To while away the days until the publication of Sarah Palin's memoirs on November 17th, Rudolph Delson is reviewing the American vice presidential literary canon.

There is breaking news about Spiro Agnew.

Now, Agnew was a Vice President unlike any other, so maybe I should have steeled myself before opening his memoir. But it is hard to steel yourself against giants, and Agnew's book, Go Quietly...or Else, is full of them. It reads like the literary equivalent of an exhibit on ice age mammals. Here is the skeleton of President Richard Nixon, that shabby mammoth, who grew his tusks twelve feet long. Here is the skeleton of Attorney General Elliot Richardson, that honorable ground sloth, who stood as tall as a tree. Even Agnew's dedication page has a monster! I mean, what a sensational dedication page! It affects me the same way that I used to be affected by those tableaux (of cave bears, of woolly rhinos, of saber-toothed tigers battling packs of dire wolves) that natural history curators place in their rotundas, to overawe the visiting children before the visiting parents have even bought the tickets. What follows is Agnew's dedication page, reprinted in its entirety.

To Frank Sinatra

Now that is how to write a memoir! And the book does not disappoint. In particular it contains one revelation so amazing, so unforeseen, that I felt I should interrupt your Tuesday afternoon with a Special Vice-Presidential Memoir Emergency Update.

Agnew begins predictably enough. "I am writing this book because I am innocent of the allegations against me which compelled me to resign the vice-presidency of the United States in 1973." And for two hundred pages he make his case.

Some of what he says is irrefutable. In 1973, anyone who hated the President hated the Vice President more: irrefutable. And in 1973, there were a number of people who foresaw that the President might soon be impeached: irrefutable. Therefore, in 1973, there were a number of people worrying about how to chase the Vice President out of office before the presidency became vacant: irrefutable. (It was essentially the situation that would confront America again in 2005, and that would be summarized by the bumper sticker Impeach Cheney First.)

Agnew believes that in 1973 a cabal of arrogant attorneys-liberals who worked for the Department of Justice in Maryland-began to dream of bringing him down. Those attorneys, Agnew says, suborned perjury from a handful of crooks in Baltimore, pressuring them to lie about having paid bribes to Agnew. The lies made it into the press; the press made it into a scandal; and Dick Nixon, beset by his own worries, let Agnew fall. Agnew is no great stylist, his memoir has none of the flair of his famous speeches-but he is not a bad storyteller, and he has a formidable talent for political psychology, and the case he makes is not laughable on its face. Still, it does have one hole. If Agnew was truly innocent, why did he resign? Well, Agnew says, it's simple:

I was told, 'Go quietly-or else.' I feared for my life. If a decision had been made to eliminate me-through an automobile accident, a fake suicide, or whatever-the order would not have been traced back to the White House any more than the 'get Castro' orders were ever traced back to their source.

Yes, Agnew claims he resigned because he believed that Nixon would otherwise have had him assassinated.

Realizing that this sounds incredible-and perhaps libelous-Agnew equivocates. Psychology is his strength, and he relies on it: "Perhaps I overreacted, but my mental state after months of constant pressure was hardly conducive to calm and dispassionate evaluation." But Agnew should not equivocate. He should not fear libel. He should rise to his calling as a memoirist. If he is not afraid to begin his book with a dedication to Frank Sinatra, then he need not be afraid to end it by accusing the White House of plotting murder.

In any event, spicy Spiro did, in fact, resign. And Nixon replaced him with milquetoast Gerald Ford. And the Pleistocene era of politics drew to its close. But what did Agnew do after he left office? Disgraced and destitute and ultimately disbarred, how did Agnew feed his family? Here we come to the great revelation of Go Quietly...or Else; here we come to the reason for this Special Vice-Presidential Memoir Emergency Update. As Agnew confesses to his readers:

Late in 1973, I had hit on the idea of writing a novel.

Spiro Agnew wrote a novel! Spiro Agnew wrote a novel!

It was a best-seller in 1976, and it is called The Canfield Decision, and it is about a corrupt Vice President, and it is available on Amazon.com for $0.01, and I have ordered it!

Friends, I will report back to you in short order.

This concludes my Special Vice-Presidential Memoir Emergency Update.

Previously: "An Amazing Adventure: Joe and Hadassah's Personal Notes on the 2000 Campaign"

Rudolph Delson lives in Brooklyn. He has won no awards and earned no distinctions. His novel "Maynard & Jennica" is now available in paperback.