Dave Barry loves Florida enough to skewer it right
Alex Perez
Before Florida became a national punchline, Miami Herald humor columnist Dave Barry was already down south lovingly poking fun at his adopted home and its eccentric citizens. Like his buddy Carl Hiaasen, Barry has made a career of documenting Floridian wackiness for decades, which is why his latest Florida caper, Swamp Story, is an authentically rendered distillation of the Sunshine State’s special sensibility. The novel is funny, ridiculous, and even moving — a typical Barry affair.
A true Florida novel needs Florida men and gals, of course, and Barry packs Swamp Story with as many sweat-soaked and beer-drenched rascals as a book can hold. There are brothers Ken and Brad Bortle, who run Bortle Brothers Bait & Beer, a dilapidated shop on the edge of the Everglades where “dusty plastic alligators with FLORIDA printed on their backs and MADE IN CHINA printed in smaller letters on their bellies are sold.” There’s Slater, a typical Florida beach bum — “sweaty, filthy, and glassy-eyed from weed” — who, alongside his buddy, Kark, a wannabe documentarian, is creating a reality show called Glades Man about his hijinks in the Everglades. Jesse, a former trust-funder, is shacked up with Slater, who blew all her money on his cockamamie schemes. Their baby, Willa, is along for the chaotic ride. And then you have Phil and Stu, two middle-aged losers from Miami looking for easy money, who get dragged into a wild scheme with the boys in the Everglades that’ll go viral and change everyone’s lives.
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Barry’s crew of misfits is a wild one, but the dual plots he sets in motion are why Swamp Story shines. Slater and Kark, with the help of Brad and Ken — Ken is Slater’s weed dealer — come up with the fantastic idea of creating a viral video that shows a Bigfoot-type beast, the “Everglades Melon Monster,” chasing Slater and Ken. The goal is to parlay the fame into a TV deal for Slater’s failing Glades Man show and to jump-start business for the Bortle Brothers shop, which will become a “research institute” for studying the melon monster. All that’s needed is for someone to play the melon monster, which is where former newspaperman, now drunkard Phil comes in. Phil, who’d previously gone viral for wearing a giant Dora the Explorer head — it’s a long, ridiculous story involving men in drag and a groin injury — dons the giant head once more. Phil, with the help of Kark’s “postproduction skills,” makes for a passable melon monster, whatever the hell that even is.
As the Florida men prepare to execute their plan, Jesse, out on a walk with Willa in the middle of the Everglades, discovers gold bars buried in the muck. As Jesse heads back in possession of a single gold bar, two ex-con brothers who’ve been searching for the gold, Duck and Billy, start following her. They know she has the gold but don’t know where she found it. And so now, we have a “melon monster” roaming the Everglades and two very bad men chasing Jesse, who accidentally found a treasure buried deep in the Everglades. It’s perfectly ridiculous.
As Swamp Story reaches its inevitable conclusion and everyone comes together at the bait shop, a veteran TV reporter who’s been covering Florida for decades asks her cameraman what she can possibly say about the chaos she’s witnessing — gold bars falling from the sky as an alligator attacks a politician. The savvy cameraman says: “Just say it’s Florida.” That’s the perfect descriptor for Dave Barry’s Swamp Story, too: Well, it’s Florida, all right.
It’s commendable that Barry doesn’t go the easy route and politicize his Florida caper, which is what’s expected of writers who cover the state. The only politics in Swamp Story are the politics of ridiculousness. There’s an Everglades hillbilly named Skeeter who travels with a wild boar and a crooked politician named Whitt Chastain who makes an appearance late in the novel, but hillbilly or politico, everyone is treated with Barry’s signature empathetic disdain. To write about Florida is to accept that one must not look away from the ridiculousness while also treating its people with respect. Even while writing a comic novel, it’s possible to respect the state, which Barry succeeds in doing. Barry, a longtime Miami resident, doesn’t pull any punches, but it’s evident that he loves Florida. And when you love something, you can skewer it mercilessly while capturing its nature.
Swamp Story is predictable, but it’s inside that cocoon of predictability that Barry shines as a satirist. Of course, the ridiculous story of the melon monster is going to go viral and send hordes of TikTok-brained zoomers to the bait shop in the Everglades to buy merchandise. Of course, Jesse will have to fight off the ex-con brothers with the help of a new love interest. Of course, violence will ensue as everyone chases the gold. As a lifelong Floridian who judges books about Florida harshly, I’m pleased to say that Barry got it right. Authenticity is a tough metric to gauge, especially when Florida is the subject, but Swamp Story is as authentic as you’ll get. It’s grimy, nasty, and fun.
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If you want to read about the state and have fun doing so, don’t pick up a “serious” nonfiction book written by a hack pundit or read the latest long-winded piece in the Atlantic about DeSantis and his battle with Disney. Read Swamp Story and dive into the Floridian muck. It takes a Florida man to write a proper, ridiculous Florida novel.
Alex Perez is a fiction writer and cultural critic from Miami. Follow him on Twitter: @Perez_Writes.