A new novel set in a parliament

Since books are talked about here I thought I'd mention my own.
Hopefully it won't come across as a crude advertising ploy. I'll
address that in a minute.

_Verbatim: A Novel_ was published by Enfield & Wizenty in October
2010. (ISBN: 978-1926531038.) It's a satirical work set in a fictional
canadian legislature in the 1990s. For those who know about the
parliamentary system, some things in it will be familiar; for those
who don't, the book educates (painlessly!) as you go. The content is
given in three ways: lists of members, letters between bureaucrats,
and debates set out in the dual-column format used by Hansard, the
transcribing division of legislatures in the Commonwealth. (Hansard is
sort of like the Congressional Record.)

It's getting good press up here (canada) and in england; and _American
Book Review_, out of texas, says: "Let the record show that this is
probably about the funniest intelligent book on politics you can get
your hands on these days."

If I stopped there, then this could be seen as just an advertisement.
But I'd like to say that the main purpose of writing the book was to
show, without a narrator (without a partisan guide, so to speak), what
happens in a legislature; how we are governed. I think Tallyrand said
that speech was given to hide men's actions. All that's presented in
the book is speech, about health care, mining, forestry, road repair,
social services, financial debt, and so on. (Speech mediated, of
course, by transcribers and editors.) Party platforms are presented,
policy is discussed, ideas are put forward and debated, from the
right, the centre and the left. While members comment on these things
quite freely, and at times angrily or humourously, there's no narrator
telling the reader what to think. A reader will find something
objectionable in a speech that another reader admires. But it's an
open field for a reader to make up his or her own mind.

Maybe that's what each country's citizens need to do. Pay less
attention to partisan approaches and ideology, be independent in
thought, and analyze the way we choose to be governed (if we
participate, then we choose, it's no longer chosen for us), not just
what this or that approach by this or that person is like.

I'd very much like to see the same kind of novelistic approach done in
the u.s., or australia, or anywhere. I think it would reveal a lot.

regards,
Jeff Bursey

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