Gratuitous Llama Literary Observation

I just finished up reading Chris Buckley's Boomsday, his wicked story of a modern modest proposal for dealing with the social, financial and political crises brought on by the massive retirement of the baby boomer generation.

I titled this post an "observation" instead of a "book review" because I don't really want to examine this story in particular, but instead want to air my thoughts on what I see as a recurring trait in Buckley's books, of which I've read about half a dozen now: In tackling the absurdities of the modern world, his style is the cheerful flipside to Tom Wolfe's doom and gloom. His premises are always clever and well-established. His plots move forward in multiple story lines with a kind of zany logic that you're happy to buy into. And his climaxes.....

Well, that's the thing. Each time, I expect some kind of madcap finale, some kind of spectacular burst of mayhem, some kind of reductio ad absurdem of the motivations that have been powering his characters, leading to hy-larious results. And each time, well, it all seems to fizzle. Typically, I'm a page or two into the denouement before I even realize that the action is over. It's the literary equivalent of putting one's foot down in expectation of that last - and nonexistent - step at the top of the stairs.

I don't really mean this as criticism. I like Buckley's books, although another curious thing about them is that I almost immediately forget them. (On the bright side, this makes rereading them all that fresher a pleasure.) But I can't help wishing that he would end them with a little more bang (or in this case, I suppose, boom).