Book Review: Boomsday, a novel by Christopher Buckley (2007)

The paperback cover of Boomsday by Christopher Buckley, 2007. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Christopher Buckley’s 2007 novel Boomsday tackles the subject of Social Security. Not perhaps the most obvious subject for political satire, but Boomsday is fun and effective, nevertheless. The main character is Cassandra Devine, a young woman who works for a public relations firm and also runs a blog that is concerned with Social Security spending. The full acronym of her blog is Concerned Americans for Social Security Amendment Now, Debt Reduction and Accountability. 

When Cassandra incites young people to rise up against the senior citizens that are crippling their future with debt, riots break out. Golf courses in gated communities are ripped up, and Cassandra is investigated by the FBI and arrested. Cassandra eventually comes up with a bold new proposal to solve the Social Security solvency crisis: tax benefits for old people who commit suicide in order to lessen the population of elders receiving Social Security. This proposal is eventually called “transitioning,” and Buckley’s black humor shines as he describes the public relations spin on the proposal.  

Boomsday is packed with other characters ripe for satire: Gideon Payne, the holier-than-thou leader of the Society for the Protection of Every Ribonucleic Molecule, or SPERM for short, Randolph K. Jepperson IV, a Democratic Senator from Massachusetts who decided to enter politics after a painting of JFK spoke to him while he was on an LSD trip, and Cassandra’s father Frank Cohane, who spent all of Cassandra’s college fund, but eventually struck it rich with a technology start-up.  

The panoply of characters that Buckley populates his novel with reminded me of Tom Wolfe’s writings, and like Wolfe, Buckley puts his characters through their paces during the course of the novel. There are numerous funny lines and scenes throughout Boomsday. Here’s an assortment of my favorites.  

Cassandra’s mother despairs when Cassandra starts reading The Fountainhead: “I had a boyfriend in high school who read Atlas Shrugged. He ended up handing out leaflets on street corners about how we all have to watch out for number one. It’s an unpleasant philosophy.” (p.50) This is even funnier if you know that William F. Buckley panned Atlas Shrugged in the pages of National Review, and Ayn Rand threw a fit.  

“In cyberspace, everyone can hear you scream.” (p.172) 

“Why had he remarried? What possessed him? If he’d only waited a little longer, his dick would no longer have been in charge.” (p.187)  

“His brain was like a mastodon struggling to free itself of a tar pit.” (p.227) 

“She found herself wishing that she had lived before the age of the Internet and cable TV, when news arrived twice a day instead of every fricking second.” (p.279) 

“When she and Terry did their preliminary reconnaissance, he had taken one look at the depiction of FDR, with opaque bronze eyeglasses, upturned hat, and sitting on his almost invisible wheelchair, and said, ‘He looks like that Irish writer, James Joyce, sitting on a toilet.’” (p.312) Devoted fans of Christopher Buckley will recall this line from his very funny book about walking around Washington, D.C., Washington Schlepped Here. Having seen the sculpture in question at the FDR Memorial in person, I’m inclined to agree with Buckley.  

If the above quotes tickled your funny bone, you should pick up a copy of Boomsday.