[NP] Milwaukee the Beautiful by Dakota James (1986)

[Michael Lee Bailey]

Sounds really good…I’m getting one from abebooks

Sent from Proton Mail for iOS.

-------- Original Message --------
On Tuesday, 10/07/25 at 00:45 j e l <ssnomes at gmail.com> wrote:
another Milwaukee. from 1986. a dirty shame that this book is out of print.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-05-18-bk-20667-story.html

Milwaukee the Beautiful by Dakota James (Donald I. Fine: $16.95; 240 pp.)
By Jesus Trevino

May 18, 1986 12 AM PT

<i> Trevino recently wrote and co-produced "Neighbors: The U.S. and
Mexico," a documentary on immigration for PBS. </i>

Two Mexican nationals cross the border illegally on their way to the
Promised Land. Sound familiar? Well, this time it’s not Tijuana to San
Diego. The year is 2013, the promised land is the newly chartered state of
Milwaukee (yes, Milwaukee), and the two Mexicans are the heroes of
anthropologist Dakota James’ second novel. An engaging, incisive satire on
America’s extremes set in the not-distant future, “Milwaukee the Beautiful”
demonstrates no small insight into the foibles of contemporary AmeriThink,
the machinations of big business, and the contradictions of corrupt
politics. In a fast-paced, witty narrative reminiscent of the best of Kurt
Vonnegut, James has the reader’s chuckle from one line tripping over the
one from the line before.

In his previous novel, “Greenhouse: It Could Happen in 1997,” James
outlined in broad strokes the elemental features of his future-history.
Unchecked population growth has intensified worldwide pollution, finally
breaching an atmospheric “tip-over point,” and precipitating a global
“greenhouse” effect.

By the year 2013, a resurgence of the “States’ Rights” movement has allowed
for the creation of new states: Buffalo, Duluth, St. Petersburg, the Idaho
and Alaska panhandles and, of course, Milwaukee. The greenhouse effect has
abated slightly, convincing Americans that their wanton disregard for
population and environmental issues was, after all, entirely justified. But
to the Southwest, the failed foreign policies of one American President
after another have resulted in the continued influx of vast numbers of
Central Americans and the creation of a border-length Rio Grande Wall. As
with the fence that today separates Mexico from the United States, the Rio
Grande Wall is useless in stemming the ever-present tide of humanity.

To the border come “Milwaukee’s” two protagonists: Diego Rivera Garcia
Lorca Grenada, a middle-age magical-realist writer turned farmer and
nicknamed “Pooch,” and his traveling companion, an 18-year-old aspiring
artist named Charles (Rico) Far. Both of these Mexicans, through fortuitous
circumstance of birth, speak fluent English--Rico because his father was an
Americano , and Pooch because he was adopted as a child by the British
consul to Mexico. Their English, and tenacity, enable them to outwit the
migra . They escape from a detention center for illegals fashioned out of
the Carlsbad Caverns, and eventually reach their destination, Milwaukee the
Beautiful.

And what do Pooch and Rico find in Milwaukee? Nothing less than Dakota
James’ alternative to a world future based on overpopulation,
overproduction, shoddy workmanship, ICBMs, foreign debts and disregard for
human life.

Milwaukee is a state built on the premise that “Small Is Beautiful,” whose
flag bears the motto, “There Are Limits,” whose building code reinforces
the craftsmanship of traditional architecture, where pornography is
outlawed and where child and elder abuse have been entirely eliminated by
the strict and public enforcement of the “Tar and Feather Emergency
Provision of Public Law 466LR.”

As Pooch and Rico soon find out, Milwaukee, above all, is a State of Mind,
one in which the governor unabashedly proclaims the important things in
life to be, “grandma’s recipe for rhubarb pie,” a pair of suspenders that,
“won’t let you down,” feeding the ducks in park lagoons. . . . “ If this
sounds too Utopian, too sentimentalist, perhaps it’s because we have grown
accustomed to having these same traditional American values misused to sell
us hamburgers, automobiles, beer and life insurance. We have cause to be
suspicious.

“Milwaukee the Beautiful” may be only an unattainable state of mind, but
one we musn’t lose sight of, for the sake of our collective future.

--jel
--
Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l