Checkpoint: A Novel

One wonders how Baker got this story through his agent and his editor and into print in August of 2004. It's pretty clear that this is simply the author ranting about the political situation of 2004; framing it as a dialog turns a rant into a "novel" just like putting a handle on the side of a building makes that "portable".
But even bad Baker remains interesting.

A shallow political rant from Bush Jr's first term, done up as a fictional dialogue. I suppose Baker would argue it's a portrayal of the despair and confusion felt by many Americans (and me) at the time, but neither character has nearly enough depth to make that work. There's a brief discussion of conspiracy theories which is perhaps prescient, but really the whole thing seems especially juvenile in light of the Trump era's manifold monstrosities.

Mercifully short but still one of the more pointless ways of spending an hour and a half.

Baker is a fine writer, but he seems to have let emotion get the better of him here, because this book is nothing but useless polemic. There was no attempt to persuade the reader with any well thought examples and counterexamples, out of which some sort of synthesis might occur. Rather, there was just one guy, who was a pretty obviously a complete nutjob and not someone anyone would be inclined to pay much attention to, yelling at another guy who doesn't say anything much other than, "Well, *that"* sounds like a crummy idea. Are you crazy?" As such, it came across as not as a piece of persuasive writing so much as a 120-page long list of harsh criticisms about the current administration (GW Bush, for those of you reading this in 2009 or show more later, after Bush and his minions are thankfully long gone), all of which you've either heard before or could think of yourself. There was no illumination, just the feeling that Baker was vomiting onto the page. In short, pretty much a waste of time. show less

More than just an anti-Bush dialogue, although if true, it was way worse than I even knew. What I found interesting, if subtle, was the interplay between the two not-very-close friends, one wanting to assassinate the President and the other trying to convince him not to. Different attempts, different strategies, positions reversing, food discussions, links to the past. The politics are there, but so are the characterizations.

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I thought that I would find reading this book to be a lot more cathartic than it actually was. Baker's decision to set his book in the real world with a character discussing his plan to assassinate George W. Bush, rather than just some nameless President, however, seems like just a cheap ploy for attention.

Of course, had he elected to use a nameless target rather than a real person, this book would have perilously little to recommend it. The characters are not nearly interesting enough to sustain the narrative (short as it is), leaving the book bereft of anything to attract a reader's interest, short of one's particular feeling about the current administration.

Even that, however, feels lacking. Modern political discourse, sadly, show more doesn't progress much past calls for assassination, although those calls are couched in metaphor and abstracted. But conservatives just want liberals to just run away to their hippy communes and leave the man's work of running the country to the "real patriots," while liberals just want the conservatives to be locked away for their fascist war crimes.

So reading Checkpoint doesn't feel like anything new or even shocking. Oh, look, people hate the President and wish he was dead; frankly, that's not even yesterday's news. show less

anti-bush, but disappointing,dialalog goes on &on stating the obvious without making any points that further the case against Bush. Progressives will agree just because, conservatives will go on & on with spurious claim that we are fighting terrorists.

A novel written in script form...interesting concept, but not a great story.