Homeland

That's how it feels to read HOMELAND: as if Vonnegut and Thompson had merged and become Paul William Roberts writing the fictional memoirs of centenarian David Leverett in the year 2050. From the book summary on the inside flap, I expected more "history" from the years we have yet to experience. But only the first few and the last twenty pages of the nearly three hundred in HOMELAND foray into the black morass of tyranny and perpetual war that Leverett's world had become. Instead, the novel -- and I shall return to whether this ought to be a novel at all -- traces silver spoon Leverett from his birth in 1950: First, his youth in England, courtesy of his ambassador father's posting. Then, his higher education at Eton, Oxford, and Harvard -- which included membership in a secret, secret collegial society -- in the company of other sons of the elite . On to his public service (which was pretty much ordained by his grandfather who placed his fortune in a trust that only paid family members who held public office or appointments) in the halls of Washington power. His four closest friends and others he met at Harvard also climbed the power ladder... one perhaps even attained the presidency (although Leverett couldn't be sure because by that time the government operated in blanket secrecy for national security and citizens didn't know their rulers' names). As Leverett toiled at producing position papers at the State Department, he rubbed elbows with and sometimes was invited to exchange views with high-profile officials of the Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush administrations. Zbigniew Brzezinski and Scooter Libby, to name two. For a short time, Leverett's boss was a man who bore a striking similarity to Paul Wolfowitz but who, for the sake of fiction, wore another name. Just before meeting this man, Leverett had a lengthy conversation with a friend about the political theory we know as neo-conservatism, allowing the author to sketch its origins and its fundamental philosophy. This is an education in and of itself, although the thick political science terminology obfuscates some of the concepts. HOMELAND also includes a lengthy position paper about the obligations of governments on the international stage and, later, a lecture entitled "Unacceptable Interventionism." Both are ostensibly the work of Leverett but seem more like insertions the author pulled out of his file cabinet where they might have lain long. This brings us back to the question of whether HOMELAND might not have been better conceived as non-fiction. Canadian Roberts is a noted journalist who covered the Middle East for decades and who interviewed Saddam Hussein. His 2005 non-fiction,THE WAR AGAINST TRUTH, was described by Publishers Weekly as a "relentless polemic" so anti-American that it "collapses under the weight of accusations, innuendo and conspiracy theories." As HOMELAND is my first taste of Roberts, I can't affirm or refute that judgment of THE WAR, but let me