An Independent reporter caught up with the local author of a new satirical novel about a lame duck president looking to preserve his legacy.
The book is called The Midland Kid: Tales of the Presidential Ghostwriter. (Order it here.) It’s being published by New Haven Independent Press, an arm of this news website.
The author is Allan Appel … a reporter for this news website.
Allan Appel was interviewed by … Allan Appel.
Read on to read what he found out. And show up Tuesday, April 22, for a book-signing and bluegrass party to celebrate the launching of The Midland Kid. It takes place at Koffee? on Audubon Street from 6 to 8 p.m. All Independent readers are invited.
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NHI: I suppose I have to ask at the outset why you chose to write this novel.
AA: You don’t “have” to do anything, pal. I already get the sense that this is a set-up. You’re posing as reluctant to ask questions, when, really, we both know you’re absolutely dying to talk about The Midland Kid. It’s just fake modesty. Don’t look at me that way. I’ve got your number.
NHI: We’ll just wait here and lose the audience, one by one, until you decide just to do this straight.
(Several agonizing minutes of staring…)
AA: Oh, all right. Like a lot of people in ’04, I just wanted to do something, anything, so Bush wouldn’t be re-elected, so the first version of the book was a ghostwriter being asked to pen a Western to help the Bush-like main character, President Brewster George, prevail in the Western states. It didn’t get published because I finished it too close to the election. The publishers who were interested bailed out because if they didn’t have it ready for Nov. ’04, and there was no time to do that, they didn’t see publishing it at all.
NHI: So you re-wrote it?
AA: Yup, several times. The focus now in ’08 is that the ghostwriter is supposed to help Bush nail his legacy and library through helping the prez be America’s first to write a novel while in office. He hasn’t done much of anything else, so a novel writing achievement is all he has left.
NHI: And yet your liberal ghostwriter comes under the so-called charm of President Brewster George. Isn’t it true that people have criticized you for creating not a stereotyped Bush √°-clef character, but one indeed with some charm and pizzaz, when we all know the man is an inch from being a war criminal?
AA: You’re getting pretty harsh, and non-objective there for a journalist, but yes, I’ve suffered from such slings and arrows. But look, when you write a novel, you’re not writing an essay or a screed. Even in a satirical novel, if you’ve created someone, you’ve got to let the character have integrity, go where it will. So this guy went charming. Go on, psychoanalyze me if you want, but that’s the way he came out. Anyway, lots of people who have messed up the world have been charming. The Antichrist, you know, is also called the great deceiver, because he’s the most charming of fellows, the most polite, and so forth, which is why a variety of lunatics believe the headquarters of Antichrist is at the diplomatic U.N. So charm and deceit go hand and hand, switch and bait, as we’ve seen, and my tale is full of that.
NHI: Whoa, you’re saying that your novel is basically accusing Bush, that is, your Bush character, of being the Antichrist? That’s quite a charge for a Jewish boy from Los Angeles. Maybe we ought to switch to the animals in your story.
AA: I’m all for that.
NHI: I’ve noticed that when you write for the New Haven Independent, you’re pretty much the reporter who’s been given the animal beat.
AA: Correct. Bass [the editor] has had me interview turtles, cover the monk parrots that by the way are back again sitting atop those electrical transformers in City Point, and, oh, get this: A first for me, I interviewed a wooden carousel horse the other week, down at the carousel at Lighthouse Point Park. Did you read that?
NHI: What do you mean did I read that? I wrote that!
AA: Right, right. I almost forgot. But to get back to The Midland Kid, yes, we have a hero mouse in the story. Our down-and-out ghostwriter is motivated by his amanuensis, which is not his poet wife, although he loves her, but by the pet mouse to whom he feeds camembert. When the presidential operatives, in their zeal to bug the ghostwriter’s basement office, seem to have exterminated the mouse, the muse of our ghostwriter, well, that’s I would say the turning point in the story. That’s what breaks the spell of the Decider and has the ghostwriter become the true fifth column within the administration, torpedoing the plan.
NHI: And everyone lives happily ever after?
AA: That’s right, wise guy.
NHI: So what are your hopes for this novel?
AA: Hopes these days for a novel? And for satire? You know what George Kaufman said about satire in the theater? It’s called satire because it closes on Saturday of the first week of performance. Likewise fiction. No, if there’s such a thing as poetic justice, this president should deserve, if not prosecution, then to be immediately elevatored down to the presidential basement of Millard Fillmore, James K. Polk and the rest of them that even B students can’t remember. My novel is a contribution toward this important national educational effort.
NHI: Anything really distinctive about the book or that you’re particularly proud of in the work?
AA: Well, since this is Passover season, I should mention that I believe Midland Kid is the first American novel ever with a few paragraphs of Aramaic in it. I kid you not. Check out page 103. Move over, Mel Gibson.
NHI: In addition to that stellar achievement?
AA: Well, you know plot is an underappreciated aspect in contemporary fiction. It’s really hard to do — for us, I mean for me, anyway. And this book doesn’t stop to admire itself, just chugs right along.
NHI: All right, I’m getting a little tired of feeling my own hand congratulating itself. Any one final thing you’d like to say before we send this off to Bass to edit? He’ll probably cut out all the juicy details anyway.
AA: Yes, he’s always doing that. But you hire a long-winded novelist to write this picture-driven web-based journalism, what do you expect? You thirsty? I don’t know, am I?
NHI: Yes, you’re thirsty. All I think you’d like to add is that you’re grateful that Bass and the others in the Online Journalism Project decided to launch the New Haven Independent Press with your book.
AA: That’s right, I am grateful, and delighted, and my daughter designed the book and the wonderfully noir covers, and that collaboration for me was priceless.
NHI: Nevertheless, priceless or not, people should buy the book by clicking on amazon.com. I think we’re done. Are we?
NHI: Why you asking me?
AA: Look, I think there’s a party for this book, April 22, between 6 and 8, at Koffee on Audubon. I suggest we meet there, and, so to speak, get together. What do you say?
NHI: See you there.