Literary Vices, with Rudolph Delson: Spiro Agnew, NSFW @12:29 PM
Now that Sarah Palin's 'Going Rogue' is beginning to leak out onto the Internet in advance of next week's publication date, we are wrapping up our series analyzing the canon of vice presidential literature!
If you ever buy Spiro Agnew's novel The Canfield Decision, buy the mass-market paperback edition released by Berkley Medallion Books in March of 1977. For one thing, Berkley Medallion is the kind of publisher that inserts full-color cigarette advertisements between leaves of their books. For another thing, Berkley Medallion is the kind of publisher whose copyright pages include disclaimers such as: "Published by arrangement with Playboy Press." In other words, Berkley Medallion fiction is adult fiction. Accordingly, gentle readers, it is my duty-my gentle duty-to inform you that the following review of The Canfield Decision is Not Safe For Work. READ MORE 11
Literary Vices: Special Vice-Presidential Memoir Emergency Update! @12:20 PM
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. READ MORE 9
