1. Democracy,
by Henry Adams (1880): Henry Adams was the
original "Anonymous" political author. and Democracy remains one of
the finest political novels ever written. The novel , whose authorship was not
revealed until the 1920s, tells the story of Madeline Lee, a wealthy young widow
who comes to Washington, D.C. a generation after the Civil War. She becomes a
famous hostess, an informal power broker, and the romantic object of several
powerful men, including Silas P. Ratcliff, the new Treasury Secretary and a
likely contender for the presidency. As Madeline sees how the Washington game is played, she becomes increasingly comfortable in a world of moral grey areas, but she holds to the belief that there is some core of virtue underneath the American system of government that resists the corrupting nature of politics. The central question of the novel is the question of "American Exceptionalism": is the American political system fundamentally different than other political systems? Are Americans, at some level, immune from the corruptions of power and position? "There is only one thing in life," she confides to a friend "that I must and will have before I die. I must know whether America is right or wrong."
At the time that Adams wrote Democracy, America had yet to become a military or economic superpower. It was still a young nation, still licking its wounds from a disastrous civil war. But the novel's central question could not be more important today, when "American Exceptionalism" has become a hiss and a buzzword and American power has shaped the world for more than 75 years.
2. It Can't Happen Here,
by Sinclair Lewis (1935): Generally considered the
best of Sinclair Lewis’s post-Nobel Prize novels, It Can’t Happen Here
still lacks the canonical heft of works such as Main Street, Babbitt,
and Elmer Gantry. And even these novels don’t exactly reside in the
literary canon’s better neighborhoods. But It Can’t Happen Here deserves a place as one of the great
political novels of the 20th century.
In
the novel, a nationalist demagogue named Buzz Windrip becomes President by
appealing to nationalist sentiment and amasses dictatorial power. Many of the
issues that propell Windrip to power will strike modern readers as eerily
familiar, though not as ideologically consistent in 2012. Like real-life almost-dictator
Huey Long, Windrip combines the redistributionist impulses of the left with the
militarism and ultra-nationalism of the right—along with unhealthy doses of
racism, antisemitism, and
instutionalized Protestantism. The result is a plausible scenario for the 1936
election (written only the year before) in which FDR is defeated in the
Democratic primary and replaced by a Homespun Hitler figure who transforms America
into a fascist state.
Lewis wrote It Can’t Happen Here at a time when it was still possible for Americans to have a good word for Hitler and Mussolini—and for the extreme nationalism of fascist government generally. The novel’s main character—a Vermont journalist named Doremus Jessop—watches the transformation of America, first as a detached observer, and later as a victim. Throughout the novel, he listens in amazement as his fellow small-town Americans repeat, over and over, some version of the novel’s title, “it can’t happen here.”
Lewis wrote It Can’t Happen Here at a time when it was still possible for Americans to have a good word for Hitler and Mussolini—and for the extreme nationalism of fascist government generally. The novel’s main character—a Vermont journalist named Doremus Jessop—watches the transformation of America, first as a detached observer, and later as a victim. Throughout the novel, he listens in amazement as his fellow small-town Americans repeat, over and over, some version of the novel’s title, “it can’t happen here.”
3. All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren (1946): Interest in Warren’s classic novel of American politics has not
quite faded--All the King’s Men
still appears the top of most people’s lists of “Best Political Novels.” But
not many people read it anymore. I was barely aware of its existence until Russell Fox steered me in its
direction. Most of the good things that people say about the novel are true.All the King’s Men tells the story of the rise and fall of Willie Talos (renamed “Willie Stark” by Warren’s editor, and then restored to “Willie Talos” in the official 2003 reissue). Talos, the governor of an unnamed Southern state, bears a quite intentional resemblance to Louisiana’s Huey Long, who must be considered a primary subject of the book. Warren always said that the book was not about politics, but about human nature—which was kind of a joke, since he knew perfectly well that the two were the same thing.
What strikes me the most about All the King’s Men is it’s nuanced Machiavellianism. The viewpoint character, Jackie Burden, calls Machiavelli “the founder of the modern world,” which Warren seems to accept. He does not mean the Machiavelli of myth and legend, but the very real, complex, and morally complicated political philosopher who actually wrote The Prince. Willie Talos believes in power alone, which is bad, except that he mostly does good things with it, which is good, except when he doesn’t, which is . . . . well, complicated.
4. The Devil's Advocate, by Taylor Caldwell
(1952): Taylor Caldwell is the Ozymandius of 20th century
Anglo-American letters. She was one of the most well-known and highest paid
writers of the mid-century, she wrote more than 40 books, nearly all of them
bestsellers. And today, very few people under 60 have even heard her name.
The Devil’s Advocate is not even one of her better known novels, but it has had something of a second life among various right-wing patriot groups, who see in it something of a blueprint of how they are going to fight the war against the government. The novel centers around Andrew Durrant, a Constitutional patriot in an America that has forgotten the Constitution. He is part of a small group of “Minutemen” who infiltrate the government with the intention of making things WORSE for the people so that they will remember their liberties and throw off their oppressors.
I read this book as a teenager, when I was reading books by Richard Bach and Ayn Rand and imagining myself to be an intellectual. And though Ms. Caldwell held many of the same views as Ms. Rand, she was a much better writer and storyteller. I would argue that she was a more powerful thinker as well. The Devil’s Advocate makes a good case against Constitutional mission creep and large-government totalitarianism; today's liberals would do well to consider it carefully.
The Devil’s Advocate is not even one of her better known novels, but it has had something of a second life among various right-wing patriot groups, who see in it something of a blueprint of how they are going to fight the war against the government. The novel centers around Andrew Durrant, a Constitutional patriot in an America that has forgotten the Constitution. He is part of a small group of “Minutemen” who infiltrate the government with the intention of making things WORSE for the people so that they will remember their liberties and throw off their oppressors.
I read this book as a teenager, when I was reading books by Richard Bach and Ayn Rand and imagining myself to be an intellectual. And though Ms. Caldwell held many of the same views as Ms. Rand, she was a much better writer and storyteller. I would argue that she was a more powerful thinker as well. The Devil’s Advocate makes a good case against Constitutional mission creep and large-government totalitarianism; today's liberals would do well to consider it carefully.
5. The Mouse that Roared,
by Leonard Wibberly (1955):
Like many insufferable teenage geeks, I saw the Peter Sellers
movie on TV and thought that that was as good as reading the book. But it wasn’t.
The movie was comic genius, but the book is excellent satire, which
is not the same thing.
The Mouse that Roared tells the story of the knights of the Grand Duchy of Fenwick, who (around the time of the Marshall Plan) set out to attack the United States, lose the war, and “be rehabilitated beyond our wildest dreams.” They send a small pack of longbowmen in medieval armor to New York City and manage to capture the world’s leading nuclear scientist and his new super-weapon that can destroy the entire world. With this weapon in hand, they form the “League of Small Nations” and force the world’s powers to sue for peace.
The Mouse that Roared tells the story of the knights of the Grand Duchy of Fenwick, who (around the time of the Marshall Plan) set out to attack the United States, lose the war, and “be rehabilitated beyond our wildest dreams.” They send a small pack of longbowmen in medieval armor to New York City and manage to capture the world’s leading nuclear scientist and his new super-weapon that can destroy the entire world. With this weapon in hand, they form the “League of Small Nations” and force the world’s powers to sue for peace.
In the process of
telling this story, the Irish-American Wibberly gets his satiric hooks into all
of the principal players in the Cold War: American exceptionalism, Soviet
triumphalism, British colonialism, scientific detachment, and the absurdity of “arming
for peace.” And it is short enough to read in a few hours. Not a bad way to pass an evening with nothing much going on.
6. Advise and Consent,
by Allan Drury (1959): Though it reeks of the Cold
War, Advise and Consent has a number of surprisingly modern themes. It
treated Mormonism, homosexuality, and the politics of personal destruction
before any of the three had an official “moment.” It was the bestselling novel
of 1959, and a Pulitzer Prize winner to boot. And, for all that, it has not
been in print for years.
Advise and Consent tells the story of a controversial political nomination. A dying president names Robert Leffingwell—a well-known liberal, a professor, and a supporter of engagement with the Soviet Union—to be the new Secretary of State. A number of powerful senators immediately object, and, during the hearings, he is accused of hiding a Communist past. As the nomination plays out, Utah’s earnest Senator Brigham Anderson, who holds the nomination in his hands, is blackmailed by somebody aware of his homosexual past. Things, of course, go drastically astray.
The most important character in the book, though, is the United States Senate itself, which Drury treats with reverence. The Senators disagree with each other, but are able to do so in a cordial way, until one senator breaks ranks with the august body and stoops to blackmail. He is the only real villain in the novel, and, once he is exorcised, the democratic process of disagreement, debate, and compromise produces a desirable result.
Advise and Consent tells the story of a controversial political nomination. A dying president names Robert Leffingwell—a well-known liberal, a professor, and a supporter of engagement with the Soviet Union—to be the new Secretary of State. A number of powerful senators immediately object, and, during the hearings, he is accused of hiding a Communist past. As the nomination plays out, Utah’s earnest Senator Brigham Anderson, who holds the nomination in his hands, is blackmailed by somebody aware of his homosexual past. Things, of course, go drastically astray.
The most important character in the book, though, is the United States Senate itself, which Drury treats with reverence. The Senators disagree with each other, but are able to do so in a cordial way, until one senator breaks ranks with the august body and stoops to blackmail. He is the only real villain in the novel, and, once he is exorcised, the democratic process of disagreement, debate, and compromise produces a desirable result.
7. Mother Night, by Kurt
Vonnegut (1961): Kurt Vonnegut’s reputation as
a major American writer seems secure, but Mother Night remains one of
his least read works, which baffles me, as I consider it one of his best. It is
also, he has said on many occasions, the only one of his works that has a clear
moral, which is this: “you are what you depend to be, so be careful what you
pretend to be.”The hero (sort of) of Mother Night is Howard Campbell, Jr., an American writer who becomes a Nazi propagandist during World War II. Except that he isn’t really a Nazi agent, he is an American agent who uses his anti-American broadcasts as a way to get important intelligence out of Germany. But nobody knows this but the agent who runs him, and, when the war ends, everybody considers him a traitor.
I have thought back on this work many times when I look at politicians pretending to be things to get nominated, to get elected, or to stay elected. We do tend to become what we pretend to be, so what we pretend to be is every bit as important as what we are.
8. Our Gang, by Phillip
Roth (1971): Roth has written a number of
brilliant political novels, such as Operation Shylock (1993) I Married a Communist (1998) and The
Plot against America (2004). But none of them hit my funny bone like this
gem of a book published during the first Nixon administration. Before the Watergate
break- in even happened, Roth created a brilliant satire of Nixon’s essential
duplicity.
This is not really a novel. It is more like six separate satiric shorts featuring the American President Tricky Dixon (who has followed Lying B. Johnson and John F. Charisma into office). Tricky is shown giving a press conference on abortion (confronting accusations that some of the women killed in the My Lai massacre might have been pregnant, therefore making the heroic act of killing them abortions instead), working with his various advisors to find a way to prove that he has never had sex, and, in the end, going to hell and mounting a campaign against Satan.
Our Gang was Roth’s follow-up to Portnoy’s Complaint, and it has all of the irreverent zing of the more famous novel. It got lost in the shuffle of Watergate, however, and is now read only by academic Philip Roth specialists, which is a shame, as it is a darn funny book.
This is not really a novel. It is more like six separate satiric shorts featuring the American President Tricky Dixon (who has followed Lying B. Johnson and John F. Charisma into office). Tricky is shown giving a press conference on abortion (confronting accusations that some of the women killed in the My Lai massacre might have been pregnant, therefore making the heroic act of killing them abortions instead), working with his various advisors to find a way to prove that he has never had sex, and, in the end, going to hell and mounting a campaign against Satan.
Our Gang was Roth’s follow-up to Portnoy’s Complaint, and it has all of the irreverent zing of the more famous novel. It got lost in the shuffle of Watergate, however, and is now read only by academic Philip Roth specialists, which is a shame, as it is a darn funny book.
