Book 11 - Fool - Christopher Moore

I'm still playing catch-up.  As I mentioned in my last entry, King Lear was just a lead-up so I could enjoy the satire of Christopher Moore's Fool.

Book 11 - Fool - Christopher Moore

In Fool,  Christopher Moore retells Shakespeare's classic King Lear from the perspective of Lear's fool  Sort of.  I mean he sort of retells King Lear.  And it's sort of Lear's Fool.  However, there is a great deal of embellishment on the characters and story line, borrowing heavily from other plays and changing the actions of players, as well as the outcome of those actions.

A case in point is the Fool himself.  Named Pocket, due to his diminutive stature, he moves to the forefront of the story, becoming the narrator and the center of the action.  An orphan who was raised by nuns, he learned his jesting craft as a captive part of a group of travelling performers.  He's a randy fool, shagging all three of the King's daughters as well as various female members of the palace staff.  He's a conniving fool, becoming instrumental in the intrigues that were engineered solely by Regan, Goneril, and Edmund in the original play.  He's a fool to be reckoned with, despite his size, as he is quite accomplished with the throwing knife, and keeps a stash of them in his cowl.  But most importantly, he's the King's fool, a status that protects him from other royals who have been the brunt of his jokes in the past.

Pocket's best friend and apprentice is Drool, a "Natural," fool whose diminished intelligence is made up for by an uncanny ability to mimic voices.  Drool is able to repeat whole conversations verbatim, in the voices of the speakers, despite the fact that he lacks the ability to really understand what is being said.  Drool is also gifted in the manhood department, and Pocket makes effective use of both of these natural talents in his plans.

Pocket is driven to his Machiavellian manipulations by the prophetic poetry of a mysterious female ghost ("there's always a bloody ghost"), and some witches seemingly borrowed from Macbeth.  He is not the sole perpetrator of intrigue, however.  As in the play, Regan, Goneril and Edmund have plots of their own.  However, Pocket is usually able to take their plans and make them work to his advantage.  Like Shakespeare's play, all of this planning and plotting comes to a convergence, resulting in the fatalities of most of the major players, but here Moore diverges drastically from the original play, making adjustments to who dies and how, in order to help wrap up his embellishments on the plot.

This book is quite funny, but also quite bawdy and vulgar.  There aren't too many pages where someone isn't engaging in acts of sexual debauchery, or hurling insults that would make a sailor blush.  However, if this kind of stuff doesn't bother you, and you are a fan of the Bard, you will likely find this book to be hilarious.