person
1919–2000·also known as Trudeau

The Canadian prime minister who appears in dialogue 24 only as an anecdote in Bob's satire set piece. Recounting how McLuhan and his wife frequented Bahamas nudist beaches, Bob remembers Trudeau arriving — around 1970, with his bodyguard — and casts him, in Theall's terms, as a "Varronian": the joyful, hedonistic temperament that the satire typology opposes to Lewis' cynical Menippean. He is a passing illustration, not a subject in his own right.

Across the dialogues

24

Enters as a one-line illustration — Theall's living example of the "Varronian" temperament, encountered nude on a Bahamas beach around 1970

Trudeau serves as Theall's living illustration of the Varronian temperament — the hedonist strain of the satire typology, offered as a concrete case against the abstract Lewis/Joyce contrast.

"So Trudeau was, Don would say, a Varronian."
Donald Theall, read by Bob Dobbsreported

Connections

exemplifiesMenippean Satire

In Theall's typology Trudeau, nude on the beach, is a "Varronian" — the hedonist strain against Lewis' Menippean.