I am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to be Your Class President Top Quality

In I AM A GENIUS OF UNSPEAKABLE EVIL AND I WANT TO BE YOUR CLASS PRESIDENT, Josh Lieb has created an inverted gestaltic world inhabited exclusively by the one dimensional drones that may in fact represent reality. Behind this facade of inanity lies some real creative genius, the "genius" of the title, a seventh grader named Oliver Watson. In Oliver, Lieb has borrowed liberally from other sources of the enfant terrible: the golden haired uni-mind children from the film, VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, the monstrous seven year old Anthony from the TWILIGHT ZONE episode who has become ruler of his world, and even from Piggy in LORD OF THE FLIES. There is a tendency for adult readers to gloss over the premise that a ten year old fat boy could rule the world by proxy. After all, the saying that one might be the power behind the throne is well-established and even sincerely believed by many. The problem though lies less in the convoluted mind of Oliver but more in the collective minds of the assumed audience. Given that the picture on the dust jacket is a sliced in half photo of a pudgy pre-pubescent youth, it is not likely that many adults will look within. It is more reasonable to assume that the reader will be a middle school student whose notions of good and evil and the Way That The World Works are still largely unformed and uninformed. Such a reader will look at Oliver as more or less a kid like him or herself, more a difference of degree than in kind. The reality is more prosaic and harder to spot. Oliver may look like your run of the mill goofy kid, but he no more is like that than an edible toadstool is a poisonous one. Oliver speaks in the kidspeak of his age when addressing his family and peers, but the moment that he speaks to his adult flunky, Lionel Sheldrake, his vocabulary and tonal inflections assume Olympean proportions. And therein lies the paradox of the book. Children who read this book must maintain a double perspective on Oliver. When he speaks to Lionel, he grows metaphorically speaking, to be the very adult institution that the book so clearly lampoons. It is only when he communicates with his peers and family that he shrinks and becomes more accessible. Since most of the book deals with the nitty gritty of life as a picked on class clown by schoolyard bullies of various stripes, a youthful reader may fast forward the adult conversation with Sheldrake and focus on the monumental insecurities of middle school angst that Oliver can whisk away in a heartbeat. Further, Lieb provides some humorous variations on scholarly footnotes that may impel readers to pick up as if by linguistic osmosis the very critical reading skills and cultural literacy that educators complain is so lacking in our curriculums.

This is not a plot driven novel. The drive to be class president is the only plot glue holding the strands together. The focus is on the world view of a boy who sees his universe through the mutated senses of a genetic freak of nature, and it is his perceptions that set the tone of a world weary adolescent who, like some shrunken Alexander, complains that he has no more worlds to conquer other than to be class president. I recommend this book but with the proviso that a well-read parent may wish to chat with that parent's child about the surprisingly adult themes that are intertwined with the seeming childishness of a boy who is far more than he seems.

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