The War Between Sylvania and Freedonia

The current issue of Harper's includes a brilliant short story by Robert Coover entitled "The War Between Sylvania and Freedonia." The story is a straight-faced, surprisingly moving account of the war depicted in the Marx Brothers' masterpiece Duck Soup, delivered in the terse manner of a solemn military history. Coover ingenuously fills in details missing from the film, while also granting us occasional glimpses of beloved classic moments -- a sort of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead approach to the Marx Brothers.

The story is seen mostly through the eyes of Ambassador Trentino, the perpetually frustrated diplomat played by Louis Calhern in the film. In Duck Soup, Trentino is a standard Marx Brothers "heavy" -- that is to say, a stiff pillar of decorum and protocol, against which comedy's greatest anarchists can bounce gags and non sequiturs. By doing what nobody who's seen Duck Soup has ever done before -- taking Trentino seriously -- Robert Coover has discovered a rich new vein of humor in this immortal comedy. What if it were a real war -- not between delirious geniuses and stuffed shirts, but between two actual nations? What if Ambassador Trentino were a real statesman, trying not only to maintain the peace, but to contend with a rival who behaves like Groucho?

Here is a section of the priceless inauguration sequence from Duck Soup, cast in a new light in Coover's story:



From this source material, Coover gives us:

DEFINING MOMENTS IN HISTORY. "Take a card, any card," says the new president of Freedonia, fanning out a pack, upon being presented to Ambassador Trentino from Sylvania, come on an official state visit to pay his respects at the inaugural ball. What does this mean? The baffled ambassador, bowing slightly, gazes not at the offered cards but at the leering face of the president, and beyond the rolling eyes and exaggerated moustache he sees nothing but contempt. For him, for his nation, for international protocol, for ordinary human discourse. This is a man without redeeming qualities, a mindless windup toy of the rich, plucked from the crowd and imposed upon the people of Freedonia in a bloodless coup. More or less bloodless -- the deposed president, the former favorite of the moneyed classes, has not been seen since his forced resignation. "Execution," as Mrs. Gloria Teasdale, self-styled first lady of the land, has been known to say with her ingratiating smile, "always works." What, then, the ambassador wonders, is he to do about the proffered card? He feels vaguely threatened by it, taunted, tested: will he or will he not play the fool for this smirking upstart? Although he senses that somehow his choice will align him in Freedonian minds with the forces of evil, he will not, cannot. "I can't stay very long," he says lamely, refusing a card, and President Firefly, puffing portentously on his black cigar, abruptly turns his back on him and pockets the fateful pack, effectively burying diplomacy with it.

The story has a thrilling concept, delightfully executed, and I heartily recommend it to all fellow Marxists. (If you're not familiar with Duck Soup, I can't image how Coover's story would strike you, so in that case I recommend Duck Soup first and then the Coover piece.) It has not yet appeared on the Harper's website, but Harper's is a wonderful magazine, and even if it were not, this story alone would be well worth the $6.99 newsstand price. Pick it up if you have the chance.

[6/14 UPDATE: The story is now up on the Harper's website, but you have to have a subscription to Harper's to read it. I suggest at least picking up the current issue, as this story is a treat for all Marxists.]