High Desert Barbecue: A Tale of Suspense, Pyromania and Sexual Tension

by J.D. Tuccille

In this Freedom Book Club book of the month, conspiracy, arson and ineptitude threaten the desert West, and only a misanthropic hermit, a subversive schoolteacher and an unemployed business writer stand in the way. Living as a squatter on public land, Rollo has long waged a personal war against the Forest Service, so it's little surprise when rangers burn him out of his latest shack. But when Rollo is subsequently blamed for a disastrous wildfire, he seeks help from his close friend, Scott, an anarchically minded outdoors enthusiast, and Scott's girlfriend Lani, who dislikes Rollo but shares his distaste for authority. While investigating a suspicious new forest fire, the trio interrupts a bizarre but vicious gang of environmental terrorists. Chased through the canyon country of northern Arizona, Rollo, Scott and Lani must rely on their wits and skills to survive. Just steps behind, their pursuers compensate for incompetence and sexual eccentricity with fanaticism and official connections. Hanging in the balance is the fate of human habitation throughout the West - or maybe just peace and quiet in downtown Flagstaff.

Genres: Fiction

280 pages, Paperback

First published October 30, 2011

Reviews

[Patrick Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

2022-11-19 Just finished this fun, humorous, first (and only?) novel by Reason Magazine editor J.D. Tuccille. I enjoyed it. Fast paced, with some likeable main (positive) characters and some incredibly goofy/ridiculous bad guys. The caricatures of the bad guys (and gals) was pretty far-fetched, though with a solid kernel of truth kept me going. The plot was a little (? LOL) "extreme" to say the least. But as with the characterizations, a solid kernel of truth or at least plausibility, based on the ridiculous philosophy of the bad guys.

The book will probably appeal to the more anarcho-capitalist type libertarians than the more classical liberal types, like me, due to two of the three the main positive characters' personal philosophy and actions. Their disdain for most laws and bureaucrats/politicians is palpable. Of course the bad guys disdain most basic laws and morals too, but in a far different way.

I liked the descriptions of the natural environment of northern AZ, a big player in the story, especially since I have visited there and got to know the somewhat similar Sonoran desert around Tucson over the last 25 years or so.

Since the book was published in 2011, and I have come to really enjoy the author's reporting and commentary in his Reason.com articles over the last 4-6 years, I wonder if he has any more novels coming? Would love to see a similar style, pace, humor type novel with some improvements (maturation?) of the bad guy characters, plot, and believability on some points.

A few parts of the book I highlighted:

"Scott didn't share his buddy's conspiracy theories, but not because of any inherent respect for government employees. To the contrary, he considered anybody who preferred a life of administering laws and rules and living off of taxes to one of persuading people to buy what you had to sell and living on what you could earn to be more worthy of contempt than fear." Highlighting the author's anarcho-capitalist perspective, which I don't share. Bureaucrats and politicians have a sacred and crucial duty to uphold basic laws that make civilization and human thriving in a difficult and dangerous world possible.

"years of writing about business had crystallized his convictions. So far as he could tell, government regulators were good primarily at tripping up the competent and propping up the screw-ups. Especially if the screw-ups were their buddies." - Wish more business writers got this perspective from their work besides the author, John Stossel, Avik Roy (?) and precious few others.

"Mostly, I’m a loafer who likes to hike and shoot and cash paychecks from companies that haven’t yet realized that they no longer need my services.” Not very moral/admirable character traits of this generally positive (otherwise) main character.

“Naked taxpayer-subsidized arsonists with the runs!” - typical bad guys? LOL

Another nit: the author uses the term "authority" as his whipping boy for the main characters. If he used "tyrant" or "authoritarian" (one who loves to coerce others) I would be MUCH more positive. But well-earned, voluntary "authority" is a very positive thing.

Enjoyed this little exchange because of the (sadly) realistic view of Youtube's connections with government officials and of the individualistic/independent spirit and knowledge of the protagonists:

"Now, why don't we get that video of yours onto our servers.” “It's already up on YouTube.” “Oh, YouTube will fold the first time somebody official waves a take-down order at them, and we already know you're dealing with government people. Our servers are in Amsterdam. And so is the company that officially owns them. I think we can keep your video online a good long time, even after they find a lawyer who speaks Dutch.” “Really?” “Yep. This isn't our first legal rodeo.”

Last bit of humor, philosophy, and perspective on the 2nd amendment. If this kind of writing appeals to you, this book is for you:

"They have horses and guns and other friends on the way.” Scott nodded, impressed. It seemed like the right thing to do, to acknowledge people he'd never met who were willing to bear arms against deranged, half-naked, government-employed arsonists."

[Furbjr · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a lot of fun reading this book. The picture painted by Tuccille is one of detail, but not so much that it is overwhelming. There is just enough detail that your mind fills your senses with the sounds, sights, and smells that one might experience during an adventure in the uplands of Arizona.

I had a hard time accepting the silliness of the Forest Rangers at first. But I came to grow to love them as despicable morons, much like Ned Beatty's masterful comedic performance as Otis, Lex Luthor's sidekick in the 1978 film superman.

The unlikely trio of Scott and Lani, and Rollo, inadvertently stumble across a Forest Service plot to re-purpose the land. You see, much of the land is infested with a terrible plague of upright mamals, and they must be burned out. But Scott, Lani, and Rollo capture video of rogue Forest Service Agents who have teamed up with eco-terrorists to get rid of people.

Will the trio succeed in foiling their plans?

The one major problem I had with the book could not be the fault of the author. My paperback copy completely fell out of the cover as I read it, then all the leaves started falling out of the book. Double-plus ungood.

[Kay · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the teacher, the writer, and the hermit, but the Forest Service characters were not believable.

[Charles G · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting. Group of mad envirmentalist take on an unemployed libertarian journalist. Its not the fountainhead, but it was a quick read

[Richard Blake · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will begin by saying that this is a consistently funny and entertaining novel. It is also hardcore libertarian propaganda. I hope, on both grounds, my readers will see this as a recommendation.

The novel takes place in and around a vast expanse of Arizona that has been claimed by the American Federal Government. Rollo, a former insurance salesman, has built a shack here, and he lives in a seclusion that he breaks only when he comes into town to visit his friend Scott, or to buy sexual services with the money he earns from growing marijuana. So things go on until, one day, employees of the National Forest Service decide to burn his shack and steal his truck. This sends him off to stay with Scott, whose employer has just discovered that, following a round of downsizing, his well-paid job now involves printing e-mails sent out from head office and faxing them back.

But Rollo’s life has not been turned upside down by some casual act of sadism. The uniformed thugs of the National Forest Service have big plans for him. All radical greens – or hoping to do well from a green agenda – they have decided to burn down much of the wilderness they are employed to protect. They will burn it down and pin all the blame on Rollo. This will give them an excuse to close the whole wilderness to mammalian bipeds, so the trees and other plants that survive the fire can flourish in peace.

Little, however, do these thugs in uniform realise that they have chosen the wrong man to frame. Together with Scott, and Scott’s girlfriend Lami, and their dog Champ – and eventually with a pair of elderly and overweight pornographers – Rollo sets off into the wilderness to get at the truth and have his revenge. The rest of the novel describes how the baddies are shot and poisoned and revealed and framed, and generally ground into the dirt in ways richly deserved. This is a novel in which the good end well and the bad end very badly.

It is also a very polished novel. The plot rolls smoothly forward, propelled by multiple shifts of perspective, and by a careful balance between narrative and libertarian preaching. The characters and their motivations are believable. The locations are adequately described for those of us who have never experienced their like. I repeat my recommendation of the novel.

Now, there are libertarians who take a sniffy view of libertarian fiction. A few months ago, after one of my more frenzied acts of self-promotion, a friend wrote to me from Australia to say that writing novels was a diversion from the proper business of a libertarian activist, which was to denounce the State and all its works. I disagree. A point I keep making is that state socialism did not become hegemonic in the twentieth century because the masses read the works of Karl Marx or the Webbs, and voted Labour as a result. What happened was that the intellectual classes read these works, or abridgements of them, and reworked what they found there into novels and films and plays, thereby changing the general climate of opinion.

The libertarian movement is filled with bright young men who have read Human Action or Democracy: The God that Failed, but whose enthusiasm for these has no wider effect. I would like Hoppe and von Mises – among many other of our writers – to be popular bestsellers. But it is the nature of things that they will not. Take away the patronage of the Soviet State and of western universities, and I doubt if the heavier works of Karl Marx would have sold more than a few thousand copies a year. The difference is that the state socialists have had popular culture as their transmission mechanism, and our movement is filled with people who think that novel writing is somehow letting the side down. Of course, if we are to get anywhere at all, we need our Hoppes and we need our L. Neil Smiths. And we need Jerome Tuccille.

One of the central assumptions of High Desert Barbecue is that state employees are, by their nature, morally defective, and that the usual requirements of proportionality do not apply when fighting these people off. For example, in chapter 60, Lani kills a park ranger. He has just killed her dog, but there is no reason to believe that he wants to kill her – even when the story is being told from his point of view, it does not seem that he intends to kill her. Even so, she shoots him dead. She gets away with it. No question is raised that she might have committed a murder. Jerome’s assumption here is that the death of a beloved pet may be avenged even to the point of killing a human being if he works for the State. I am not sure if I agree with this. But I do think it is an arguable case. And I am glad that it has now been put in an accessible work of fiction, rather than in some forbidding text bristling with footnotes.

Another assumption – and this is rather less controversial – is the moral superiority of those who live from voluntary exchange. Take the McGintys – that is, the elderly pornographers. Their occupation is generally despised. Even in films like Boogie Nights, pornographers are shown as not entirely respectable. The McGintys, by contrast, are at peace with themselves and generous to others. See the offer they make to Lani, when she says that she has uploaded a video of statist wrong-doing:


“It's already up on YouTube.”

“Oh, YouTube will fold the first time somebody official waves a take-down order at them, and we already know you're dealing with government people. Our servers are in Amsterdam. And so is the company that officially owns them. I think we can keep your video online a good long time, even after they find a lawyer who speaks Dutch.”

“Really?”

“Yep. This isn't our first legal rodeo.”

Lani nodded. “Cool.” [Chapter 72]

Yes, this is a technically competent and ideologically correct novel. It is also consistently enjoyable. With Christmas fast approaching, I gladly recommend High Desert Barbecue as a present.