So I read Christian Kracht’s much-praised satirical novel Imperium, and for once, I enjoyed satirical writing for the length of a full book. Typically after a chapter or two, satirical novels become too arch for me to enjoy, but no, Kracht keeps it up pretty good. Me and this book could have been friends, I think, if it hadn’t kept making me sigh.
Have you had books like that? Where they’re not so ideologically maddening that you want to write a post denouncing them and all that they stand for, but there’s just a couple of things about them that make you sigh? In Imperium, the only gay character rapes a kid and is subsequently violently killed. And also: “one of [the indigenous people] even wore a bone fragment in his lower lip, as though he were parodying himself and his race.”
Look, I get it. It’s satire. It’s not reality, it’s what the protagonist sees. The European rapist stands in for the greed and rapaciousness of European colonialism. I get all that, don’t write me a cross letter. It’s just that sometimes you feel like dealing with this kind of thing, and sometimes you don’t, and I didn’t, and it made me sigh.
Since that isn’t much of a review, let’s talk about something awesome that Kracht mentions in this book: BOMBAY FORNICATORS.
Have I told you about how I really, really want a Bombay fornicator? I have wanted one for years, ever since Tom Stoppard mentioned them in his play Indian Ink. They are a type of chair, popular amongst European colonials in tropical climates, that is pleasant to sit upon even when the weather is very hot, and the armrests fold out into footrests, as seen below.
Good, eh? Are you duly impressed? The proper, nonslang name for these chairs is super gross, so let’s stick with “Bombay fornicator,” SHALL WE? Because the thing is this, my friends: I have just recently discovered where one would get a Bombay fornicator (if you click on the picture it’ll take you to their website), and through a superhuman effort of self-control, I have not made pricing inquiries. Because that would be an insane thing to buy. (Right?)
I don’t care how much it costs to get a Bombay fornicator. It’s irrelevant to me.
I don’t.
So shut up.