My extremely smart and funny fiction-writer friend, Tod Goldberg has a thing he does every year on his blog called 12 days of lists. I’ve decided to shamelessly steal this idea and tweak it for WLA. From now until New Year’s eve I’ll be posting lists—a new one every day or so. (I urge you to check out Tod’s lists too.
Some of the lists will be political and social justice-y. Some will be far, far more frivolous. Some will be liberal- leaning (like the one below), some not. Okay, here’s the first one:
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This past Saturday night I was at the LA writer-clogged party for Red Hen Press and decided to ask a bunch of novelists and poets (and one composer) which of the presidential candidates they thought would make the best fictional characters. Here’s what they said:
1. MIKE HUCKABEE by Kate Gale
Kate is the editor of Red Hen Press, and The Los Angeles Review. She’s also the author of five books of poetry, the editor of four anthologies and she is now writing operatic librettos that have been performed at such venues as Disney Hall, and the New York City Opera.
Okay, as a fictional character I’d choose Huckabee because he’s the most ridiculous. So many of his beliefs are so completely out of touch with the majority of the American people. I’d use him in a libretto because librettos are all about extremes. In opera people are going to die, they’re going cheat on their wives, do the wrong thing, and generally behave badly. Huckabee would be a great character in an opera libretto.
2. RUDY GIULIANI by Don Davis
Don is a notable film composer best known for the landmark avant-garde scoring of the three Matrix films. Most recently, Don has been composing operas with Kate Gale (above).
Giuliani is the obvious choice. Rudy would be perfect for a James Elroy hard-boiled type of noir novel because he’d be the Mafiosi head of the police department who kicks the shit out of everyone
3. HILLARY CLINTON by Daryl Glenn
Daryl Glenn writes short fiction
Hillary because she has a such a colorful, wide-ranging past. She’s a larger than life character, and representative of the mysterious qualities that you find in great fictional characters.
4. GEORGE BUSH by Bart Edelman
Bart is an LA poet and professor with five highly-regarded books of poetry, the most recent “The Last Mojito.”
Well, can I pick a character I’ve already written about? He’s not a candidate, he’s the President. In my latest book, I wrote a poem called “Little Daddy’s Thanksgiving,” about George Bush. All the psychological material that’s been worked out in this man’s mind with regard to his father, and the whole father son relationship….it’s fascinating.
5. BARACK OBAMA by Aimee Liu
Aimee is a best-selling novelist (“Flash House”), memoirist, and nonfiction writer (most recently, “Gaining”) NOTE: She wasn’t at the party but we chatted about it all the next day.)
Given what I write, I would pick Obama. Because of his mixed background, there’s just so much more to work with. And he’s loaded with contradictions—living overseas and having that perspective…..having the perspective of a mixed race background….having experienced multiple religions….That’s all fertile stuff for a character in a novel. The more complex, the better the character.
6. HILLARY CLINTON by Loraine Despres
Loraine is a former TV writer (Dynasty, The Waltons, Love Boat, and Knots Landing and, most famously, the “Who Shot JR?” episode of Dallas). Now she has turned best-selling Southern chic lit novelist ( make that smart chic lit).
Hillary would make a perfect heroine for one of my novels because she’s such a force of nature. Yet she always had to take a back seat because she was married to a governor and then to the president. But now she can come out on her own. I’d use Mitt Romney as her bête noire
7. HILLARY CLINTON by Carl Eastlake
Carl is a TV writer/ producer who specializes in science fiction (“Earth: Final Conflict,” “Outer Limits”).
I think Hilary because she’s so tragically complicated. The very fact of her early brilliance when she was student body president at Wellesley. But then being married to such an accomplished politician has meant that she’s been so imbued with the technology of modern campaigns, and it has tragically compromised her as a person, even though she may be one of the best people running.
8. BARACK OBAMA by Tony Barnstone
Tony is a poet with four books of poetry out, and a new one on the way. His latest is called the Golem of Los Angeles
I’d say Barack Obama because he’s a black man running for president in a country that kills black leaders. He somebody with something of a Muslim background in a country that’s at war with radical Islam. Yet he’s running for president and doing damn well. How does he do that? Part of it has to do with the cultural hypocrisy that says a light skinned black is somehow more acceptable. And because his father’s directly from Kenya he’s doesn’t come out of the American tradition of slavery. So somehow he’s escaped our whole history. So in some odd way Barack Obama is at the core of American racism and cultural warfare, and yet somehow he’s stepping outside of it.
8. BARACK OBAMA by Mark Cull
Mark is a short fiction writer, and the co-founder and publisher of Red Hen Press, one of California’s best literary presses.
I’d write a piece of speculative fiction about Obama about the first few weeks of his presidency. It would be tragic. He’d be martyred in much the same way as Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy.
9.. JOHN MC CAIN by Jamey Hecht
Jamey is a smart new LA poet
I would write about McCain because he’s a tragic figure. He paid an enormous price for his survival and achieved this remarkable moral capital. There he was in his spiffy white uniform to be congratulated by President Nixon for having survived his ordeal in the North Vietnamese prison. Then he submitted to abuse by the Bush family who dragged his name through the mud with a racist slur campaign in North Carolina. Yet he continued to do Bush’s bidding. Now his campaign has lost momentum, but he keeps on running. He’s a great tragic character.
“Hillary’s a larger than life character?” – I wish !
And, since we’re all critics – which is so much easier than writing the book – I’ll suggest that even novelistically making “Ain’t Nobody Home” Mitt her “bete noire” not only makes the story duller than it need be but misses the obvious and far more dramatically interesting “bete noire” lurking in her “home” turf.
Continuing the role of snotty critic that writers love to loathe, as regards the notion that Obama has “somehow escaped our whole history” – I’d suggest that not only is he an ultimately predictable product of our “mixed race” social and cultural history, he’s also chosen to place himself as a forceful actor at its center. Hardly what I’d call “stepping outside” nor is his chosen role or particular persona playing out as “odd.” (I think a lot of “coastal” liberals have pretty naive notions that their “enlightenment” about racial issues is so much more sophisticated than that of the unwashed masses. In fact, some of the clumsiest racial constructs I encounter in conversation come from folks in advanced stages of leftish liberalism.)
Celeste, you need some new friends.
Incidentally, I think the best fictional character among those running for President would be either Ron Paul or Alan Keyes. (Kucinich doesn’t quite make the cut, but he’d be my third choice.) The only truly good, interesting non-nonfiction books about presidential campaigns and contenders would have to be comic. A story about a quixotic, unlikely, largely delusional character seeking the presidency and making it into the “real” forums with the duller, scripted major candidates is the only one I’d be likely to read. The only alternate strategy likely to draw readers (as suggested by Joe Klein’s roman a clef) would be going the Jacqueline Susanne route with a barely disguised Hillary (hopefully made a bit more interesting than the person we’ve had with us for longer than I care to remember) and her philandering husband. Go with the crazy guys at the margins, not the controlled “electables” in their current “presidential” mode. (McCain and Obama obviously have authentically compelling stories that they’ve told themselves, but as candidates even those two are relatively colorless compared to the bona fide crackpots who are on a mission to “tell the truth” by their own inner-directed lights.
Incidentally, kudos to TV veteran Lorraine Depres for writing a novel and her good luck in its success. No reflection on her talent or her success, I’m reminded of a funny story that Cheers veteran Rob Long told in his “bloggingheads” debut. After some years of success writing comedy for television, Long told his agent he had decided to write a novel. The agent, not missing a beat, responded: “You need $800? I’ll give you $800!”
reg, you just need some friends, period.
Go play with Maggie…
I hate to be a serial nitpicker (not really!) but I also don’t see in Mike Huckabee the guy likely to cheat on his wife or “generally behave badly.” Quite the opposite. I find him the most likely to help you change your tire or give an elderly friend a ride to the store. And given his weight loss, Huck’s not even likely to die any time soon (as apparently conforms to the “libretto” profile – of which I plead total ignorance.) Again, Giuliani seems like a natural here – not the genial cracker. Hell – Huckabee wouldn’t even make a good character in a country and western song.
Huckabee is a good choice. Sort of a modern “Lonesome” Rhodes character. Andi’ll leave it to you intellectuals with your “fine Educations” to discover who I mean and who played him in what film!
One of my favorite films, but I don’t just see that depraved, narcissistic center in Huckabee. He reminds me more of a fifties sitcom dad than Shulberg’s “Arkansas traveler.”
Now there’s Huckabee’s son…
Second thought, in fairness, it’s certainly arguable that ANYONE seriously running for the Presidency of the United States has, de facto, mustered a depraved, narcissistic center.
Hey, keep the ideas and the critiques coming.
I have to run off for a day of meetings, but I’m still not 100 percent sure who I’d have chosen. Likely McCain— if I had to give an answer with no notice and after a glass of wine, like these folks. But, upon reflection, I think Mike Gravel’s my real pick. He’d be a brilliant supporting character for a comic novel—but to use him correctly I’d have to have, say, Neil Gaiman’s talent. Or at the very least Christopher Moore’s talent.
It is not surpring to me that writers at a party for a westside press would submit entries smaller than their photographs.
Just to clarity, no one is running for President, yet. They are running for their parties’ nominations.
It’s funny that Celeste’s friends would write about Republicans as ridiculous, evil, or tragic. However, they would write about Obama like he was JFK or MLK and would portray Hillary Clinton as heroic and brilliant. Something tells me that they all live in California–that strange land removed from reality.
If I were writing about one candidate as a fictional character, it might be Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party in a comedic role as she spreads communist theories and 9-11 conspiracies.
Republican candidates could be written about as traitors to reflect their positions relative to true conservative fiscal philosophy.
For the Democrats, it definitely would have to be Hillary Clinton in a murder mystery based, say, in and around the White House. Oh, wait. You said “fiction,” didn’t you?
Great idea. Great friends. Great photos. All around, just perfect.
Reg I was thinking more of the fact that he was played by Andy Griffith with that down home humanity that made “Andy Taylor” America’s favorite Sheriff. I know its an image but the reason he is so dangerous to the others is there is more than a little whiff of Mayberry in him. As someone – Fred Allen? – once said if you can fake “sincerity” you’ve got it made.
Wow, no one’s attacking each other and sticking to the topic of the thread, amazing progress. Woody, it’s true you’d be laughed out of the room if you had anything good to say about almost any Republican, except as a comic foil. Except when it comes to Rudy — notice no one’s mentioned him, except maybe an illusion to the inelegant way he let his wife know he was leaving her, but otherwise, his absurdities (like the cell phone too-cute thing backfiring, and his incessant ref’s to 9/11) come from his character and actions, not just from being a Republican. He passes the smell test because he’s not a religious evangelist, anti- abortion type. That loses him some right-wing vote (though he got Falwell??!) but makes him not all that different from Hillary, both in terms of policy and messy personal life. So my bet it’ll be the two of them left standing at the end.
Yes, she’s got the downside of seeming to be “run by a smooth political machine” more than running her own candidacy, but as a result, they’ve listened to which way the wind is blowing and moved her politically to the middle — very close to Rudy.
No one mentions Obama in a farcical light because of their political beliefs and how un-PC it would be to make fun of the first black man running, and a really likable person at that — but let’s face it, if a white Republican or even white woman like Hillary offered living abroad from ages 6-10 as his street cred for foreign policy, he’d have been laughed off the stage. Now that the Oprah spike is over, my money says he’s going to fall back down to human level, and as push comes to shove, his naivity and lack of experience will seem more a liability than breath of fresh air.
I don’t know if oth Rudy and Hillary are “tragically complicated,” but they certainly are complicated and flawed in a way that dispells idealistic notions about our leaders, and that’s a sign of our growing up as a democracy.
Overall good comments except for Tony’s picking Obama “because he’s a black man running for President in a country that kills black leaders” — I hope that’s the wine and spontaneity talking.
rlc – I’d have to agree that the Huckster strikes me as utterly sincere when he fakes his sincerity.
Theresa, don’t blame the poor writers I accosted with my digital recorder and camera. The word count and photo size were all my doing. (I told them to keep it short as I knew I wasn’t up to typing up any novella-length answers.)
And, yes, kudos to all for staying on topic.
Herman Wouk already wrote about Giuliani as a fictional character.
Where was that ? interesting… wait!
Oh damn. That’s a Caine Mutiny joke and I bit…
As they say in Brazil “Te peguei, jacare!”
But he proved, with impeccable logic, that the strawberrys . . .
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