NASCAR Will Never Be the Same, Better Pole Position: Charlatan by Pope Brock

For the sake of the purpose of this blog, the book is set for the most part in Milford, Kansas but it's scope is nationwide (I'll get back to ZZ Top later). But unlike the last posting, Crazy School, where there was no sense of place and everyone was rootless, the main character in Charlatan creates his own stage, for a while being the moving force in two towns, one state, and the ether.

It tells the true story of John R. Brinkley, arch-quack, famous for transplanting goat testicles into men. What! You've never heard of him? And this was the 20's and 30's. (Like many of the biographies I read in 2008 -- specifically Lucia Joyce, Lee Miller, Helle Nice -- Brinkley was famous in our grandparents' generation and virtually ignored and unknown in contemporary culture.)

Brock is an exceptional writer, with harkenings of Mark Twain, but then again, the subject is so ripe for satire and repartee. Two quotes will suffice to illustrate the topic and the author's rendering of it:

"Only the urgency was new, not the idea. Ever since man began to walk upright, he had been obsessed when his penis would not behave likewise ..." And "Quacks have flourished in all ages and cultures, for nothing shows reason the door like cures ... for they unlike most scams which target greed, quackery fires deeper into Jungian universals, our fear of death, our craving for miracles."

Kansas is chosen by Brinkley for his clinic because he wanted to profit from naive people and flourish in a place that was off the beaten track, farther away from his nemesis in Chicago, Morris Fishbein of the AMA's Bureau of Investigations and later editor of JAMA. Brinkley eventually relocates to the Texan border, and once unsuccessfully in Arkansas, but his appeal is beyond the limits of any state (one step ahead of having his bogus medical license pulled by the medical boards).

As he expands into more and more promotion of his cures, Brinkley becomes the precursor of modern day marketing and public relations. He buys megawatt radio stations, eventually setting up the biggest station across the border in Mexico. He is one of the first to broadcast live performers, giving air time to country and western music and credited with making it a bigger part of American culture. After yet another legal setback, Brinkley decides to be a write-in candidate for Governor of Kansas and only loses through typical party election law maneuvering.
As a campaigner, he is noted for being the first candidate to fly to reach the electorate and to use the infamous loud speaker truck. Who knew?

Interwoven with the main theme of medical fraud ... and mass murder ... is the rise of the power of the AMA and regulation of the licensing of doctors and curtailing of bogus cures. Brock sets the book in its historical context, explaining the Jacksonian rise of distrust of professionals, lax laws, similar "research" and treatment in Europe, and the economic effect of the Roaring 20's and Great Depression (the first) on the populace's resort to cures and rejuvenation. At the conclusion, Brock outlines the legacy and continuation of such trends: in collagen injections, Viagra, and across the border cures for cancer.

Outside of it's medical legacy, Brock emphasizes the links of Brinkley's radio station to as diverse a pop culture spectrum as Johnny Cash, Wolfman Jack and ZZ Top ... bringing me back full circle ... closing with the lyrics of Fandango which refer directly to Brinkley and his station as their muse.