A Crafted Beast

A Crafted Beast is a multi-character focused, comedic psychologically-informed story focusing on contemporary politics and social issues. It has elements of absurdist social commentary akin to books such as A Confederacy of Dunces, as you see its main anti-hero, selfishly sewing chaos and trouble for others, though on a much larger and more influential scale. Dreadson and Scott Broadcasting Group, a conservative media empire out of L.A. are a force to be reckoned with, helmed by an aging president out to expand his influence and social agenda, and his lacky, an egg-headed numbers cruncher figuring out how to attract more viewers by focusing on details down to how much makeup the company's female anchors should wear and what type of music to play during commercial outros. The story's main antagonist, Bud Harbaugh (aka Your Bud) is a sack of pudding windbag, spewing ultra-conservative propaganda in a Cajun/Texas backwoods accent via the airwaves. One of his everyday listeners (a simple man slowly changing for the worse in conjunction with these messages) flits in and out of the story. Bud and the broadcasting empire are currently backing a candidate, David Betty, the possible next POTUS with an election coming up in two months. Betty is a man who will say and do whatever he can to attract a following to take him through to the highest level of office. He does not care how he caters to those followers one iota. Dr. John is a Chicago area psychologist working with clients from the inner city (and some quirky elderly clients at senior living homes). One of them, an autism spectrum teen nicknamed Kenilworth, is a brilliant mind trying to get into the University of Chicago's molecular biology program, but is hindered trying to navigate Chicago's south side with his poor, if well-intentioned, social skills. He and Dr. John work together to help Kenilworth meet his goals. The characters begin coming together and lives intersperse. Dr. John finds himself coming face to face via the airwaves to refute Bud Harbaugh's harmful messages, before the story comes to its climax around David Betty's circus-like political rally at Chicago's UIC pavilion. There are themes of false narratives, political divisions, and a focus on how psychology (the author is a practicing psychologist) gets woven into media to try to assert influence and push agendas. There is humor throughout to help in navigating some tense themes, though the book as a whole could be described as a humorous work of contemporary literary fiction