A blood take a look at to foretell habits? Charles Baxter finds humor in that scary premise

“You fall down right here in Kingsboro, Ohio, you’re in good firm,” says Brock, the narrator of Charles Baxter’s new novel, “Blood Take a look at.” True sufficient, quite a lot of issues are going sideways for Brock and people round him on this fictional city. His ex-wife’s new boyfriend is a boor who spouts doctrine from a distressingly Scientology-esque group. His teenage son appears to be planning self-harm. His teenage daughter has grown overly cozy along with her boyfriend. Who wouldn’t need somewhat certainty within the face of all this?

The setup for “Blood Take a look at” is a careful-what-you-wish-for reply to that query. Throughout a physician’s go to, Brock is invited to take a blood take a look at by a agency referred to as Generomics Associates that “predicts habits, tells you what you’re going to do earlier than you do it.” Due to superior medical know-how and AI, we are able to now work predictive wonders for society. Nice! Much less nice: The take a look at informs Brock that he’s virtually sure to commit a heinous crime.

Lots of criticisms of up to date American life spill out of this simple, virtually folkloric setup. It takes on scammy pseudoscience (assume Theranos and its personal false guarantees for blood assessments). Gun tradition. Authorized mumbo-jumbo. Church tradition. Protestant predestination. Cults. Manifest Future. The algorithm. Masculinity.

Baxter, a veteran storyteller who’s been nominated for a Nationwide E book Award and written and edited a number of books on the craft of fiction, is presented at giving every of those social stressors their due whereas retaining the story transferring. The novel is subtitled “A Comedy,” however he’s written one thing nearer to a farce — a narrative wherein each predicament is deliberately absurd. (“Should you don’t like zany you most likely shouldn’t reside in America,” Brock notes.) And it nonetheless feels loads like actuality.

Informed he’s now all however helpless to change into a hard-core legal, Brock — a straight-spined, humble insurance coverage salesman and Sunday-school trainer his son dubs “Mr. Dependable” — begins flirting with petty theft. Maybe somewhat shoplifting will forestall any extra critical transgressions? Nope: Listening to that his ex-wife’s new accomplice, Burt, has been utilizing homophobic slurs towards his son, Brock insists on a confrontation. There are phrases. Cue the banana peel. Instantly, Burt has a debilitating cranium fracture.

Whether or not this constitutes an accident, a violent assault or a fuzzy form of self-fulfilling prophecy, forces exterior of Brock’s management are immediately set in movement. Generomics, which will get wind of Burt’s destiny, arrives with new knowledge for Brock, a promise of an insurance coverage coverage and the supply of an undesirable gun. Brock’s girlfriend appears at Generomics and sees an existential nightmare: “They gave you permission to do something and the whole lot. The whole lot is permitted as soon as they are saying so.”

Brock is a tick extra restrained, although. He thinks of his high-school buddies for whom “guilt slid off … like rainwater off a goose.” Why not him too? The web says he’s fated to be evil, and the legal professionals say even when he’s, he’ll be spared jail time. Possibly having a conscience is overrated on this courageous new world.

That’s the largest, juiciest goal in “Blood Take a look at”: an America whose residents are inspired to not assume, or solely to assume selfishly; the place we must always count on to get away with something, aided by know-how. It’s an thought {that a} novelist can discover solely in comedy to keep away from trying like a scold.

And “Blood Take a look at” is a humorous e book, if of a cautious kind. Generally Baxter will go for a throwaway gag line (“Girls don’t prefer it if you make generalizations about them”) or a unusual scene (he watches a B-movie wherein a robotic one way or the other turns into pope). However largely Baxter is a deadpan artist: He’s made Brock as blandly Midwestern as doable to place the wildness of up to date American life into sharper aid.

In that regard, “Blood Take a look at” is a form of heir of Don DeLillo’s traditional “White Noise,” one other story a few just-so Midwestern household fractured by know-how and the creeping sense that we’re now not in charge of our personal destinies. Like DeLillo, Baxter is moved to satirize the ways in which each atom of our consciousness appears to be up on the market. (“We have now methods of monetizing desires, for those who’re ,” a Generomics physician tells Brock. “These are discount desires. We may deliver you in on the bottom ground, pennies on the greenback.”) However Baxter has eliminated a few of the iciness of DeLillo’s prose, permitting Brock to be a hotter postmodern patriarch.

It’s not giving an excessive amount of away to say that “Blood Take a look at” ends with a duel — there are few higher methods of symbolizing America’s us-versus-them tradition. Additionally it is, in a time of normal mass shootings, an virtually quaint, comedian technique to body a battle of wills. “Ours is a violent nation the place a single bullet not often issues,” as Brock places it. That’s not an apparent chuckle line. However after Baxter has laid out the parade of egocentric, money-hungry, blindly tech-admiring parts of up to date life, the black comedy of the phrases shines by means of.

Mark Athitakis is a author in Phoenix and creator of “The New Midwest.”