Desi is a spaceman who has a way with words. Listening to them, that is. He's been hovering over Earth for years, occasionally beaming up earthlings and telepathically auditing their personal histories. At the opening of Robert Olen Butler's metaphysical comedy, the date is December 30, 2000. Desi has beamed up a busload of gamblers bound for a Louisiana casino. His wife, Edna Bradshaw--beamed up earlier from Bovary, Alabama--is making sausage balls, a dish she believes will comfort the astonished visitors. Together, Desi and Edna put everyone so at ease that the abductees quickly become disciples. Butler's narrator is a happy comic creation, a deadpan alien in love with his wife and her fine set of knockers: "There are three things about this planet which are too wonderful for me. Make that four things. The way of dreams in the mind; the way of tears in the eyes; the way of words in the mouth; and the way of my wife Edna Bradshaw when she acts like a cat and lovenibbles me into her arms." In a novel that eludes classification, Butler propels Desi's linguistic struggles, busload of disciples, and attempts to plumb the mystery of human yearning to a tight climax as he plans his first public appearance on Earth, which his new followers believe is a second coming. Mr. Spaceman is by turns a fond satire of science fiction, an ode to the South, and an exploration of marital dynamics that's as besotted with detail as any Anne Tyler novel--though the perspective tilts a little off-center. Edna gives her spaceman a fond pinch on the cheek, and he observes, Her hand lunges forward and grabs a sizeable part of my cheek and squeezes and jiggles it. This physical attack is very distressing to me, especially given the sudden light-heartedness of her demeanor as she does it. This is a side to Edna that shocks me, and the violence goes on. I am bearing it the best I can and now Edna even says, "Oh you spaceman," in that cheery, loving voice that I have grown to recognize in spite of the neutrality of the words themselves. I am very confused and her attack on my cheek ceases and her hand drops and I think I may have missed something. I think she has meant this gesture as a friendly thing. After all, she does not have suckers on her fingers. Butler also frequently digresses into the narrative voices of the earthlings in their monologues about their lives. Alas, so appealing is Desi's narrative voice that these (admittedly often virtuoso) forays into other voices offer a degree of frustration. --Claire Dederer
From Library Journal
Tired of Y2K worries and millennial hype? Don't let that discourage you from reading this book, a warmly comic fable set on December 30, 1999. Butler, best known for his Vietnam-era fictions (e.g., 1993's Pulitzer Prize-winning A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain), here explores the final frontier. The narrator is Desi, an E.T. look-alike who has spent decades observing Earth and gently abducting Americans to listen to their stories. On New Year's Eve, he'll tell the world's earthlings about life on other planets. In part, this novel succeeds because of the abductees' richly told stories--marvelous soliloquies full of wonder and yearning. But even more important is Desi. His first-person ruminations about the human condition, told in a crazed American English that's been cobbled together from bits of advertisements, slang, and the Alabama speech of Edna, his human wife, are as poignant as they are funny. A charming novel brimming with love; recommended for all public libraries.
---Brian Kenney, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A surprisingly sweet and droll first-person account of the vexed attempts of an alien to understand the bafflingly unpredictable human race. The Pulitzer Prizewinning Butler (A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, 1993, etc.) has wandered far from his usual guilt-haunted terrain here, displaying a remarkably deft hand for gentle satire. A spaceman has been circling the earth for decades andin an attempt to make sense of humans and their ``complex and alien world''gently abducting people, interviewing them, and returning them to their homes (after clearing their minds of any recollection of his presence). His mission: During the last minutes of 1999, he is to descend to the planet and inform its populace that they are not alone in the universe. But the project gets more and more unpredictably complicated. He's fallen in love with Edna, a good-hearted beautician from Alabama whom he abducted from a WalMart parking lot. She's named him Desi (his own name being unpronounceable), set up housekeeping aboard the spaceship, and doesnt mind that he is short, thin, gray, and has eight fingers on each hand. Desi has abducted 12 people, on a bus trip to a casino, to have one last talk before his annunciation. Butler, not shy of controversy, has much fun with the religious overtones inevitably invoked. Some of the 12 insist, despite Desi's denial, that he is a divine being. ``We always knew there was someone bigger and better watching over us,'' one says. ``One era, it's a carpenter. A whole other era, it's a spaceman.'' Desi goes down to earth as midnight nears, having chosen a suitably public place for his arrival. But he hasn't counted on how accepting, even appreciative, humans can be of that which is odd and unsettling. His mission, he discovers, is really only beginning. Light, mischievous, satisfying entertainment. (First printing of 50,000; $50,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
...Butler has created a central character who is warm, memorable and fully drawn. Desi is the most likable, engaging and human of aliens. -- The New York Times Book Review, Geoff Nicholson
About the Author
Robert Olen Butler is an American fiction writer. His short-story collection A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1993.
