Ethan, Welcome to the Lake.

Christy, Thank you for Hosting today’s Book Salon.

A pleasure to be here, Bev and Christy.

My pleasure, Bev. Welcome Ethan.

There is so much packed into this novel — the political intrigue and philosophical glimpses, the press, the lusty betrayal. But the reminder that politicians are, above all, the same flawed human beings as the rest of us is incredibly valuable. I’m curious how you began this novel? Was it a particular character or reading some moment in history — or something else entirely?

Ethan, is there a reason you picked the late 60s for this book?

Welcome Ethan, and thanks Christy.

We’ll have to agree to disagree about Billy Joel, but the book sounds great. When you started it, did you anticipate bringing out in this kind of political environment?

Also, Ethan, as a WV native, the story about the mining negotiations between the patriarch of the Medarey clan and the miner’s union was an awfully familiar tale, sadly even up to the present time. Was there a particular incident that you used as a backdrop or was that pulled from some family tale from long ago?

This book began without the politics. It was just a class story, a working class boy and an upper class girl. I started it in late 2000. I was about 200 pages in when the attacks came on September 11th, and after that day I didn’t write fiction again for about two years. I’ve always been something of a political hound, but those events made me even more deeply interested in politics and history. When I came back to the book, Senator Bonwiller entered it. And then he took it over.

That seems somehow appropriate, given Sen. Bonwiller’s ego in the book.

Not answering for the author, but for me, that was the last period of time that was Real. Since then, we’ve all been trying to acquiesce. Pretend.
Well, until now, of course.
I might have to buy this book. I only read fiction. I read enough non-fiction during the day, during the week on the internet.
Thanks for the heads up on a Cool Fiction Read.
Is this the first non-fiction book spotlighted at Book Salon?

Hello — I look forward to reading your book.

i’ve just finished a contemporary novel that will more than likely be considered politically controversial if it ever sees print. Any advice on agents, publishers, small presses that are interested in promoting political fiction (with two true life, suspicious, politically charged deaths at its center)? Like my daughter sez – you don’t ask, you don’t get. thanks for any suggestions.

It’s mostly the early ’70’s, actually. Really, I chose that time for reasons of my own memories–at 12 years old I remember carrying a Unicef can for George McGovern. But it seems to me that those years were also the beginning of the public consciousness, or at least the wide-spread public consciousness, of political corruption. And obviously Nixon is to thank for that. I love Nixon as a character. I can see him in his wingtips in a dark office, lurking behind everything.

Good afternoon Ethan and wlecome to FDL

Hey Christy!

So, as someone who lived through that period with both fond and not-so-fond memories, what should entice me to read this book?

Pick up a copy of the Writer’s Market — available at any book store or library — lots of info to start with there. But let’s stick to the topic of Ethan’s book for the salon, please. Thanks!

Ethan, I was very curious about your references to Mencken and so many other journalistic icons, and other bits and pieces sprinkled throughout the book on journalism versus the use of it for political gain. Wondered if you could comment on some of your influences on that? And whether you’ve been a working journalist or if it’s an interest based on being a political junkie through the years?

duh. out here in the boonies we don’t meet many novelists.

Jane,
Funny you ask that. I wrote most of it during non-campaign years (remember them?). So I had to imagine the dirty tricks, imagine the vulgar tone of a presidential year. But I realize now that I underestimated how ugly things really do get. At least, they’re getting that way this year (This morning I heard rumors of Bristol Palin’s big wedding ceremony right before the election). I don’t think these dirty tricks were either as apparent in 1972 as they are now, nor as prevalent, but I also know that the internet makes so many of us so much more aware of them.

I think the difference between then and now is that then politcians were corrupt but tried to hide it whereas now they do it in plain sight and even run on it. The key is what you call it. Henry Paulson wanted a plain and simple $700 billion bailout for his erstwhile colleagues on Wall Street. Now he was politically astute enough to say this was for “stabilization of the markets,” instead of loot for my homies. But the Democratic leadership wisely understood that this was too high brow and would never connect with the masses of rubes they “represent”. It didn’t have enough “sort ofs” and “kind ofs”. So they added a few sort of oversights here and some wish we could give some kind of help for homeowners there and with these flourishes of lipstick declared the bill rube-proof and ready to go. They have also made sure that despite this being the age of the internet and the ease with which documents can be posted online in either html or pdf formats that no such posting as yet been made. Because the last thing they want is anyone actually having the time to read and think about this turkey.

Hey kittykitty, but, ain’t that the “beauty part of the innernet? Levels the playing field.
CHS…love the political junkie or the egg question. Waiting for that answer. Really. Me, waiting.
PS to Ethan – I love Nixon as a Character too.

Yeah, the Dems had Dick Tuck while the Reps had Donald Segreti. At least Tuck had a sense of humor about things.

And Hunter Thompson to make “sense” of it all.

I have wondered during the last few days of crazy campaign stunts and stumbles what Hunter Thompson would have made of all of this. I’ve especially wondered how he would have dealt with Sarah Palin — because that’s been a circus in and of itself, hasn’t it?

Ethan raises some of the “was it or wasn’t it and by whom” dirty tricks questions within the book that, even though fictional, get to the heart of some of the baser motivations in play.

Christy,
I have been a working journalist, but not much of one, and not for very long. But my wife was one for a number of years when we were in our twenties. (I remember living in the town she used to cover for a paper outside of Boston, having to get in the car every time we heard a fire-truck turn on its siren.)
In my time as a journalist I’ve been on enough press junkets (mostly around arts journalism–movies, tv shows, that kind of thing) to see just how much of it is corrupt. And I’ve certainly had my share of exposure to the east coast establishment, both the political one and the journalistic one. It’s difficult to say which side has the more heavily fortified egos.

Having been in and around some of those egos the last few years, I’d say it’s often hard to discern where the flattery ends on one end and begins on another in some of the conversations I’ve seen. Let alone the spin I’ve seen dropped in someone’s lap from time to time. It’s truly unnerving when you start to think that from such brittle beginnings a solid batch of public opinion and history can be born…

As someone involved in the McGovern campaign (at the lofty age of 17 — no Unicef can for me!) I can assure you there were lots of dirty tricks in the 1972 election. There’s a case to be made that politics were dirtier then than they are now, or as dirty. People in California were amazed in 2002 when Governor Gray Davis reached into the GOP primary campaign to advertise for and help select his own weaker opponent. But in 1972, the Democratic field was winnowed to McGovern with much help from the GOP.

Not only Muskie’s “tears” in New Hampshire – there were shady grownups around our McGovern organization who’d never been involved in Democratic politics before. They knew all the rules about caucuses and helped us swamp the Northern Virginia party events for McGovern. They never showed up on caucus day, but they sure helped us get organized beforehand.

I always wondered who those guys were.

Anyway, as you can tell, 1972 has many fond memories for me, and I am really enjoying your book. Thanks for picking this era for a wonderful read. What’s next on your writing table, Ethan?

Teddy — that is a fascinating tidbit about the organizing folks. Wouldn’t it be fun to find out names and track them down?

Hi Ethan,

It’s very cool of you to to a book salon here. Thanks very much. I read Emperor of the Air in high school (1999) and as an aspiring literato I liked it a lot. (I remember presenting “Star Food” though I admit I only remember snippets from the book.)

It’s so interesting that you’ve managed to write an essentially political novel, with a politician as a main character. I’ve recently been thinking that there is fodder for great fiction in our current political scene, but at the same time I can’t really think of any novels that can tell that kind of story. In fact, off the top of my head, I can’t think of any political novels at all. Are there any you looked to?

Yes, as a character Nixon is endlessly interesting. Watching Katie Couric and Sarah Palin the other day, I couldn’t help feeling for Palin as her eyes cast about the table for her notes. Man, she must be one frightened person. I always think of Nixon the same way. A lot more polished, but always feeling, even as President, that he’d been left out of the joke.
Many people have mentioned the similarity of America America to the Chappaquiddick story, by the way. But actually, I had LBJ more in mind than Ted Kennedy. LBJ with his mix of high ideals and bigotry, with his great social generosity and his utter ruthlessness.

Well, if I remember correctly, it was Joseph Alsop at Newsweek who used the phrase of Watergate as a “third-rate burglary” to downplay it.

The National press was quite often in the tank in those days as well.

You know the slimey Mitch McConnell of Kentucky started out, and I know this is hard to believe, as something of a reformist Republican. As a Representative, he even made some overtures to the African American community in Louisville. This, of course, was considered heresy by most Republicans and they laid down the law. McConnell never got out of line again. Instead he sold his soul to the big power broker in Kentucky, Big Coal, and parlayed that support and one of the first (and generally considered classic) negative campaigns to become Senator. Having learned the lessons of never sticking his neck out and always siding with those in power, he has managed to slither to his current position of prominence as Senate Minority Leader.

Ethan, something that I’m always curious about with fiction writers especially — how did you get started writing fiction? Was there a particular book you picked up as a kid that made you want to put pen to paper?

I have a lot of friends who are writers and, to a person, they’ve always been the sort who wrote in journals or put together short stories or made up stories to tell their family and friends from a young age. Wondering who your influences are? And also what you are reading for fun at the moment as well?

Greetings Ethan. Just wanted to drop in and say that my wife has been raving about this book all week. It’s moved to the top of my reading list. Kudos for putting a story together that so completely captured her. That’s pretty tough to do, especially this close to November.

Again, well done and thanks.

Two things…
I’ve always thought you were smart enough to discern what the flattery really means, and stems from.
and,
from such brittle beginnings a solid batch of public opinion and history can be born…
Are you speaking of the blogosphere, sorry, can’t tell.
Blogs are just more front porch pickle barrel BS, water cooler chat.
You remember what Paul Begala said the other day? Maybe it wasn’t him. Someone here, oh, yes, that guy named Markos, seemed to have a good perspective on this forum.

Teddy, you’re one of the few people I know of to mention GOP rodent fornication designed to boost McGovern — and the first, to my knowledge, who was actually in the McGovern campaign. One of my oldest online buddies swears up and down that just as he sent Anna Chan Chennault to Paris in 1968 to destroy the peace talks and ensure a Nixon win, Tricky Dick wanted to face McGovern instead of Muskie and thus had his old friend Loeb engineer with Segretti the “Canuck Letter”.

Not speaking for the author but a couple from the ’50s/’60s are:
The Last Hurrah and Advise and Consent

Can you imagine LBJ in Harry Reid’s spot right now? Master of the Senate, indeed.

Not necessarily blogs, although I’m sure there are some who fall for it, certainly. But from the regular media broadcasts and “opinion makers” out to the whole of the viewing and reading public, really. We’ve all seen — and dissected — how something becomes part of the narrative, and then once it’s cemented as part of the accepted storyline, the “conventional wisdom” becomes nearly impossible to break through, right or wrong.

John MCCain’s “maverick” reputation — with the scads of lobbyists in tow working for his campaign — is a very good example of that. And only one of many.

Aloha, Ethan! Welcome to the Lake!

Do you agree with Scott McClellan’s disillusionment, amongst numerous others, over the ‘Eternal Campaign’ and that the process itself discourages many well qualified individuals from even considering entering the fray?

Teddy,
Oh, of course! Nixon was running on the democratic side pretty hard. I try to hint at that in a few places in the book. But even some of the more sophisticated tricks (like the “Canuck letter” about Muskie) seem like the early days of the forward pass versus the sophisticated Rovian stuff we see now. Attack your opponent precisely where he is unassailable (Kerry). Release smears against your own man, then “uncover” them as false. Wear a wire in a debate in front of 200 million people.
Extremely interesting about those northern Virginia guys in your past, by the way. You ought to write about that.

And think how much of Segretti’s legacy we are still living with these days? From him to Lee Atwater, to Rove learning at his feet along with Ralph Reed, then on to Steve Schmidt currently helming McCain’s campaign? Not to mention all the gems we’ve had through the years on the Dem side as well.

It’s a lucrative yet nasty business. But someone always seems to be ready to do it, don’t they? And someone else is always willing to lay out the payola to get it done.

On election day in ‘72, I was campaigning at the polls and one girl that had joined me said that she and her family were all voting for McGovern because Nixon had “gone Commie” by going to China.

It was an interesting day to say the least…

Dave,
To tell you the truth, I don’t think I’d ever read a political novel before writing America America. But enough people compared my own book to All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren, that I recently read it. It’s a book full of narrative beauty–it won the Pulitzer in 1946–and, like my own, it’s both a personal story and a political one. The political part is based around Huey Long, who is as interesting a character as Nixon is.
Another book that comes highly recommended to me, although I just started it myself, is “The Gay Place,” by Billy Lee Brammer. It’s about LBJ.
One of the things that got me thinking as I was writing my own novel is the American fact of certain great social progressives, from Teddy Roosevelt, to Franklin Roosevelt, to the three Kennedy brothers, who were nonetheless undoubtedly of the landed gentry. Versus a man like Huey Long, who couldn’t afford his textbooks in college.

John MCCain’s “maverick” reputation — with the scads of lobbyists in tow working for his campaign — is a very good example of that. And only one of many.

Sometimes these can be more accurate than we could ever have guessed. Bush was called the first CEO President, and, given the current financial meltdown and all the CEOs involved in that disaster, I find with each passing day the description more and more appropriate.

how something becomes part of the narrative
Oh, yes. Marshall Mcluhan? Media = Message.
Having watched Way too much msm news this week, and in particular Dana Bash is bugging my ass!, I have to agree with you totally.

Sad, yet true. And how reassuring is that? Not.

When I read about your book, I too thought of Ted Kennedy, but now that I am reading your book, I see the LBJ comparison.

I wonder if you are familiar with a novel that made the rounds in Virginia in the seventies, which was a roman-a-clef about our late Lt Governor Sargeant Reynolds, a shining star who died at 34 of an inoperable brain tumor. Your view of how a life lightly touched can be changed forever reminded me very much of the protagonist — a young political operative — in that novel, the name of which escapes me right now.

The Billy Joel that characterizes this time frame best for me is Goodnight Saigon

They left their childhood
On every acre
And who was wrong?
And who was right?
It didn’t matter in the thick of the fight

Sometimes I go to extremes…

Going after the opponent’s strength was quite the strategy in 1972, though — very few Americans then realized that while Nixon played poker aboard supply ships in the Pacific, George McGovern flew B-24 bomber missions over enemy territory in Europe. McGovern was called a peacenik and worse, and tied to the “amnesty, acid, & abortion” wing of the Democratic party, even though he was a real war hero.

Funny, I was also thinking about the reckless stupidity we’ve seen in so many politicians the last couple of years — Larry Craig, David Vitter, Eliott Spitzer — who allowed their personal vices to control so much given the enormous risk to their public personas, regardless of their policy goals and/or public work. And how Sen. Bonwiller’s folly was, like so many of those in real life, partially a by-product of the very hubris that made him a good politician in the sense that his belief in himself propelled him forward to the next challenge — but it also allowed in him an internal sense that he could wiggle his way around any obstacle, no matter how stupid and illogical that might seem in reality.

Do you think that 1984 is the politician’s master manual? Apparently, Muckasey hung a picture of George Orwell in his office.

I saw an article from ABC and Waxman is grilling the former chief of Lehman Brothers next week. Waxman is a mite upset that there isn’t any internal documents from the past six months from one ceo to another.

Poof! All evidence gone. And $700B. gone,too.

There is a superb passage in the book talking about Vietnam, wherein Liam Metarey’s son has just been shipped in country and into harm’s way — at the son’s request. And he’s speaking with young Corey about how it isn’t just the sons of Americans who are left on the field or shattered for life and those of their families left in the wake of these political choices, but also all of those families of all of those folks from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia…and so many other ripples that we could not at that point begin to predict in the years to come.

That has always been, and yet we fail to learn that lesson. Still.

Ooops — meant to indicate that Liam is speaking to Corey, not Liam’s son Andrew. Never type and try to start a DVD for your 5 year old at the same time…

Christy,
I generally hate to write. But when I read something good, I’m instantly drawn back to the (generally hopeless) labor of writing fiction. It’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever done, by a good measure. I trained as a doctor, for example, and medicine, for me, was immeasurably easier. But I thank the great books I’ve read for continually reinventing my desire. Some of the most important books I’ve read over my life include The Stories of John Cheever, Notes from Underground (Dostoyevsky), Mr. Bridge (Even Connell), Open Secrets (Alice Munro), Henderson the Rain King (Bellow). Obviously there are many others; but these are some that come to mind at the moment.
And I’m not a journal writer. Never! Part of writing fiction is conscioulsy repressing one’s own psychological exploration. This allows the pressure to build. And if you’re lucky, a novel is the result.

That’s so interesting. I’ll have to check those out. Re: Nixon as a character, I just finished Mailer’s Miami and the Siege of Chicago. It was pretty incredible to read it in the week after the conventions this year. One of the most gob-smacking moments was Nixon’s stated reason for running for President after he swore off national politics years earlier:

I believe that my travels around the country and the world…has led me to the conclusion that returning to the arena was something that I should do–not that I consider myself an indespensable man. But something that I should do because this is the time I think when the man and the moment in history come together. // I have always felt that a man cannot seek the Presidency and get it simply because he wants it. I think that he can seek the Presidency and obtain it only when the Presidency requires what he has to offer and I have had the feeling and it may be a presumptuous feeling…

Gives a new spin to “Nixon’s the One.” And yet here are Republicans talking about Obama’s “messiah complex!”

I shall order it most ricky-tic.

The thrill sought in illicit sex is, I imagine, similar to the thrill of winning an election, or the thrill of being worshipped by a huge crowd, or the thrill of running from one Capitol Hill suite to another late at night pretending to save the American financial house of cards. The personality traits required to succeed in our political environment aren’t all good.

The personality traits required to subsume one’s one personality within another’s political success aren’t all good, either. The apparatchiks and functionaries can be as dangerous, and as deluded, as the front wo/man.

Part of writing fiction is conscioulsy repressing one’s own psychological exploration.
Uh – oh….
Oh man, why I’m not published, and you are. I give a lot of credit to that. But, maybe we differ in our definition of that term. Yes?

I ride on milk train
can’t buy no thrill

Ethan, how have your student reacted to your book? Do they see any parallels between the wars and protests, republican president?

Wasn’t it Al Gore’s dad, the Senator, who went to LBJ on his son’s behalf to get him sent to Vietnam? LBJ wrestled with that, I recall, knowing that (like Prince Harry in Iraq) young Al would be a tempting target for kidnap and ransom.

I think the apparatchiks are more dangerous, frankly, because they so often operate in the shadows, beyond the purview of normal sunshine. It’s how Tom DeLay and his K Street buddies were able to so easily set up their blatant influence peddling operation in plain sight. I’m still waiting for that dig in on his pal Ed Buckham.

And you see that a bit in America, America, with the various sycophants and hangers-on who are there to scurry about when the limelight may shine on their candidate, but are so absent when it stops shining so brightly nearer the end before the final fall.

Ctuttle,
Of course. You’d have to be crazy to want to be President. Or at minimal profoundly wounded. I mean, who in his right mind would ever CHOOSE to be the one to make a decision about, say, a nuclear bomb? Or starting a war that will kill hundreds of thousands? For a character with any degree of empathy–which in my book is the great benchmark of human development–the mere choices would be utterly debilitating. So though we crave politicians who can mimick empathy, I can’t imagine we will ever really get one.
At one point in the book, the narrator says: “power is desperation’s salve, and this fact as much as any is what dooms and dooms us.”
I stand by that.

Some of the most important books

I remember thinking “Star Food” was reminiscent of “The Dead”…

I think so — I remember reading about that as well. I

Hi, Demi,
I don’t mean that in a pervasive sense. I mean that if you have a character in mind, and some vague sense of an internal conflict, and if you want to write fiction about it, then 1) don’t talk about it at all; and 2) don’t think about it until you are sitting down to write.
You need unrelieved psychic pressure to propel your writing.

I think the apparatchiks are more dangerous, frankly, because they so often operate in the shadows, beyond the purview of normal sunshine. It’s how Tom DeLay and his K Street buddies were able to so easily set up their blatant influence peddling operation in plain sight.

Which is a point that all the advocates of “term limits” miss – if there were artificial term limits, the apparatchiks would become that much more powerful

Mahalo! And well said…

“power is desperation’s salve, and this fact as much as any is what dooms and dooms us.”

Bluebutterfly,
Yes, absolutely. 1984. It’s truly emerged as the bible.

Thanks, Mr. Redd Hedd. I hope you like it.

I cannot remember who said it..but, someone said that the only thing that George Orwell did not foresee was the rise of Little Sister (the internet) to counter the tactics of Big Brother.

Oh, Ethan. I do write and I write with a partner – another woman on a screenplay with a character with internal conflict — well, all the characters we are writing do and, oh gosh, we do talk. A lot, we’re girls, er, um, woman.
I hear you and will consider and share.
Now, what am I going to tell her tomorrow?
Ha! Thanks for your imput.

Ethan — before we get too much further down the road in the chat, I wanted to thank you for coming today to discuss the book and your influences and all of the work that went into the superb character development in America, America. I was particularly taken with Corey and his father and their relationship, and how well you were able to shift between the thoughts and dialogue style of the hesitant, younger Corey, and the more substantial, caring older Corey with his family in later vignettes. Very well done with that in terms of distinguishing between the styles of the two…

Teddy,
I agree.

“The thrill sought in illicit sex is, I imagine, similar to the thrill of winning an election, or the thrill of being worshipped by a huge crowd, or the thrill of running from one Capitol Hill suite to another late at night pretending to save the American financial house of cards. The personality traits required to succeed in our political environment aren’t all good.

The personality traits required to subsume one’s one personality within another’s political success aren’t all good, either. The apparatchiks and functionaries can be as dangerous, and as deluded, as the front wo/man.”

Teddy, I’d add that the further problem is that such acquisitive characters need constantly to ramp up the stimulus. Once the crowds have adored you, it’s hard to work at a desk.

To be fair, we sacrifice our politicians. They know it, and they know it’s coming, but they can’t turn away from the light.

Until Big Brother takes little sister by the hand.

Fisa?

Thanks, Christy. What an intelligent and civil group you have here. I’m very impressed.
And I’m impressed you can run a chat while loading DVD’s for your 5-year-old, too.
I should say that this book, in the end–for me, at least–remained a character book more than a political book. It’s a book about parenthood, in some way; about how one must reconsider every act, both great and terrible, in light of having brought children into the world.
Thanks for helping out.
–Ethan

As we come to the end of the Book Salon,

Ethan, Thank you for stopping by the Lake today and spending the afternoon with us.

Christy, Thank you for Hosting this great Book Salon.

Everyone, this is a must-read book, if you haven’t bought one yet, there is a link above.

Thanks all.

Not just FISA but also the potential to infiltrate political discussions and news anonymously–not to mention in a highly targeted fashion. If there’s a way to exploit the internet politically, then a political operative would be remiss to not exploit it. I can only imagine what the news scene on the internet will be like two or three elections from now.

Hi, Bev,
Sorry to have followed your lovely post with a mundane one.
Thanks again to all of you.
Ethan

Ethan,
Thank you for joining us this afternoon. Looks like another book goes on the “to read” list.

But jsut to let you know in case you stop by again sometimes, the Book Salons tend to be fairly civil thanks to folks staying on topic as much as possible.

That can’t always be said about other discussion threads…

Thanks for being here Ethan.
Many of us here have children and share the positive influences that being a good steward is also a good parent. And, we share our triumphs in that vein. We try to help.
Christy is a great role model for many people.

Thanks so much, Ethan — come back any time!

Mahalo for spending time with us! Please drop by more often, there is no other place like it…! 8-)

Ethan, thank you for writing this wonderful book and for sharing your time with us here today. Drop by anytime!

Thanks Christy, and thanks Bev, for another great Salon.

Jo Fish is upstairs…