Why I feel like Billy Pilgrim: ‘The Solomon Scandals’ as a time-warpy book
Was it Jerry Ford or Jimmy Carter who sat in the Oval Office when I finished the original draft of The Solomon Scandals, my Washington newspaper novel?
I do remember what I was writing on—an old electric typewriter: first a veritable antique from the early 60s, then a somewhat newer model with a metal golf ball: a red Selectric that I later gave away to the cleaning lady.
After NPR ran a segment the other day about age, time and the brain, I inevitably wondered, “What does this mean for novelists?” I was in my late 20s or early 30s back when I was seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting and otherwise undergoing the experiences that I fictionalized for Scandals. The world was fresher to me and my generation—D.C. scandals included, even with Watergate having already happened.
In that sense Scandals is a 30ish writer’s novel, and maybe this gets me off the hook when NPR tells how the young remember in more detail. At the same time, perhaps Scandals also reflects what I learned in the three decades that sped by. Talk about Billy Pilgrim–style time warps. You might say I didn’t just write my historical fiction—I lived it.
‘The Rothman Scandal’: What’s good for the Solomons is good for…
Beth Solomon of TheGeorgetownDish is a good sport about the existence of a D.C. novel with a villain named Solomon:
“It would be great to have SOME kind of scandal in the family.”
Now I’ll try to show Beth’s humor and aplomb toward another book, or at least its title: The Rothman Scandal, by Stephen Birmingham of Our Crowd fame.
“The Rothmans have money, power—and secrets to hide,” reads back-cover copy for the paperback. “A distinguished patriarch’s dark history. A handsome grandson’s mysterious death. An illicit affair that could destroy a family.
Truth or PR spin? W. Post’s Dana Milbank fires back at TNR’s ‘Apocalypse’ analysis of L Street
Firing back at the New Republic’s Gabriel Sherman, Dana Milbank at the Washington Post is spot on when he says the death watch on the Post newspaper is premature. I’ve given my own two cents on survival strategies.
That said, Milbank needs to remember that the Washington Post Company’s priorities are less journalistic and more business-oriented than in the Watergate days.
‘Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins’: My Q. & A. with playwright Margaret Engel
A black mongrel dog scampers across the stage, “dragging a leash and a canoe paddle.”
Her owner yells for the dog by her proper name, “Shit”—an ever-handy expletive for a Texas oilman’s red-headed daughter, grouchy about the status quo.
This is the populist journalist Molly Ivins at home, in a new play by Margaret (Peggy) Engel and her sister, Allison. With the blessing of the Ivins estate, the twins have deftly stitched together an Ivins soliloquy from her actual writings.
Ivins wrote best-selling books and syndicated columns and fired up hundreds of young reporters, only to die of breast cancer in 2007 at 62. But if Kathleen Turner’s acting is as good as the script I read the other day, even Molly’s barefoot ghost might have to double-check the death certificate.
The play’s debut, March 19 through April 18, is in Philadelphia. Ahead is an edited email interview with Peggy Engel (right in photo by Mark Berndt), former Washington Post reporter, ex-managing editor of the Newseum and long-time director of the Alicia Patterson Foundation. Peggy and I have been friends for decades, starting with her first newspaper job in Lorain, Ohio, near Cleveland. Peggy now lives in Bethesda, Maryland; Allison, in Los Angeles, where she is director of communications at the University of Southern California.
Q. Tell us more about who Molly was. Which other writer, dead or alive, was she most like in her humor and some other respects? Admirers say Ambrose Bierce or even Mark Twain.
She was hilariously funny. She was so smart and her wit just sparkled. She was a combination of Bierce and Twain and Will Rogers, with some of that caustic humor that Ann Richards possessed.
Three ways to save the Washington Post: A few ‘Post Apocalypse’ musings from Alexandria
My old friend used to handle some PR matters for a union in Northern Virginia, and people still pick his brains. Here’s a rule near the top of his list. Don’t waste too much time trying to get into the Washington Post, even on the most newsworthy stories. L Street probably will just ignore you.
Similarly when an obituary dissed local history and I complained, the Post ombudsman would not even acknowledge receipt of my e-mail. The obit writer had at least given me the courtesy of a short explanation. But no more details came. Hmm. Wasn’t ombudsman Andy Alexander himself worried about the Post’s aloofness? Yes, I gave him Web links—from this site—which hundreds and perhaps thousands of surfers had clicked on. Is Mr. Alexander really Net-blind enough not to e-mail me even a few words?
The above two examples came to mind as I read a New Republic piece with the cheery headline of Post Apocalypse: Inside the messy collapse of a great newspaper. Actually the Post’s continued decline is not inevitable, and as a decades-long reader of the paper. I’d like L Street to thrive. Here are three partial remedies, overlapping somewhat with Gabriel Sherman’s TNR piece, but far from entirely. The first idea would help deal with the Post’s snobbery problem as well as with the sheer arrogance that the retired union man and I have been up against.
“Same dark zeal Hammett held for Frisco or Chandler had for Los Angeles.” — Washington City Paper
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Recent Posts
- Why I feel like Billy Pilgrim: ‘The Solomon Scandals’ as a time-warpy book
- ‘The Rothman Scandal’: What’s good for the Solomons is good for…
- Truth or PR spin? W. Post’s Dana Milbank fires back at TNR’s ‘Apocalypse’ analysis of L Street
- ‘Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins’: My Q. & A. with playwright Margaret Engel
- Three ways to save the Washington Post: A few ‘Post Apocalypse’ musings from Alexandria
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