Dan Baltic's 'Nutcrankr' as ideological enema

Ideology doesn't exactly encourage self-awareness. From outside, a committed ideologue tends to look ridiculous; from deep enough inside, the absurdity is invisible. The thing is, all ideologies rest on vaporous premises, on that final because I said so as first principle. Maybe it's justified by all the other beliefs that are contingent on it. Maybe one because I said so will refer to another because I said so; some call this 'being systematic'.

Now, presuppositions aren't strictly bad: having a common medium of communication has its benefits, a shared moral centre. There's a whole lot to like about stability. But this stability is always limited in space and time, it's as subject to decay as anything else. Any ideology is an exercise in cartography, a systematising map distinct from our shared territory. Born to a particular time and place, never a perfect rendition of the world, there's a tension between what is and what we say there is, strain. So when problems arise - some painful difference between our map and territory - they're a function of ossification, rigidity. Why consider a place beyond all I care to know? Why modify my beliefs, even as the ground shifts underneath me? And that's when the brittle break.

So, how to remain supple? There are plenty of ways, broad strategies, narrow tactics, pinpoint artefacts. And one such artefact is Nutcrankr, by

Dan Baltic

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A breezy, energetic, often hilarious novel, Nutcrankr follows one Spencer Grunhauer, an internet-brained, chud Quixote who tilts at 'global Marxist' windmills built by 'Davos Daddies'. And how does he tilt? By leading a double life, a spiritual guerrilla war against twenty-first-century American liberalism. Exteriorly, Spencer is a man who believes in All the Right Things: he'll don a pussy hat, he won't yuck anybody's yum, he's caring, open, just a really good guy, you know? But away from the public gaze, Spencer is working on 'The Project', a fragmented treatise published on message boards, as comments under porn videos, a proposed Spousal Distribution Program, solutions to the problem of female hypergamy, complaints about his girlfriend's weight. These are seeds scattered in the ether between servers, devices, this cloud and that, a new ideology to rise from liberalism's ashes. Or maybe it will descend from Valhalla; it's a matter of perspective.

This double life is where many of the novel's funniest moments come from. Outwardly, Spencer will behave boorishly, swearing at receptionists, politically indoctrinating a woman he met on a BDSM website, tickling members of a polycule at an anti-Trump rally, the list goes on. But inwardly? Everything is framed in grandiose terms, Spencer as a son of Odin, Spencer as Aenaeas fleeing Troy, Spencer as a gentleman scholar, Spencer as a discerning epicurean, a man whose moral compass and tactical genius, not his cowardice, demand that he run - literally run - from a difficult situation. 'Are you crying?' is something often asked of Spencer, normally after he has been publicly humiliated. And no, he is not crying. His roiling emotions, this Dionysian exuberance, a mid-Atlantic storm within: his body can barely contain what he feels, that's all. He's a sensitive guy.

Were Spencer Grunhauer merely an object of ridicule, a satirical, cardboard cutout of a terminally-online right-winger, then Nutcrankr would be amusing, but ultimately forgettable, a pleasant weekend read and little more. Fortunately for us, this isn't the case; Baltic is too good an author for that. As one spends more time with Spencer, a softening takes place. Part of Nutcrankr's magic is this: it gets your guard down, refuses to take an ideological position, lets you laugh at everyone, laugh at your pretensions. Part of this is thanks to its vulgarity, never so overbearing as to make you roll your eyes, switch off, but present enough to bypass that sophisticated part of your psyche.

Then, there's the characterisation. It's never so detailed or naturalistic as with an Ivan Karamazov or Humbert Humbert, but, I suspect, this is to the novel's advantage. A character too lifelike, too threatening, might scatter the unsteady steps of a stripling self-awareness, wouldn't be so effective in allowing a reader to laugh at their own faults. The characters here are flattened, simplified enough to have their foibles and motivations easily understood, but deep enough to feel like people, objects of sympathy and empathy.

What's striking is how kindly these foibles and motivations are presented: this is a remarkably good-natured book, and to primarily satirise the political right was an excellent decision. Successful satire comes from a place of love, belonging, and Baltic couldn't satirise the online right so deliciously if he were outside of it. He wouldn't have the delicacy, the affection, necessary to elevate Nutcrankr from mean-spirited denunciation to incisive revelry.

That Baltic is a creature of the right, however, doesn't mean that he treats left-wing characters unfairly. No character is blandly awful, an easy object of hate. Sure, depending on the beliefs you bring with you into this book, some might seem more sympathetic, more easily understood. At their very worst, their least likeable, characters are obnoxious but well-meaning.

And no character typifies this quite like Spencer. Because, despite his hyperbole, his outbursts, his preternatural affinity for faux pas, Spencer is rarely completely wrong. He'll have often correctly identified that something isn't right, but will address this problem in comically inept ways. Then, when his efforts are repaid in humiliation, frequently before a large audience, that's when we readers find ourselves laughing, splinters of discomfort through our chuckles, creeping nerves. Because we've all embarrassed ourselves in public, said precisely the wrong thing, approached a situation in just the wrong way. And the curl of your toes, that involuntary grimace, that burn in the pit of your stomach as Spencer finds himself, again and again, the object of derision? That's empathy. Welcome it in: there's a little Spencer in all of us, agree with him or not.

The book isn't perfect, although its flaws are far from fatal. The novel's structure is, essentially, a series of scenes in which Spencer humiliates himself. And this is as far as the structural variation goes: it's all buildup, moment of embarrassment, repeat. I can't help but feel that a little more variety in how the scenes are structured would have made the moments of eruptive comedy - climaxes, moneyshots, as I'm sure the perennially risqué Baltic would call them - even more impactful. Close to the book's end is another scene where Spencer humiliates himself, but this time with much higher stakes than before, which brings me to a deeper problem, perhaps Nutcrankr's most significant. We aren't shown much of Spencer's character development. That final scene of humiliation, the one with the high stakes? It felt like it almost came out of nowhere, I didn't expect Spencer to do something quite so drastic. It's not wholly out of character - he's proven himself adept at making bad decisions - but a more obvious buildup of frustration, rage, something, would have greatly elevated this scene and given the book more shape. And this last, drastic act does, in fact, change Spencer: Nutcrankr's conclusion gives us a Grunhauer who has adapted, adopted a new suite of tactics. In terms of plotting, however, what we see is a discontinuous character arc: Baltic provides us with Spencer's nadir and the endpoint of his transformation, but not with the character development between these two stages. It's not that this story doesn't make sense - it's clear what happened, it's clear why Spencer is a changed man - but I would have liked to see more of this process for myself.

A final criticism: I don't like the book's cover design, and I'm ambivalent about its title. I held off on buying Nutcrankr for a long time because its packaging says 'vulgar, schoolboy, frogpost literature' to me. Most of all, having read and enjoyed Nutcrankr, I don't think the packaging and title quite sum up what the book is doing, and what it does so well. It's a misdirection, away from the book's strengths and towards something much less exciting.

I can easily see rejoinders to all of my criticisms: the book maintains such a quick pace because it doesn't stray from what it does well, aiming to humble our Spencer in amusing ways, rather than getting stuck on complex character development or shifting from its straightforward structure. The vulgarity of its title and packaging are highly marketable, something that Baltic has managed very well using his online persona, a cavalcade of 'nut'-related jokes and puns painting podcast appearances and posts on X.

Nothing I've criticised here really tarnished my enjoyment of this book, and I have a great deal of respect for what Baltic has done. Dispensing red meat for the ideologically faithful can be satisfying, lucrative, but it's not artistically interesting. Rather than just tell one group that they're right and another that they're wrong, Baltic has written a book that lets us, however briefly, step back and see our vanity for what it is: something absurd, something really, really funny.

So, give Nutcrankr a read. Be a little less brittle, less self-righteous, less self-important. Navigate according to a different map for a moment, take someone else's ideology out for a spin. You probably won't end up converting, but you might have some fun.

You should buy Nutcrankr