SQUEEZE ME Book Club Kit by PRH Library

BOOK CLUB KIT

First, it’s almost impossible to create a satirical fictional character more outrageous than Donald Trump. At the same time, it’s impossible as a novelist to ignore the extreme moods afflicting the country, the daily lunacy fueled on all sides by Trump’s behavior. The President in SQUEEZE ME does resemble the Big Orange Trumpster in many ways—he’s got a mansion in Palm Beach, a freakishly weird tan, and he’s not very good at spelling—but there are differences. For instance, my character binges on Dr. Pepper, not Diet Coke.

Photo ©Elena Seibert

A CONVERSATION WITH

CARL HIAASEN

The President in SQUEEZE ME, known only by his codename “Mastodon”, resembles a certain, ah, resident of the White House. Was it irresistible to write a character like him into your book? Was penning “Mastodon” different from other political characters you’ve created over the years?

Pythons prowling Palm Beach—a scenario only you could unleash! What inspired this? We’ve all seen the videos of pythons in Florida—how big a problem are they? And are they really IN Palm Beach?

Speaking of political characters, Clinton Tyree, aka Skink, is perhaps the most beloved among the many you’ve created in your prolific career as a novelist, and fans have been overjoyed to hear he makes an appearance in SQUEEZE ME. What made you decide to bring him back in a book set in 2020?

The pythons are, literally, a huge problem in South Florida. They’re massive, prolific, voracious, and seemingly unstoppable. They are definitely advancing beyond the Everglades. A few have turned up in the suburbs east of Lake Okeechobee, but I’m not aware of any that have made it to the island of Palm Beach—yet. They’re damn good swimmers, and they’ll get there eventually. The novel imagines the lively consequences of their arrival.

Skink is one of my favorites, too. Even though he’s getting old, he remains perpetually pissed off and plotting, which is useful. His early back-story is political – being a fugitive former governor of Florida—so the story line of this novel seemed like a solid fit for him. I thought it would be fun to turn him loose in a silly, pretentious place like Palm Beach. Also, living deep in the Everglades, he’s a dude that’s comfortable interacting with big-ass snakes.

A few years ago, I selfishly put him in a novel called STAR ISLAND just because I wanted to see how he’d cope with the ludicrous South Beach scene in Miami. He didn’t let me down then, and he didn’t let me down in SQUEEZE ME, either.

become very difficult to improve on the absurdity of true-life headlines and characters—like the Minnesota couple that proudly wore their swastika masks in a Walmart. Those folks belong somewhere in a scathing novel, but now it’s too late to make them up.

Angie Armstrong, the main character, is a woman, and you often choose to make women your protagonists—what draws you to female leading characters?

It’s not a stretch to say you are, in many ways, the conscience of Florida. What keeps you loving such a crazy place?

In my own experience, most women are smarter, more complicated and way more interesting than most men. When I started working on SQUEEZE ME, the main character—a wildlife-removal “specialist”—was a guy. I got a few chapters into it and realized it would be a much cooler story with a woman in that job, so I went back and started over. I’m glad I did, because I’m really fond of Angie. She’s fearless and clever as hell, and takes no sh** from anybody.

While the book is pure fiction, it manages to nail the absurdity of our times on the head. Given the madness of the world today, was it easier or harder to satirize things? As a novelist, it’s always been challenging to come up with something crazier than the reality of life here in Florida. These days, thanks to the pandemic and fevered social upheaval, the rest of the country is giving off a Florida-like vibe—weird and sketchy and crawling out of its skin. In that sense, SQUEEZE ME was definitely harder to write. For fictional purposes it has

I’ve never lived anywhere else, and what hasn’t been paved, poisoned and subdivided is still worth fighting for. It’s tough to watch a place you care about get trampled and sold off, but how can you give up and walk away? Almost everybody has a special quiet place from their childhood that lives on, at least in their hearts. I’ve always said that tourists shouldn’t be allowed into Disney World until they’ve spent a day with their family seeing the Everglades.

How are things there, what with the recent Covid-19 surge and Governor DeSantis? We’d love a brief dispatch from the Sunshine State. Well, just today (July 29) we set a record for single-day COVID deaths, so we’re all eagerly awaiting the governor’s upbeat spin on that news. He has become a national punch line, the gift that keeps on giving for Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah. In May, DeSantis basically declared victory over the virus and blamed the media for being so downbeat. Since then, Florida has exploded, as everyone knows: more than 6,300 deaths, and counting. And still no mask order from the governor. It’s pathetic—and tragic.

You’re first and foremost a journalist, and are a longtime columnist for the Miami Herald. How does that differ from your fictional writing? Do you prefer one to the other or is it a different but equal kind of love? I started writing novels as a sort of personal therapy, to burn energy, because there was so much overflow of rich material from my day job in the newsroom. Remember what Miami was like in the 70s and 80s—wild, drug-crazed, violent, and, of course, corrupt. To be a young journalist in a town like that was a nonstop adrenaline rush, so at night I came home and worked on the books. After so many years I still feel honored to have the Herald column, and Florida still has plenty of crooks, greedheads and pretenders to write about. No one can accuse of me of mellowing out.

I was fortunate to be absorbed in finishing SQUEEZE ME during the first part of the pandemic shutdown. Writers self-isolate, anyway, so my daily routine didn’t change much. Being a news junkie wasn’t easy, so at night we watched a ton of old “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episodes, just to remember what it was like to laugh. Now that the book is finished, I’ll be reading more—though I might steer clear of dystopian themes for a while.

ANY WORDS OF WISDOM FOR US TO KEEP IN MIND AS WE FACE THE BACK HALF OF THE YEAR?

Any predictions about what will happen in Florida on November 3rd? It’s safe to assume that the balloting process will not go smoothly in Florida. It never does. Every four years we all pray that the presidential election won’t hinge on what happens here. This coming November, Georgia looks like the early favorite to screw things up even worse than we do.

It’s safe to say 2020 has been a doozy for pretty much everyone. How have you filled your time during the mostly stay at home year so far?

YEAH, WEAR A MASK, WASH YOUR HANDS, AND STAY THE F*** AWAY FROM FRATERNITY PARTIES.

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