Daily Loaf

Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to nominate the University Press of Florida for the state’s highest public service award.

After all, the publisher has brought Carl Hiaasen’s two collections of newspaper columns  back into print in handsome trade paperbacks. Check out Kick Ass and Paradise Screwed (both University Press of Florida, $24.95 apiece).

Hiaasen has always said that if he isn’t pissing people off, he isn’t doing his job.

Will somebody please give this man a raise?

There’s something in these books to offend just about everybody – particularly morally challenged shitheels ass-raping Florida’s environment and destroying the fragile beauty of this magnificent and wacky state.

And if you don’t fall into that category, Hiaasen will probably still make you pretty mad. He might get you so angry you’ll get out of your chair and do something to stop the ecological and ethical erosion of the Sunshine State.

Lots of people know Hiaasen the novelist.  His marvelous satirical books – Tourist Season, Strip Tease, Nature Girl and Lucky You among them – have sold truckloads of copies. He’s become a monster in young-adult fiction, with Hoot, Flush and Scat. And he is the Patron Saint of Golfers-Gone-To-Seed in his latest nonfiction best-seller, The Downhill Lie.

But a lot of his loyal fans don’t realize that despite his success, Hiaasen keeps his day job as a Miami Herald columnist. This probably saves him a lot of trouble. He doesn’t have to go looking for weirdness to put into his novels; all he has to do is page through the local section of his newspaper.

So he holds onto the newspaper job as a sort of reality check – or, since this is Miami, a surreality check.

These are books for Florida. Unlike his novels,these might not travel well. Hiaasen takes the “local columnist” thing seriously, and these pieces are specific to his beloved and vulnerable home state.

They are also well reported. Again, fans of his novels might not realize it, but Hiaasen was part of the Herald’s investigative team before he became a columnist in 1985. Unlike a lot of snoremonger columnists  — who read the work of real reporters, then ruminate and deign to tell us what it all means — Hiaasen still does his legwork. He doesn’t sit on his can and comment on things he’s only read about. This guy never stopped reporting.

His column isn’t syndicated much out of Florida and Hiaasen seems to have no interest in being a fixture of the Anytown Gazette, like his pal Dave Barry. To go for mass acceptance would mean watering down his message and betraying his audience. The book is dedicated to “all those who care about Florida,” and the profits will benefit the Carl A. Hiaasen Scholarship Fund at his alma mater, the University of Florida College of Journalism and  Communications.

Of course, the columns share with the novels that uncanny ability of Hiaasen’s – to blend the comic and tragic, to horrify readers and make them laugh at the same time.

Kick Ass (the title is drawn from Hiaasen’s self-composed job description) is, among other things, a history of South Florida from the dawn of the Reagan Era to the middle of the Clinton Years. Paradise Screwed picks things up from there.

The columns are freckled with corrupt politicians (a redundancy in Hiaasenland), immoral developers and mouth-breathing geeks who, for example, ignore posted “no swimming” signs on the beaches when the waters are contaminated with feces. “You can almost hear Darwin’s ghost,” Hiaasen writes. “Surely these morons aren’t going swimming in THAT crap! Not with their kids! Not with a warning sign right in front of their face! Wrong, Charlie Baby.”

Hiaasen pokes fun at it all – the inane tourist slogans, the ineffective drug war, the unchecked growth and, of course, the madcap politicians. While watching Cardinals pitcher Joaquin Andujar throw a fit during the 1985 World Series – he chased umpires, foamed at the mouth and destroyed a dugout toilet with a baseball bat, all on live TV – Hiaasen realized he might be the perfect candidate for mayor of Miami: “In no time Andujar would mop up the City Commission,” Hiaasen wrote. “Forget diplomacy – we’re talking a 93-mile-an-hour brushback pitch. It’s not such a bad idea, when you review this year’s crop of political hopefuls, a veritable slag-heap of mediocrity.”

Aw, don’t hold back, Carl. What do you really think of them?

Like Hiaasen’s novels, this book is filled with great one-liners. And, as always, he walks so well that terribly fine line between comedy and tragedy. He horrifies you with his stories of life’s insanities, but he makes you laugh about them too. But unlike his novels, where the weirdnesses are products of imagination, all this stuff actually happened.

This is real; this is journalism. Truth can be stranger than fiction and that’s why fiction can be such a comfort.

(By the way, some of the comments above were drawn from my earlier reviews of Kick Ass from the St. Petersburg Times and Communigator magazine.)

COMING TO INKWOOD:   Author John Henry Fleming debuts his new book, Fearsome Creatures of Florida at Inkwood Books, 216 S. Armenia Ave., Tampa,  on Thursday, Sept.  10 at 7 p.m. Fleming mixes the real and imaginary in his bestiary offering an eerie portrayal of the parallel lives of modern-day Floridians and the living landscape — at once gorgeous and menacing — that surrounds them. Peter Straub calls it “required reading for anyone who lives in Florida, has ever lived there, has relatives who live in Florida, ever went to Florida on vacation, has ever flown over Florida…, has ever dreamed about Florida,…or ever read Charles Willeford or John D. MacDonald. Much ingenuity, much wit, much verbal magic — this book is sheer pleasure.”

Meet author Alicia Thompson as she discusses and signs her debut novel, Psych Major Syndrome, at Inkwood on Saturday, Sept.12 at 2 p.m. This debut novel is a delightful romantic comedy for young adults featuring a heroine who, while a teen mentor, also manages to get in trouble herself. Meg Cabot calls it a “scorching hot read” with “smart writing”, and Publisher’s Weekly praises the book for its irony, humor, and offbeat supporting cast. Note: While the audience is listed as age 12 and up, the story deals frankly with sexual issues of a college freshman, so the content seems mature for that age.) Thompson attended Tampa’s King High and USF’s New College, and is now an MFA candidate and instructor.

Don’t miss Inkwood’s popular Book Group Night at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept.17. Inkwood’s staff members share favorite their favorite books with group members, presenting favorite titles recently released in paperback and books to look for in upcoming months.

William McKeen is chairman of the University of Florida’s Department of Journalism and author of several books, including the acclaimed Hunter S. Thompson biography Outlaw Journalist, now available in paperback.

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