Review of The Men in the Jungle by Norman Spinrad

By the time the late 60s rolled around, America had had enough of the Vietnam War (or what the Vietnamese call the American War). Unable to shit or get off the pot (same situation Russia currently finds itself in Ukraine), the US kept sending troops and armament to 'fight the war on communism' (Russians are 'fighting the war on Nazis') but never committed enough firepower to actually win the war. And the North Vietnamese, using their own brutal, ruthless methods, fought back, hard. From a certain viewpoint, it was animals fighting animals, killing for the sake of killing, ideology a far cry. Commenting on, or at least seeming to want to comment on the war, is Norman Spinrad's The Men in the Jungle (1967), a science fiction tale/allegory of dubious execution.

Ousted asteroid dictator, Bart Fraden, sets his sights for power on a new destination, the planet Sangre. He invites along his mistress, the power-loving Sophia O'Hara, as well as General William Vanderling, a strategist Fraden hopes will easily knock over the military dictatorship on Sangre. The trio's plan is to peddle pleasure narcotics among the elite and sow discord among the rural villages, then wait for the right moment to engage with uber-weapons. The drugs work among the Brotherhood of Pain, leaders of Sangre, but rousing the villagers runs into a little trouble, one of an atavistic nature.

From 10,000 feet, The Men in the Jungle would have itself be a satirical allegory of humanity's weak attempts at gaining, maintaining, and losing collective power among its groups. Spinrad uses an unending parade of extreme-extreme graphic violence to hammer home said absurdity. The story is a bloodbath, often involving babies and children. It's clear Spinrad's morals are in the right place: the violence is not just for titillation, rather he wants to smack the reader in the face with the uselessness and tragedy of war and killing. Fraden, Vanderling, and the Brotherhood of Pain's methods for waging war eventually become indistinguishable.

The Men in the Jungle has only anti-heroes, which gives the book an edge. Spinrad fails to actually cut anything, however. The anti-heroism is soulless, personality-less. Fraden and Vanderling are almost indistinguishable and the other primary characters are caricatures. The reader is not given a reason to establish a relationship, for better or worse, and thus when the characters' fates are relayed, we shrug our shoulders. This is particularly noticeable with Fraden. When the denouement rolls around, Spinrad would seem to be trying to redeem the man... maybe? Doesn't jive with the preceding story.

Another aspect of the allegory which doesn't sit well is the characterization of humanity as a whole. As we all know, human behavior covers a spectrum, lemming to dragon, with most people falling somewhere between. In Spinrad's Sangre, however, character portrayals are only the ends of the spectrum, nothing between, which makes it difficult to relate to. By contrast, Kurt Vonnegut was a writer good at having a laugh at humanity's foibles. But he did so in organic, relatable, Hey-look-at-that-silly-human-doing-silly-human-things fashion. Spinrad does so in staged fashion.

Unfortunately, the criticism continues. The Men in the Jungle should have been a novella. Almost 300 pages, the unending waves of violence, not to mention the meandering nature of Fraden's coup d'etat, ensure the novel loses itself for a decent chunk of the body of text. Pushing fast forward a few times, summarizing events in a paragraph or two, would have given the story more punch and would have prevented the reader from developing callouses to the violence.

In the end, The Men in the Jungle is a Sheckley-esque novel without the subtlety or efficiency of prose. It's a violently comedic allegory that tries to represent one aspect of human nature by turning the dial up to eleven while ignoring the other aspects that make humanity what it is. I started this review with Vietnam, then didn't mention it again. I say that because, I think Vietnam was the target the story was aiming at, but the parallel becomes skewed to the point I'm uncertain Spinrad hit what he was aiming at.