The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up by Jacob M. Appel

The portrait of hysterical America, terrified of and furious with anyone who doesn’t love his country, whatever that means, is sharply drawn.

Brinkman himself, unable and unwilling to quell the baying mob, descends into downright lunacy. His half-hearted protest accidentally sparks a wave of national disgust at his lack of respect for ‘our boys’ serving in the war, and heated demands for an apology from 24 hour news coverage, furious crowds outside his front door and his own family and friends. Riled at the idea of standing for something that isn’t even the national anthem, Arnold remains seated and observes the singing crowd, which strikes him as disturbingly similar to a Nuremberg rally. When his wife makes him take his nephew to a baseball game - a much-hated activity for Arnold - that grumpiness collides with a moist-eyed crowd of patriotic Americans standing up to sing Irving Berlin’s ‘ God Bless America’. Strikingly reminiscent of DBC Pierre’s Booker Prize winner Vernon God Little, with a splash of Kafka for good measure, The Man Who Wouldn’t Stand Up is a comic satire of sinister, post 9/11 hive mind America, a nation hell bent on enforcing a strict idea of ‘patriotism’ at all costs.Īrnold Brinkman is a grumpy botanist in his mid-fifties, childless and relieved about that fact. The novel itself couldn’t be much further from traditional Scottish fiction. It’s one of the UK’s most lucrative prizes, with £10,000 and a publishing deal going to the winning writer and the likes of Stephen Fry, Alan Bisset and Philip Pullman on the judging panel. That’s the length of time he’s been looking for a publisher for his novel, The Man Who Wouldn’t Stand Up, which won the Dundee International Book Prize for unpublished authors on Thursday. It’s been a long eight years for American bioethicist-turned-author Jacob M Appel.

The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up by Jacob M. Appel