, Ad Man in the Games of 2046 depicts a future America that is rigidly divided by class. The underclass, nearly illiterate, speaks in a slurred English dialect that impedes communication. The controlling class, though foppish, enforces its authority with intrusive technologies, confusing double-speak, and collusion among the media, businesses, and politicians. Outside the country, the insurrection in Bortinca emerges as a significant sub-plot. As the revolt intersects with the travails of Gab Darby, events echo the American Revolution, but with a significant twist. In 2046, America’s leader resembles England’s King George III, while the Bortonese represent the abused patriots intent on obtaining liberty.
