His Name Is Phil Ochs, and He Is So Tired of Not Being Respected

Phil Ochs has his troubles.

His adult son is a failed artist waging a terroristic poetry campaign against him. His wife has developed an addiction to As Seen On TV gadgets. A professional rival is poaching managers from his seventeen Fry Buddy fast food franchises. And worst of all, Phil is a southern conservative who happens to share his name with a famous liberal folk singer.

That last detail, Phil is convinced, is the root of all his problems. How could anyone take him seriously when his name makes people think of a radical, hippie, tree-hugging protest singer?

Welcome to The Decadents, M.C. Schmidt's darkly satirical novel about a man whose desperate hunger for respect is about to spin wildly out of control.

For readers who don't know the reference, the joke is a sharp one. The real Phil Ochs was an American folk singer and songwriter who rose to prominence in the 1960s. He was known for pointed protest songs about war, civil rights, and politics, including anti-war anthems like "I Ain't Marching Anymore," and he was a fixture of the Greenwich Village folk scene. For a buttoned-up, conservative fast food businessman, sharing a name with an icon of the 1960s counterculture is an endless source of humiliation. Schmidt milks that irony beautifully, and it tells you everything about Phil's fragile ego before the plot even gets going.

Then comes the final insult. Phil loses a coveted business award, and not to a respected rival, but to a producer of testicular implants for neutered pets. That's the last straw. Phil is finally through being disrespected. He devises a scheme that's certain to bring him notoriety. Whether it makes him a figure of national admiration or national hatred will depend entirely on how well he can hide the more depraved elements of his plan.

Satire has a long history of skewering exactly this kind of character, and The Decadents belongs to that tradition. From Jonathan Swift to modern comic novelists, satirists have used exaggeration and absurdity to expose human vanity, hypocrisy, and self-delusion. By pushing a situation to ridiculous extremes, satire lets readers laugh at behavior they might recognize in real life, or even in themselves. Phil's obsession with status, his endless self-justification, and the widening gap between the man he imagines himself to be and the things he's willing to do all make him a perfect satirical target.

What makes the novel so entertaining is its cast. Every member of Phil's household is a gloriously dysfunctional creation, from the resentful poet son to the gadget-obsessed wife, and their chaos bounces off Phil's schemes in ways that are both hilarious and uncomfortable. Schmidt has a gift for absurd detail and dark comedy, and the story barrels forward with a mounting sense that things are going to go very, very wrong.

But beneath the laughs, there's something sharper. The Decadents is a portrait of how the craving for recognition can warp a person's judgment, and how far some people will go to be noticed. In an age obsessed with attention, fame, and going viral, that theme feels more relevant than ever.

The Decadents is a must-read for fans of dark comedy, biting satire, and novels packed with unforgettable, deeply flawed characters. If you like your humor edgy and your antiheroes spectacularly misguided, Phil Ochs, the other one, is waiting for you.

The Decadents by M.C. Schmidt is available now in paperback and hardcover.