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Ralph Nader Pens Odd Utopian Novel
Super-rich save the world in 736-page 'fictional vision'
By Nick McMaster
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Posted Sep 21, 09 6:52 PM CDT
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(Newser)
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Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate and sometime presidential candidate, has written his first novel, the New Yorker reports. Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!, out tomorrow, is a “practical utopia” in which real-life characters undertake a fictional quest to—progressively—save the country. Over the course of its 736 pages, Warren Beatty beats Arnold Schwarzenegger for California governor, and Yoko Ono invents a logo that causes people to shed their political apathy.
Many of the people fictionalized in Nader’s book are puzzled: “I read a bit of it, and I said, ‘My God, what is this?’” said Leonard Riggio, chair of Barnes and Noble, who funds anti-corporate protests around the country in Nader’s book. And Grover Norquist, on whom Nader based villain “Brovar Dortwist,” doesn’t seem to mind being the party-pooper of a progressive utopia: “I am all in favor of having the left win in fiction,” said the anti-tax activist.