Fundamentalism in The Books Store

The book is modeled on C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters much as Lewis, Himself, modeled Pilgrim's Regress on Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The time is the present. An informal dorm-room discussion group is the backdrop. Ticker's liberal classmates, Tiffany, PJ, "Yellow-dog" Jake, Howard Bentley the III, and the conservative Reginald Strong, participate in the discussions, providing complications. All is captured in Uncle Red's letters and Ticker's implicit replies. The main content of the book is a ruthless unmasking of latter-day liberalism, both as it is practiced by the liberal elite who profit (not presented as a conspiracy theory) and as it is practiced by nave True Believers, the "Troobs." Philosophy, psychology, and tactics are laid bare. Conservatism emerges as the positive alternative. At its heart, the book is about good and evil: secular Man-centered and God-centered world views in opposition. There is both humor and intellectual exercise, as Uncle Red advises, explains, and constantly adjusts to complications. Uncle Red, in the tradition of Screwtape, is brutally, for family eyes only, honest in his (white is black) mentoring of Ticker. An "underbook" (as done by William Safire inhis novel Freedom), letter by letter, gives sources and commentary. The underbook, in a separate section at the end, serves the function of footnotes without disrupting the story's flow.