Book Review: “Processed Cheese” by Stephen Wright

Processed Cheese by Stephen Wright

“Happiness can’t buy you money.” (p. 156)

What is this book about?

It’s a bit hard to say.  Basically, it’s about America today, with a focus on what “money” means.

It’s a very caustic, satiric, indeed, absurdist, version of American culture, saturated with nonsense, brutality, unfairness, and popular media.  It’s completely made up, and so easy to recognize ourselves here.

The style is rather gonzo, with the additional twist that all the names have been changed. In fact, no real names of anything; people, places, products; appear.  It’s disorienting but you get used to everything being aliased surprisingly quickly.

The basic plot is silly:  a cartoonish rich guy accidentally drops a big bag of money off his balcony.  It lands in front of protagonist Graveyard, a feckless idler, who proceeds to take it home.

This is a life changing event for Graveyard and his wife Ambience. They prove adept at spending money, buying stuff, stuff that no one needs, except to have something to buy.  They also instinctively know how to use money to insulate themselves from troubles.  This is America, money magically turns these “ordinaries” into “exceptionals”.

Obviously, the rich guy wants his money back, so Graveyard and Ambience are in danger.

Money may or may not make you happy, and it may or may not make you “exceptional”, but it sure doesn’t seem to make you smart in this story.  Not that anyone seems to have any sense at all.  America, land of dunces.

It’s an interesting, if not necessarily fun ride.  It would be easy to dislike all the people in this book, except they are all so dumb.  Just like me and you.

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1. Stephen Wright, Processed Cheese, New York, Little, Brown and Company, 2020.

 

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