Book Review: Make it Stop by Jim Ruland

 

 

Make it Stop by Jim Ruland

 256 pages, Paperback
Published April, 2023 by Rare Bird Books

Podcast interview on the way!

We have many great writers in San Diego, perhaps one of the most respected is Jim Ruland. While he has made a name for himself writing books about punk rock, co-authoring Damaged the autobiography of Circle Jerks frontman Keith Morris, telling the story of Bad Religion, and writing Corporate Rock Sucks THE BOOK on SST Records the pioneering punk record label. In town, we know Jim from his classic reading series Vermin on the Mount, which gathered authors, poets, and performance artists.  Jim is visible at book events around town, where he often writes culture articles for the LA Times.

I had his novel on my shelf for a while and needed to read it. I knew it had a slight speculative edge, reminding me of some high-powered things. The comp I came up with was a manic political thriller that crosses vibes somewhere between Fight Club and Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly.

There are a couple of reasons why I read this now. It was an episode of a NY Times podcast that was talking about rehab and psych wards that were trapping people and not letting them go. I thought as I was listening, hey that is the topic of Jim’s book. I bumped up my list, and then I saw Jim at the Verbatim Book Fair. I decided that it would be my read for the flight to Portland for Bizarro con. I started it on the bus to the airport and finished before I even got to brunch in Portland. It was a great almost one sitting read.

Make It Stop is a strange novel that doesn’t fit tidy into any specific genre. It is a political thriller, mildly a crime novel, and mainly a speculative fiction novel, but it could be called many things. I suspect the publisher is less comfortable with the SF label than Jim is. That said it is a near-future political thriller…you know Science Fiction.

Melanie is our main point-of-view character, a former drug addict who found herself in rehab and couldn’t get released due to laws that state you can be held as long as you still owe money for your care, and of course each day the cost racks up. This kind of healthcare trap is the kinda thing you think can’t happen but it does. The reason Melanie is in rehab however is as a member of Make It Stop a clandestine underground group, breaking people out of these healthcare prisons. The legal term ‘Indefinite forfeiture of liberty.’ In other words some capitalist bastardization of things that should be a right.

In one of the early chapters, Ruland has a character that highlights the struggle. “It's been three years, nine months, and twenty-four days since he chewed up Three hundred milligrams of oxycontin, chased it with a pint of rum, and waited to die. Trevor woke up in a hospital and restraints, hooked up to all kinds of tubes. For three days the lights burned through his eyelids while the voices of his deceased father and missing mother drifted through his bed and truly wished he was dead.

When he got out of the hospital, he was Seventy-three thousand dollars in debt and remanded to court-ordered rehab, where he started plotting his next attempt. There he met Doyle who enlisted him in his organization. Trevor wasn't a smash-the-state type like many of the others who were drawn to make it stop and groups like it there seemed to be more of them every week.”

The idea that people can be trapped in these health care networks that become debtors' prisons in every sense is a nightmare. Through carefully crafted backstories and dialogue Ruland has created a thought-provoking piece of entertainment. The characters are rich and fully realized, and the story is fun and interesting while communicating the message. It is also just a fun ride seeing the Robin Hood activists fight the system. 

Still, you might be wondering why I call it SF when it is so clearly ripped from the headlines. There is a technology like TruLuv dating apps (again still not that futuristic), and there are different cars and phones that gave way to TABS (tablets).  Doyle, one of the leaders of Make it Stop introduces us to the key speculative element when he goes to a morgue to identify a dead member of their team. He is struck.

A new drug on the street…” Sorry, Sally says. “Should have warned you about that these Kannibals have an intense odor.”

“Kannibals?” He fumbles in his pocket for a cough drop and pops it into his mouth. An old trick a cop taught him.

“Kannabliss users. Sally offers him a paper mask that Doyle waves off. Though most of the time they just call it bliss. Nasty stuff.”

I love a good fictional drug, and the new drug on the street simulates the euphoria of climax during sex, thus becoming popular quickly. The deadly side effects are a risk, but as addictive as it is makes it a money maker for Hansen the mustache-twirling CEO of Health Safety Net. The fictional drug and this wicked CEO keep a train of people coming into their hospitals. There is something that people always say about James Cameron’s Aliens. Capitalism is the real villain. Capitalism mixed with a uniquely American clusterfuck of a broken healthcare system is the villain in Make it Stop. It would be impossible to make a human character an avatar for that mess and not have them come off as less reasonable than Cobra Commander before his morning coffee.   

Make it Stop is an angry novel that at times has the energy of a punk rock song, but it is written carefully by a great storyteller. Ruland went through many drafts, including longer versions but you don’t feel the ghosts of the phantom limb chapters ever. There are hardly any wasted words. It is not a super long novel, but it fits in as much message, character study, and weird fun as a much longer would struggle with. Make it Stop is a great reading experience and is recommended.