Mark Maciejewski, Electric Boogerloo: I am Fartacus, New York: Aladdin, 2018. (sequel)

I am Fartacus is told in the first person by its protagonist, Chub (Maciek Trzebiatowski), a sixth-grade student who is an outcast at Alanmoore (sic) Middle School. It focuses on enmity and friendship. Chub is sworn enemies with the school’s golden boy, Archer Norris. At primary school, the duo had been best friends, but an accident with dry-cleaning fluid left Chub without hair, and destroyed the friendship. Now, Archer rules the school, while Chub does his best to ruin his former friend’s life. Chub does this with the help of his new friend, Moby, a flatulent vegetarian, but his plots never quite work. One day, however, while serving detention in the library, Chub helps the elderly librarian, Mrs Belfry, with her computer, and discovers the password to the school’s computer system. He discovers that there is more to Archer’s seemingly untouchable status than meets the eye: that the headmaster, Mr Mayer, is caught up in an illicit gambling ring, and Archer is blackmailing him. 

Chub, who likens himself to the heroic slave, Spartacus, whose story he has learned from watching films at his cousin Jarek’s second-run movie theatre, decides to bring Archer down, once and for all. But as he lays his plans, infiltrating the gambling ring with the help of Moby (who displays an unexpected talent at counting cards) and an unlikely gang of misfits including Shelby, a theatrical girl who lives with her grandmother, and the thuggish McQueen twins, something unexpected happens. Chub loses his appetite for revenge. Chub decides life is simpler if Archer continues to be the school’s golden boy. He gives the money Moby has won in the poker game to Mr Mayer, and releases him from Archer’s power. He releases Archer from the eternal contest between popular kids and nerds, that has driven the school, but does not humiliate him or overthrow his power. Instead, Chub learns to be happy with the friends he has made, especially Moby. The novel explains that the two became friends when Chub was the only kid in the cafeteria not to laugh after Moby had farted violently. And it ends with another moment of flatulence: in which Chub and his new friends, like the Roman slaves announcing they are Spartacus, take the blame when Moby farts loudly and noxiously in class.

The phrase “I am Fartacus” comes from the 1960 film Spartacus, in which slaves in a failed uprising refuse to give up their leader, each crying “I am Spartacus,” when the Romans try to find out who has organised their rebellion. The phrase is symbolic of solidarity, and has become a catchphrase much used in the modern world. “I am Fartacus” is a play on this phrase, with t-shirts and badges and internet avatar slogans proclaiming that the bearer is prodigiously flatulent. It is a classic example of how humour can work by drawing together high and low concepts – here the idea of heroism and base bodily moments combine.  

Mark Maciejewski’s novel draws on this phrase, in a novel that loosely connects with the Stanley Kubrick film through its focus on friendship and solidarity in the face of an unfair hierarchical system. The parallel between the Romans and the Slaves, and the cool kids and the nerds of Alanmoore high school is lightly indicated, as Maciejewski instead interrogates the sense of social hierarchy at the school, suggesting that Chub’s social isolation is as much the result of his own paranoia as it is of the other children’s ideas about fitting in. A revenge plot gives way to a story about resolving differences, and accepting the idea that everyone has their own struggles. The punchline of the novel – which is its title – appears at the end, in a scene where Chub takes the blame for Moby’s epic fart, only to find that his friends also do the same. 

With its emphasis on farts and other kinds of slapstick humour, the novel is firmly aimed at a middle-grade readership: i.e., children between the ages of 10 and 14 who will be increasingly aware of the nuances of social pressure, and also will enjoy the novel’s frequent descents into gross-out humour. As such, it indicates the kind of literature that is written to appeal to young readers’ sense of humour, and to reassure them that friendships can be found in unusual places. 

Hale, Elizabeth, "I am Fartacus", Antipodean Odyssey, 15/8/2020 (accessed: July 27, 2022).

Lopez-Ropero, Lourdes, “‘You are a Flaw in the Pattern’: Difference, Autonomy and Bullying in YA Fiction”, Children’s Literature in Education 06, 43.2 (2012): 145–157.

Späth, Thomas and Margrit Tröhler, “Muscles and Morals: Spartacus, Ancient Hero of Modern Times”, in Almut-Barbara Renger and Jon Solomon, eds., Ancient Worlds in Film and Television: Gender and Politics, Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2012, 41–63.