The Second Coming of Yeeat Shpanst

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Yeeat Shpanst? Don’t try to pronounce it. Nor need you pronounce the
names of the other residents of the fictional Manitoban town of
Gutenthal. The “Flat German” dialect that is very much at the core
of Wiebe’s infectiously comic political novel is annotated in a
15-page glossary. It comes, however, with the following caveat:
“excessive use of this Guide may turn Flat German into Latin. Avoid
inhaling.” Wiebe, ever helpful, adds a pronunciation guide: “When
pronouncing these words use English phonic sounds; or whole language
with roller bearing Rs; your pronouncement will either be cracked or
funny.”

In fact, The Second Coming of Yeeat Shpanst, a revisiting of Gutenthal
and its residents a

dozen years after The Salvation of Yasch Siemens, is both cracked and
funny. Following the broadcast of the prime minister’s “Dark Day in
Canada” speech, Wiebe’s Mennonite community sets out to save the
country in any way it can. Led by the visionary Oata Siemens and by
college-educated Politicks Paetkau, Gutenthal’s citizens unite to
combat the creeping Americanization of their country, the callowness of
its politicians, the eroding of its institutions. To summarize further
would be futile, so rich and intertwined are the adventures of Oata and
her friends. The picaresque plotline moves from Manitoba to Ottawa and
back again. When a tornado picks up most of the traditions, landmarks,
and political signposts of the country and spins them around and around
in a soup of Canadianism, Wiebe unleashes the full force of his acerbic
wit.

The reviewer from the Post-Modern Journal of Prairie Reflexology aptly
pronounced this novel “a foot-rubbing good read!”