The Flynn Precedent

While there have been a lot of comparisons made between Trump and Jackson (by supporters and opponents), one important similarity keeps getting overlooked. As far as Jackson was concerned, there was only one quality that proved someone's character: Loyalty to Andrew Jackson. While this caused plenty of turmoil within the cabinet (most notably the Eaton Affair), there's one particular event I want to bring up.

Samuel Swartwout had a checkered past. A military man with plentiful New York political connections, he was rounded up as part of the Burr conspiracy but was eventually released. During the election of 1828, he was a vocal campaigner for Jackson, so the new president decided to give Swartwout a cozy patronage position, as Collector of the Port of New York. To quote from Remini's "Life of Andrew Jackson:"

"And when Van Buren learned that Jackson intended to appoint Samuel Swartwout to the office he almost collapsed. Not only did Swartwout have criminal tendencies but the [Albany] Regency detested him. Van Buren alerted the President immediately and warned him that Swartwout's appointment would 'not be in accordance with the public sentiment, the interest of the Country or the credit of the administration.' Unfortunately, Jackson refused to listen. He liked Swartwout because he had been an early supporter -- unlike Van Buren -- and so he went ahead with the appointment. In time, of course, Swartwout absconded with $1,222,705.09. It was a monumental theft...
When the scandal broke, Jackson's opponents doubled over with laughter. All the talk of rooting out corruption in government, they said, and here the greatest theft in the history of the Republic..."

Jackson, like Trump, campaigned on a promise of fighting corruption and waste in government, but, through his own shortcomings, appointed people who were more corrupt than those they replaced.  

"The Sum of His Many Squalid Parts"

The recent political situation got me thinking about Thompson's masterpiece, Fear and Loathing: on the Campaign Trail '72, which led to remember my favorite bit of Thompson marginalia, the obituary he wrote for Rolling Stone on the occasion of Nixon's death.  For those who aren't fans of Thompson's work, it should be pointed out that Thompson hated Nixon.  I mean really hated the man, on an intensely personal and sincere level.  The last line of the obituary reads:

"By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream."

And "diseased cur" may be one of the nicest things Thompson calls him.  But besides the catharsis I find in this obituary, there's one moment that struck me as particularly relevant today.

"Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place...You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful."

Of course, one of the main problems today isn't objective journalism, rather the surge of pseudo-journalists and pundits.  But the fact remains that the actual journalists, the ones that still put in the work and respect the responsibility that a free society demands of the press, dropped the ball, 

There are plenty of reasons why such a large portion of all discussion on the internet is nothing more than vacuous bullshit, rote recitation of talking points, and "witty" insults.  There's the fact that the people who feel the need to make every conversation about their pet interest tend to have the least nuanced understanding of that interest, and the least tact.  There's the fact that, because anyone can (and feels compelled to) chime in, any specific issue turns into an us vs. them referendum on a major socio-political issue, even if that issue was only tangential to the original point.  But those of us who are annoyed by this can't stop other people from spending more time complaining about something than actually learning about it.  (I've watched people spend hours arguing about intellectual property law, with arguments that entirely depend upon not having even a surface understanding of the difference between copyright and trademark.)  But there is a mindset we all too easily slip into, one that exacerbates the situation.  Basically, we treat any internet discussion not as a discussion, but as debate club.

Why is this a problem?  Well, how do you win a debate club debate?  The entire purpose of the debate is to convince a third party that your side is right, even if you don't believe your own arguments.  At best, it's organized sophistry. The goal is not to engage with the person you're debating, but to demonstrate to the spectators how wrong he is.   I see too many people I know repost or share things whose message I agree with, but which contain utter bull, who mistake clever one-liners for serious rebuttals of complex opinions, who, in short, focus more on convincing people they are right than arguing in good faith.  Not only is this exasperating, it's also counter-effective.

First we need to honestly appraise what our purpose is in any online argument.  Is the goal to put forth clearly our point of view? To convince the person we're arguing with?  To convince the spectators of the argument that we're right?  And then we must ask "Is this the best way to do this?"  The answer to the latter is usually "no."

One thing that we need to acknowledge is that every group sees itself as not only correct, but as being attacked by social and political forces.  Whether or not this is true is beside the point, but whether we're talking about atheists or fundamentalists, pro-choice or pro-life, conspiracy theorists, laissez-faire capitalists or socialists, civil rights activists or hate groups, all see themselves as fighting against a larger tide.  What I'm about to recommend should be understood to apply only to online interaction, and to have an exception for public figures.

  There's a quote I like from Browne's Religio Medici that is relevant here: "[W]here wee desire to be informed, 'tis good to contest with men above ourselves; but to confirme and establish our opinions, 'tis best to argue with judgments below our own, that the frequent spoyles and victories over their reasons may settle in our selves an esteeme, and confirmed opinion of our own."  It feels good to argue against people who are clearly half-wits.  But does it do any good?  Generally speaking, responses  that are hostile or condescending or contemptuous are going to have the opposite of the effect that you want.  If the point is to persuade people to your way of thinking, does tearing down people who have no interest in the truth accomplish anything?

I should clarify that last statement.  When I say "no interest in the truth," I don't mean anyone who disagrees with you.  Different positions on a lot of major issues boil down to a difference of priorities, or an honest disagreement over an ethical point.  It's entirely possible, and common, for people to look at the same set of data, consider it honestly and with an open-mind, and come to different conclusions.  People who have "no interest in the truth" are disingenuous and they make no attempt to  even understand the position of those they disagree with.  I'll give two common examples:

If humans evolved from apes, why are there still apes?  Checkmate, Atheists.

If god knows everything that's going to happen, then there can't be free will.  Checkmate, Christians.


Both of these are disingenuous, because spending five minutes looking for an answer would show that the other side has actually thought about this. (Says the atheist who quoted Thomas Browne a couple paragraphs ago.)  All this is to get to the point that arguing with people who are disingenuous does more harm than good.  It's not going to convince the person you're arguing with.  If they actually cared about understanding opposing opinions, they wouldn't be disingenuous.  But who watching this is going to be convinced?  There's an adage I like, "Never argue with an idiot.  He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience."  People who agree with the idiot won't change their minds, because they've either heard what you have to say or don't care to find out.  At best, you'll bat .500 with people who are on the fence.  These, after all, are the people we're trying to convince, right?  If you're hostile, or condescending, etc., you'll lose a lot of them right away, especially if you're on a site that primarily caters to the position you're against.  This goes back to the sense of victimization that every group has, deserved or not.  People on the fence, especially in fringe communities like conspiracy theorists or MRAs, tend to join these groups in large part for the sense of community.  They feel like outcasts, and they may not agree with everything these communities claim, but anything that they regard as an attack will lead them to close ranks.  Attacking makes people defensive, including people on the fence.

Those who are disingenuous, or delusional, will have a response for any claim you make, regardless of how well-phrased and well-researched it is.  Research and clarity hold no sway, so you either have to disengage (e.g., they think they won because they got the last word) or allow yourself to be dragged down to their level, where they will beat you with experience.  So what, then, is the proper response?  Silence.  The approach of making other groups look foolish, to bring them down with ridicule, only serves to push people away from the center, to increase an us vs. them mentality.  Responding to a disingenuous and intentionally provocative comment, post, tweet, etc. doesn't help.  Spending hundreds or thousands of words explaining why the second law of thermodynamics doesn't disprove evolution won't do anything, because the only people who believe that are the ones who don't have a desire to actually understand it, and further, it gives credence to the disingenuous person because it seems like there's actually an argument to be had.

If a person makes a facebook status and no one comments, if no one retweets or shares, if a reddit comment is downvoted with no responses, this is more damning than any amount of criticism and argument.  What we must do, to improve the state of public discourse, is condemn dishonest argument, condemn disingenuousness, and refuse to be dragged down to the level of idiots. This includes people on our own side.  While none of us want to be "that guy," there are people on Facebook that I can go to and say, "I agree with the sentiment of that infographic you shared, but the facts are wrong."  Posting stuff like this, as funny and satisfying as it may be, only serves to misinform the people we agree with, and diminish our credibility with people who aren't on our side. The only people that this will convince are people who don't bother with fact checking or critical thought, and who will be drawn back to the other side by something equally dishonest.

Digital Humanities and the 2016 Election

I've previously mentioned the advent of digital humanities, especially in regards to measuring ebb and flow of positive and negative words.  The New York Times has done something similar, but with the presidential candidates on a scale of positive/negative and simple/complex, while also including the books closest to them on this matrix.  That Trump's language is the simplest, by a significant margin, is not surprising.  In fact, his placement is directly above The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (a novel narrated by an uneducated thirteen year old) and slightly below the Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Anderson.  To be fair, this is a man whose most lasting contribution to English letters was a two-word catchphrase.  The positive/negative spectrum is more interesting, especially when you look within a party.  The democratic candidates are interesting in that they form almost a mirror image, with O'Malley just a hair from the center line, and Sanders and Clinton equidistant from the origin on the negative and positive sides, respectively.  It's not difficult to see how this corresponds to their rhetorical style, with Sanders spending more time focusing on what's wrong and why we need to fix it, while Clinton is more focused on saying how things will improve.  

It's an interesting article, and provides a neat visualization of political rhetoric.

2008: The Appeal by John Grisham

The Author:

John Grisham (1955-    ) was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the son of a construction worker. At the age of twelve, his family moved to Southaven, Mississippi.  He graduated with a B.S. from Mississippi State University in 1979.  He passed the Mississippi Bar exam in 1981, and received his J.D. from the University of Mississippi.  In 1981, he married Renee Jones, with whom he had two children. 

Grisham began a successful law practice in 1981, starting in criminal law, and moving to more lucrative civil law.  In 1984, he was elected to the Mississippi State House of Representatives, a position he held in addition to running his law practice.  A case he witnessed while in the state legislature led him to write his first novel, A Time to Kill (1989).  He had trouble finding an agent and publisher.  He eventually found both, and a limited run of 5,000 copies was printed of his first novel.  In 1990, Grisham resigned from his position on state legislature and retired his practice.  In 1991, Doubleday published his second novel, The Firm.  It was a massive commercial success, as were his third and fourth novels, The Pelican Brief (1992) and The Client (1993).  His fourth book, The Chamber (1994) is the first of eleven novels to become the number one annual bestselling novel in the U.S.

Since 1989, Grisham has published a total of 29 novels, five children's books, and a work of non-fiction.  His family splits its time between homes in Oxford, Mississippi, Charlottesville, Virginia, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  Grisham also serves as a board member on the Innocence Project. 

The Book:

Cover design-John Fontana/Illustration-Shasti O'Leary Soudant/
Photograph-Nicholas Giraud

Length: 484 pages
Subject/Genre: Law/Legal Thriller

The Appeal starts with a verdict against a blatantly evil chemical company which had been knowingly dumping toxic waste into the water supply.  The jury finds the company responsible, and, in addition to a few million in actual damages, awards $38 million in punitive damages.  This opens up the company and it's owner, Carl Trudeau, to more lawsuits and possible bankruptcy.  Trudeau realizes this, and knows he might not win an appeal (mostly because he's unbelievably guilty), so he decides to stack the deck in his favor.  Mississippi is one of a few states that elects state supreme court judges, so Trudeau decides to get someone who will side with him on the bench, replacing a justice that generally sides with plaintiffs.  This process takes up most of the book.  I don't generally like giving away endings, but in this case it's necessary.  Fisk gets elected, almost has a change of heart, but ends up sticking with Trudeau, who ends the party having a big big party on a big big boat.

Trudeau is evil to the point of making the issue of judicial elections go past black and white and into comic book territory.  He's a mix of Sherman McCoy from The Bonfire of the Vanities and Lex Luther.  Here's an actual quote from the meeting after he finds out he lost the initial case.  "Not one dime of our hard-earned profits will ever get into the hands of those trailer park peasants."  While I understand the use of setting clear good and evil when writing a novel with a very specific moral (electing judges is a bad idea), you eventually reach a point of diminishing returns.  Either your reader is an idiot, in which case you're screwed no matter how obvious you make your point, or he's not an idiot, in which case you shouldn't treat him as if he needs the obvious shoved in his face. And this isn't just me griping over my tenth Grisham novel.  I've mentioned before that I like to read the Goodreads reviews on the books I read for this project, and reviews for this book generally fell into two camps.  The smaller camp was people complaining about the panderingly oversimplification of the novel's purpose.  The larger camp is mostly comprised of people who start the review declaring their fandom for Grisham, but giving it a one star rating because they didn't like the ending.  To quote user Alicia: "Grisham could have had a great legal thriller but instead he chose to write a political commentary that tricked me into thinking I was reading for pleasure and enjoyment."    

To quote the top review (from user babyhippoface): "I understand what Grisham was trying to do, but I hate what he did. Hate. H-A-T-E. "    

I never thought I'd feel bad for John Grisham.  He usually gives his book happy, or at least happy-ish, endings.  The good guys win and bad guys get theirs, even when it doesn't make sense.  He's often written about the corruption in politics and the legal world, and if the goodreads response to this novel is indicative of his average reader, I can understand why he felt the need to stop giving them happy endings.  Look, I get that people want stories that are entertaining.  There's nothing wrong with entertainment, with enjoyment, with reading for pleasure.  But what level of obliviousness and complacency and entitlement leads to the response this novel received?  The dislike it receives for being hyperbolic or heavy-handed I understand (and agree with).  But it seems like the general reaction was anger, anger at Grisham for not having given them a happy ending tied up in a neat bow.  Their reaction was to go online and write angry comments about Grisham, rather than write angry letters to their congressman.  Grisham usually brings some social issue into his novels, and he usually deals with them in a very superficial manner.  The Appeal is no exception.  But I'm just struck by the aggressive indifference of his fanbase.  It's one thing if they didn't just like the ending, but the general rhetoric is that they were angry at Grisham for not giving them the ending they wanted, that he had wronged them by disturbing their carefully built up complacency.  I guess I'm angry.  That I had to first read nearly five hundred pages of boring, heavy-handed agitprop, and that I now have to get up here and defend it against criticism far more stupid than the novel itself.  It would be one thing if they disagreed with the message of the novel, but they seem to generally agree.  Perhaps a condensed version of the response would be: "I agree that this is bad, but how dare you make me be aware of it."

I know there are still good books that sell a lot of copies, and there are writers who take on serious social and political issues.  But these two categories seem to keep moving farther and farther apart.  Even up to the 1970's you'd find people like Solzhenitsyn on the top ten annual list.  And this is ignoring the days when people like Sinclair Lewis, or Pearl Buck, or John Steinbeck, or Edna Ferber were some of the most read authors in the nation.  Even books I enjoyed, like A Thousand Splendid Suns or the Millenium trilogy, are limited to already popular statements like 'don't blow shit up' or 'sexism is bad.'  I guess I'm just frustrated by a culture that considers entertainment to necessarily be nothing but mindless diversion and wish-fulfillment, and an industry that caters to and encourages this.  

I'm sure you can figure out my recommendation (and probably my general frame of mind as well).

Bestsellers of 2008:

1. The Appeal by John Grisham
2. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
3. The Host by Stephenie Meyer
4. Cross Country by James Patterson
5. The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks
6. Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich
7. Christmas Sweater by Glenn Beck
8. Scarpetta by Patricia Cornwell
9. Your Heart Belongs to Me by Dean Koontz
10. Plum Lucky by James Patterson

Also Published in 2008:

2666 by Roberto Bolaño (English translation)
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
A Mercy by Toni Morrison
Home by Marilynn Robinson
When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

2000: The Brethren by John Grisham

The Author:

John Grisham (1955-    ) was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the son of a construction worker. At the age of twelve, his family moved to Southaven, Mississippi.  He graduated with a B.S. from Mississippi State University in 1979.  He passed the Mississippi Bar exam in 1981, and received his J.D. from the University of Mississippi.  In 1981, he married Renee Jones, with whom he had two children. 

Grisham began a successful law practice in 1981, starting in criminal law, and moving to more lucrative civil law.  In 1984, he was elected to the Mississippi State House of Representatives, a position he held in addition to running his law practice.  A case he witnessed while in the state legislature led him to write his first novel, A Time to Kill (1989).  He had trouble finding an agent and publisher.  He eventually found both, and a limited run of 5,000 copies was printed of his first novel.  In 1990, Grisham resigned from his position on state legislature and retired his practice.  In 1991, Doubleday published his second novel, The Firm.  It was a massive commercial success, as were his third and fourth novels, The Pelican Brief (1992) and The Client (1993).  His fourth book, The Chamber (1994) is the first of eleven novels to become the number one annual bestselling novel in the U.S.

Since 1989, Grisham has published a total of 29 novels, five children's books, and a work of non-fiction.  His family splits its time between homes in Oxford, Mississippi, Charlottesville, Virginia, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  Grisham also serves as a board member on the Innocence Project.


The Book:

Length: 366 pages

Subject/Genre: conspiracy/legal thriller

The Brethren is hands-down my favorite Grisham novel so far, and suffers mostly from  Grisham's determination to keep much of the novel serious instead of treating it as an all out farce.  The basic premise is this:  Three corrupt judges in their late middle-age, called the brethren, are inmates at a minimum security federal prison.  In addition to operating their own court within the prison, they run a mail scam with the help of an alcoholic attorney on the outside.  They take out ads in gay magazines with the intent of blackmailing closeted respondents.  I know, this isn't very funny.  But then there's the other major plot of the novel.  Russia is stepping up its game, and the CIA is worried about a new cold war.  They decide they need a president they can count on to give them practically unlimited funding, so they choose an inoffensive unknown congressman from Arizona named Aaron Lake.  Now put two and two together, and you end up with the CIA in a battle of wits with some crooked judges, letters get forged, intercepted, and redirected, and the entire weight of United States intelligence gets thrown at finding three people already in custody.      

The blackmail and underlying social issues are serious, of course, and I understand Grisham's decision to treat it seriously, but he realizes the comedy in much of the story, and treats it as such, leading to what is often a bumpy transition between humor and drama which rarely works.  Maybe I'm just a bit burned out on the rest of Grisham's novels, so one that is sufficiently different from the rest may have an undue luster of originality.  If nothing else, it was nice to see a Grisham novel where everyone was running around like chickens with their heads cut off, instead of one guy with a master plan that unravels slowly (slowly, not because the plan requires time, but because he has to hit 400 pages somehow).  

I don't know if I'd offer an unsolicited recommendation for The Brethren, but it is certainly one of Grisham's better works.

Bestsellers of 2000:

1. The Brethren by John Grisham

2. The Mark by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye

3. The Bear and the Dragon by Tom Clancy

4. The Indwelling by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye

5. The Last Precinct by Patricia Cornwell

6. Journey by Danielle Steel

7. The Rescue by Nicholas Sparks

8. Roses Are Red by James Patterson

9. Cradle and All by James Patterson

10. The House on Hope Street by Danielle Steel

Also Published in 2000:

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers

Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

1963: The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris West

The Author:

Morris West (1916-1999) was born near Melbourne, Australia.  He received a B.A. from the University of Melbourne in 1937, and taught modern languages and mathematics in New South Wales and Tasmania.  He spent twelve years studying with the Christian Brother Order, studying for the priesthood, but left in 1941. West gained notoriety as a director with Australasian Radio Productions, where he worked from 1943-53. He left Australia in 1955, taking up residence in numerous countries on multiple continents.

His first book, Moon in My Pocket, was published under the pseudonym Julian Morris in 1945.  His next book was published in 1956.  Between 1956 and 1959, he published eight books, under his own name and the pseudonym Michael East.  The most famous of these, at the time, was 1959's The Devil's Advocate, which he wrote after spending six months as the Daily Mail's Vatican correspondent.  The book received critical and commercial success.  The next novel published under his own name, Daughter of Silence, was the #8 bestselling novel in the U.S. for 1961.  The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963) was his biggest commercial success.  He appears on the top ten annual bestsellers list twice more, in 1965 for The Ambassador and in 1968 for The Tower of Babel.  

The Book:

Length: 374 pages

Subject/Genre: Catholicism, World Politics/Political Thriller

"The pope is dead."  Now the cardinals must elect a new pope, and the unlikely electee is the new Ukranian cardinal, Kiril, now Kiril I, who spent 17 years in a Siberian prison camp and only escaped to the West three days before the election.  Or was he released?  Switching between an omniscient third person narration and excerpts from the new pope's secret diary, we are given a picture of a man who, within the course of a year, went from a prisoner to a pontiff (although Kiril isn't sure there's much of a difference).  Now Kamanev, the man who tortured and tried to destroy him (and is rumored to have orchestrated his release), is leader of the Soviet Union, and it's up to Kiril to try to prevent a war between U.S. and the U.S.S.R.    This takes place among a few subplots, the political intrigue of the Vatican, and frequent pontificating on faith, goodness, etc.

This is far from the first book about priests on my list.  The bestselling novels of 1913, 1927, 1935, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1948, 1950, 1952, and 1953 have been about priests, preachers, and prophets and saints.  The Shoes of the Fisherman happens to be the meeting point between the religious trend pre-1960s, and the political thrillers/conspiracy novels to come (e.g. le Carré, Ludlum, Clancy, Brown).  Of the lot Elmer Gantry (Sinclair Lewis, 1927) is my favorite.  Shoes is tied for second for my favorite of the priest novels, alongside Cronin's The Keys of the Kingdom (1941).  While religion is obviously a huge part of the plot and character development, unlike most of the other priest novels, it's not just preaching to the choir (pun intended).   West creates a pope who is unsure of himself, who is a complex character with serious doubts and insecurities: he creates a human character, not an archetype or a caricature.  Many of the lead priest characters are two dimensional, or are given flaws that are entirely affected, flaws that are only one small life-lesson from being completely vanquished.

The novel was adapted for the screen in 1968, starring Anthony Quinn as Pope Kiril I and Laurence Olivier as Kamanev.

I apologize for the brevity of this week's review.  A lot of coursework is piling up and I have to get around to that, too (and maybe have a social life?).  Anyway, The Shoes of the Fisherman is a good political intrigue novel, and a good priest novel.  If either or both of those interest you, this would be a good choice.

Bestsellers of 1963:

1. The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris West
2. The Group by Mary McCarthy
3. Raise Hight the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour: An Introduction by J.D. Salinger
4. Caravans by James Michener
5. Elizabeth Appleton by John O'Hara
6. Grandmother and the Priests by Taylor Caldwell
7. City of Night by John Rechy
8. The Glass-Blowers by Daphne du Maurier
9. The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna
10. The Battle of the Villa Fiorita by Rumer Godden


Also published in 1963:

Pierre Boulle - The Planet of the Apes
Julio Cortázar - Hopscotch
John Fowles - The Collector
Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
Thomas Pynchon - V.
Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle
Charles Webb - The Graduate

Sources:

"Morris L(anglo) West." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2001. Literature 
     Resource Center. Web.

West, Morris. The Shoes of the Fisherman. New York: William Morrow & Co, 1963. Print.

1960: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury

The Author:

Allen Drury (1918-1998) was born in Houston, but grew up in Porterville, in Tulare County in central California.  He was descended multiple members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, most notably Edmund Rice, who immigrated to the colony in 1638.

In 1939, Drury graduated from Stanford and began working as a reporter from the Tulare Bee where he received recognition for his editorial writing, and then spent a year working for the Bakersfield Californian.  He enlisted in the Army in 1942.  He was no longer in the army in 1943. (I have been unable to find details of his military service.  With the exception of some details surrounding his writing career, I have been unable to find any information about Drury not available on his Wikipedia page.)  He worked for United Press International, as a member of the U.S. Senate's staff, from 1943-1945, became editor of Pathfinder magazine in 1947, then joined the Washington Evening Star in 1953, The New York Times from 1954-1959, and finally Reader's Digest from '59-62.

His first and most successful novel was Advise and Consent, published in 1959.  For this, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1960.  Advise and Consent spawned five sequels.  Drury published a handful of non-fiction and twenty novels, writing until his death from cardiac arrest in 1998.

The Book:

Length: 616 pages
Subject/Genre: Cold War, U.S. Politics/Political thriller

Advise and Consent takes its name from the U.S. Constitution, which states that Congress must offer advice and consent to presidential nominations for high ranking officials.  In the case of the novel, this means Bob Leffingwell, a liberal who is popular with the public but controversial within Washington.  Robert Munson, Senate Majority Leader, is tasked by the president to secure enough votes for Leffingwell's confirmation.

Advise and Consent is reflective of the Cold War era, and its political stance is that we'll either destroy the soviets or be destroyed by them.  The novel has a large cast of characters, many of whom were based off of real politicians.  The confirmation of Leffingwell gets problematic, as claims that he was secretly a Communist are brought to the Senate (possibly based on Alger Hiss), and the President starts to play dirty, leading to blackmail and suicide (likely based on Lester Hunt).  The story is largely a matter of dialogue, and most of the conflict is interpersonal, with the various characters each having their own agendas and idiosyncracies.  The story drags at some points, but otherwise is a great example of its genre.

In 1960, Advise and Consent won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making it the last book on this list to have done so.  Advise and Consent has five sequels, A Shade of Difference (1962), Capable of Honor (1966), Preserve and Protect (1968), Come Nineveh, Come Tyre (1973), and The Promise of Joy (1975).  An interesting note is that the last two are actually alternate sequels to Preserve and Protect, which ends with a cliffhanger.  Come Nineveh, Come Tyre and The Promise of Joy each cover the same time period, but are based on different outcomes of the cliffhanger in the preceding novel.  

Advise and Consent was a book-of-the-month club selection, and spawned a film adaptation in 1962 starring Henry Fonda.

Advise and Consent is an excellent political thriller, but I don't think it transcends the genre.  If you are looking to read a political thriller, Advise and Consent is definitely a good choice (although it seems to no longer be in print).

Bestselling Novels of 1960:
Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
Hawaii by James Michener
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
The Chapman Report by Irving Wallace
Ourselves to Know by John O'Hara
The Constant Image by Marcia Davenport
The Lovely Ambition by Mary Ellen Chase
The Listener by Taylor Caldwell
Trustee from the Toolroom by Nevil Shute
Sermons and Soda-Water by John O'Hara

Also published in 1960:
John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor
Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
Walter Miller - A Canticle for Leibowitz
Dr. Seuss - Green Eggs and Ham
John Updike - Rabbit, Run

Sources:

"Allen (Stuart) Drury." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2003.  Literature 
     Resource Center. Web.

Drury, Allen. Advise and Consent. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1959. Print.

1959: Exodus by Leon Uris

The Author:

     Leon Uris (1924-2003) was born in Baltimore, Maryland.  His parents were Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe.  Uris never finished high school, opting to drop out and enlist in the Marine Corps during his senior year.  He served in combat in Guadalcanal.  After the war, Uris moved to San Francisco with his wife, also a former Marine.  While there, he worked for a local newspaper.  In 1953, his first novel, Battle Cry, was published to huge popular success.  From there he was given a job in the story department of Warner Brothers Studios.

      In 1955, he released his second novel, The Angry Hills and, in 1956, penned the screenplay for Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.  In 1958, he published Exodus, which became a runaway success, becoming the first of two annual bestsellers on this list and earning him a considerable fan following. In 1961, Uris released Mila 18 (fun fact: Catch-22 was originally title Catch-18, but publishers were worried it would be mistaken for Uris's novel).  Trinity was published in 1976.  Uris kept writing until his death in 2003.  He was married three times over the course of his life and had five children.  He died of renal failure.

The Book:

Length: 599 pages

Subject/Genre: Jewish history, Israel/Historical Fiction

    Exodus's story centers around the founding of the nation of Israel in 1948 and the relationship between and American nurse named Kitty Fremont and a Palestinian Jewish soldier and Mossad agent, Ari Ben Canaan.  Uris conducted years of research, including thousands of interviews in and around Israel, for this novel.  While the main through-line of the story is the Israel's independence from the British, large segments of the novel focus on Jewish history in Europe, including the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Auschwitz, and the Russian pogroms.
     
       Much of the novel reads like a political suspense/thriller, which is appropriate for a novel that is very political.  Uris has a clear bias when it comes to Zionism, which is apparent in the sense that he is showing one side of the question.  Regardless of your personal opinions on the subject, Uris does a good job presenting the argument of one side of a complex debate.

   While this debate is common in American political discourse today, it was in fact Uris's novel that brought it to the forefront of public attention when it was published in 1958.  Like most authors on this list, Uris already had at least one popular book published before he became a top bestseller, but the popularity of Exodus specifically is worth noting upon.  The end of the fifties and beginning of the sixties were some of the harshest years of the Cold War.  World politics is at the forefront of the bestsellers list as well, with 1958's bestseller, Doctor Zhivago, focusing on the origins of the Soviet Union, and 1960's bestseller, Advise and Consent, focusing on Senate politics and the Secretary of State.  Exodus made Israel a subject of political discussion for the U.S. public.
   
     The novel was adapted for the screen in 1960.  The nearly three and a half hour long film starred Paul Newman as Ari Ben Canaan and Eva Marie Saint as Kitty Fremont.

  If you're interested in WWII/holocaust stories, or twentieth century geopolitics, Exodus would probably suit your tastes.  The novel bounces back and forth between the main storyline and a number of historical episodes, which can be annoying, even if it's informative.  

Best Selling Novels of 1959:
1. Exodus by Leon Uris
2. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
3. Hawaii by James Michener
4. Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
5. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
6. The Ugly American by Eugene L. Burdick
7. Dear and Glorious Physician by Taylor Caldwell
8. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
9. Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris by Paul Gallico
10. Poor No More by Robert Ruark

Also Published in 1959:
Robert Block - Psycho
William S. Burroughs - Naked Lunch
Günter Grass - The Tin Drum
Robert Heinlein - Starship Troopers
Shirley Jackson - The Haunting of Hill House
Philip Roth - Goodbye, Columbus
Kurt Vonnegut - The Sirens of Titan


Sources:
Uris, Leon. Exodus. 1958. New York: Bantam Books, 1959. Print.

Robert Coover's "A Political Fable" or, the Strangest Little Book You'll Ever Read

     

      Novellas don't really seem to get their fair share of attention, often cast out of the limelight by novels and short stories.  In fact, Coover's A Political Fable was originally published in 1968 as a short story with the much more descriptive title The Cat in the Hat for President.  An odd premise, sure, but what you can't understand until you read this is how terrifying that would be in actuality.  The Cat in the Hat is unlimited by the laws of physics or reason.  His antics drive people to insanity.  He can and does anything, seemingly without rhyme or reason (well, not without rhyme), but there always seems to be some deeper, unfathomable purpose to his actions, whether they're flooding a convention hall and having everyone swallowed alive by giant fish or turning hundreds of coon-skin caps into live raccoons.  

      

      The story itself is, as the title suggests, a fable, with a message to be learned about politics and order and society, etc.  Still, the story is very, extremely, and totally weird.  The blend of the mundane (party politics, voter demographics, etc.) and the bizarre (a magic anthropomorphic cat) creates a very unsettling effect which is only magnified by the way the mundane seems to not only accept, but welcome the bizarre.  And that's part of what makes this the strangest little book you'll ever read: the way the ordinary blends with the unbelievable, the way the innocuous blends with the obscene, the way reason meets nonsense until the difference becomes muddled.  It's a short, quick read, but one hell of a trip.