Fellow Travelers

Informationen zum Autor THOMAS MALLON is the author of eleven novels, including Henry and Clara, Dewey Defeats Truman, Fellow Travelers , Watergate, and Landfall. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review , and other publications. In 2011 he received the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award for prose style. He has been the literary editor of GQ and the deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He lives in Washington, D.C. Klappentext It's 1950s Washington, D.C.: a world of bare-knuckled ideology and secret dossiers, dominated by personalities like Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, and Joe McCarthy. Enter Timothy Laughlin, a recent college graduate and devout Catholic eager to join the crusade against Communism. An encounter with a handsome State Department official, Hawkins Fuller, leads to Tim's first job and, after Fuller's advances, his first love affair. As McCarthy mounts a desperate bid for power and internal investigations focus on "sexual subversives in the government, Tim and Fuller find it ever more dangerous to navigate their double lives. Moving between the diplomatic world of Foggy Bottom and NATO's front line in Europe, Fellow Travelers is a searing historical novel infused with political drama, unexpected humor, and genuine heartbreak. Leseprobe Part One: SeptemberDecember 1953 In the era of security clearances to be an Irish Catholic became prima facie evidence of loyalty. Harvard men were to be checked; Fordham men would do the checking.DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN Chapter One: September 28, 1953 Tim counted four big fans whirring atop their stanchions in the newsroom. Every window here on the seventh floor was open, and summer had officially departed six days ago, but that was Washington for you. When air-conditioning might come to the Star seemed to be a perennial matter of sad-sack speculation among the staff: When hell freezes over, went one answer Tim had heard in his three months here. Because then we won't need it.Miss McGrory, one of the paper's book reviewers, arrived with a bottle of whiskey, which she set down next to the punch bowl and cake, whose single chocolate layer and frosted inscription, Happy Trails, Sheriff, would soon be cut into by the retirement party's guest of honor, Mr. Yost, a pressman who'd been at the Star since 1912 and took his nickname from a weekend job he had as a constable over in Berwyn Heights.More people drifted in. We could use a piano, opined Miss Eversman, the music critic. She'd covered Liberace's concert two nights ago at Constitution Hall and was telling a police reporter that the pianist's mother had been in the president's box with one of Liberace's brothers, Rudy, who'd served in Korea.So she's got one boy who's a soldier? asked the reporter. Maybe she's got hope of grandchildren after all.Miss Eversman laughed.Forget Liberace, said Mr. Yost, who'd started to reminisce about his first years here at the paper. I remember seeing Wilson himselfthat's Woodrow Wilson, not Charlie, to you youngstersup in his box at Keith's Theatre. You wouldn't have figured it from an egghead like him, but did that man ever love his vaudeville. You could sell him any player-piano roll the minute it came out.We really do need a piano, Miss Eversman sighed, as the national and managing editors walked in. Mr. Corn and Mr. Noyes took up positions off to the side of things and remarked to each other, a bit shamefacedly, on the smallness of the spread.Well, said Mr. Corn, quoting the late Senator Taft's famously impolitic advice about higher food prices: Eat less.The party was making Tim feel nostalgic, and thus a bit foolish, since he'd been, after all, only a summer hire allowed to stay on through Septemberor, more exactly, this coming Friday afternoon. They'd pu...

Autorentext
THOMAS MALLON is the author of eleven novels, including Henry and Clara, Dewey Defeats Truman, Fellow Travelers, Watergate, and Landfall. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, and other publications. In  2011 he received the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award for prose style. He has been the literary editor of GQ and the deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Klappentext

It's 1950s Washington, D.C.: a world of bare-knuckled ideology and secret dossiers, dominated by personalities like Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, and Joe McCarthy. Enter Timothy Laughlin, a recent college graduate and devout Catholic eager to join the crusade against Communism. An encounter with a handsome State Department official, Hawkins Fuller, leads to Tim's first job and, after Fuller's advances, his first love affair. As McCarthy mounts a desperate bid for power and internal investigations focus on "sexual subversives” in the government, Tim and Fuller find it ever more dangerous to navigate their double lives. Moving between the diplomatic world of Foggy Bottom and NATO's front line in Europe, Fellow Travelers is a searing historical novel infused with political drama, unexpected humor, and genuine heartbreak.

Zusammenfassung
NOW A SHOWTIME LIMITED SERIES STARRING MATT BOMER, JONATHAN BAILEY, AND ALLISON WILLIAMS • A searing historical novel set in 1950s Washington, D.C.—a world of dominated by personalities like Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, and Joe McCarthy—and infused with political drama, unexpected humor, and heartbreak. • From the acclaimed author of Watergate and Up With the Sun
 
"Crisp, buoyant prose." —The New York Times Book Review

In a world of bare-knuckled ideology and secret dossiers, Timothy Laughlin, a recent college graduate and devout Catholic, is eager to join the crusade against Communism. An encounter with a handsome State Department official, Hawkins Fuller, leads to Tim's first job and, after Fuller's advances, his first love affair. As McCarthy mounts a desperate bid for power and internal investigations focus on “sexual subversives” in the government, Tim and Fuller find it ever more dangerous to navigate their double lives while moving between the diplomatic world of Foggy Bottom and NATO's front line in Europe.

Leseprobe
Part One: September–December 1953In the era of security clearances to be an Irish Catholic became prima facie evidence of loyalty. Harvard men were to be checked; Fordham men would do the checking.—DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHANChapter One: September 28, 1953Tim counted four big fans whirring atop their stanchions in the newsroom. Every window here on the seventh floor was open, and summer had officially departed six days ago, but that was Washington for you. When air-conditioning might come to the Star seemed to be a perennial matter of sad-sack speculation among the staff: “When hell freezes over,” went one answer Tim had heard in his three months here. “Because then we won’t need it.”Miss McGrory, one of the paper’s book reviewers, arrived with a bottle of whiskey, which she set down next to the punch bowl and cake, whose single chocolate layer and frosted inscription, “Happy Trails, Sheriff,” would soon be cut into by the retirement party’s guest of honor, Mr. Yost, a pressman who’d been at the Star since 1912 and took his nickname from a weekend job he had as a constable over in Berwyn Heights.More people drifted in. “We could use a piano,” opined Miss Eversman, the music critic. She’d covered Liberace’s concert two nights ago at Constitution Hall and was telling a police reporter that the pianist’s mother had been in the president’s box with one of Liberace’s brothers, Rudy, who’d served in Korea.“So she’s got one boy wh…