Hartford Courant (Connecticut)
THE HYPOCRISY OF THE MODERN POLITICAL PROCESS
MATT
BURGARD
It's
a good bet that George W. Bush won't be taking a break from the campaign
to read Larry Beinhart's latest political thriller "TheLibrarian."
Some might claim the president would be hard-pressed to get through
a book that doesn't have pictures in it, and those folks will most enjoy
this clearly left-leaning tale of intrigue and gamesmanship on the presidential
trail.
Beinhart,
the Edgar Award-winning author of "American Hero," which
became the film "Wag the Dog," will come across as annoying or a genius
to readers who pick up "The Librarian," fiction that doesn't
stray far from today's political landscape.
A gifted writer who knows how to keep a plot moving, Beinhart could
be compared with masterly thrill-spinners such as Elmore Leonard and
Carl Hiassen, though his work is much more grounded in liberal ideology.
And though conservatives might not be able to get around the book's clear
bias, those who do will be rewarded with a fantastical satire on the
hypocrisy of the modern political process, on both sides.
The central figure is David Goldberg, a struggling-to-survive college
librarian who lands a side job cataloguing files for a prominent real
estate magnate in suburban Washington. As he delves into his boss's files,
Goldberg becomes entwined in a secret Republican plot to undermine the
campaign of the Democratic challenger on the eve of the election, thus
ensuring their man will get a second term in the White House.
The name of this Republican incumbent is Augustus Scott, but that's
about all that separates him from Bush, or at least Bush as envisioned
by his liberal opponents. Scott is the progeny of a privileged East Coast
family who nonetheless plays the middle-class heartstrings of theMidwest
by emphasizing God and family values and by bashing the elitist attitudes
and mores of those with backgrounds most like his.
It's no accident that Beinhart chose the name Augustus for his version
of George Bush, as he clearly views the president as bent on building
an empire for the rich. In describing Scott's record of eroding environmental
protections and enhancing tax breaks for the wealthy, Beinhart shows
how the president's constant emphasis on patriotism and military strength
keep attention away from the fact that the deficit is ballooning and
the country's economic future is being mortgaged.
When Goldberg's boss and his Republican cronies realize the librarian
may have stumbled onto their top-secret plot to manipulate the election,
they decide he must be killed. What follows are plot points that demands
a significant suspension of disbelief by readers, but which allow Beinhart
to offer his cynical take on the machinations of politics.
While Scott seems to be a George Bush clone, his opponent is markedly
different from 2004's actual Democratic candidate, John Kerry. Scott's
challenger is a woman named Anne Lynn Murphy, a senator from Idaho who
struggles to balance the harsh realities of political necessity with
her ideals of public service.
But like Kerry, she is a veteran of the Vietnam War, and this gives
Beinhart a platform to launch withering criticisms of the Bush administration.
In a debate a week before the election, Murphy responds to criticism
about her record in Vietnam by turning the focus on Scott, who, like
Bush, was able to avoid being sent to combat by enlisting in the National
Guard. She zeroes in on the myth that her opponent is a tough, brave
leader:
"My opponent wants you to think he's some sort of war hero," she says. "He
keeps staging these video events of himself ... eating chow
with our real fighting men and women. I think it shows a certain contempt
for all of us, that he thinks we're so stupid that we'll see
him on TV and think that he actually goes out and fights ... But the
truth is that he was a coward during Vietnam ..."
Ouch. For liberals, such passages are meant to be a call to arms around
the Democratic flag. For conservatives, they're off-putting, to say the
least.
So,
as with Bush himself, one can expect "The Librarian" to sell well
in the blue states, poorly in the red ones.
[LA Times] [NY
Times] [Kirkus Reviews]
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