tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-256801828148573136.post3951099053232522588..comments2024-01-26T17:29:53.415-05:00Comments on Reader's Almanac: The literary masterpiece about Washington: has any topped Henry Adams’s Democracy?The Library of Americahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17586915922688562543noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-256801828148573136.post-48421420402862546682010-12-05T18:49:32.577-05:002010-12-05T18:49:32.577-05:00None of these are great, but in different genres t...None of these are great, but in different genres there are Ward Just, George Pelecanos, Marita Golden. Vidal in that story and in his American history sequence as well as <i> The Smithsonian Institution </i>, as light as it is. Edward P. Jones has done some DC stories. Washington as a place plays a role sometimes in novels not set there, as in Ellen going to Washington in Wharton's <i> Age of Innocence </i>.Nicholas Birnshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18352955651694124463noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-256801828148573136.post-41204443318257536662010-12-05T13:46:58.758-05:002010-12-05T13:46:58.758-05:00It's hard to imagine a novel set in a company ...It's hard to imagine a novel set in a company town not being 'about' the company. If that's accurate, I can think of none better than Advise and Consent.Donhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06127579149080546956noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-256801828148573136.post-49195940721130860332010-12-04T21:06:58.642-05:002010-12-04T21:06:58.642-05:00I tend to agree with Steve Riddle and Mark Judge: ...I tend to agree with Steve Riddle and Mark Judge: both Hitchens and Teachout are too narrowly equating Washington with politics, forgetting the people who actually live there or who visit for other reasons. It’s a bit like saying that <i>Augie March</i> isn’t a great Chicago novel because it doesn’t deal with the Mercantile Exchange, or that a New York novel has to feature a stockbroker or Broadway actor. And there's an additional inherent problem for fiction about government: most great political novels (including Adams’s <i>Democracy</i>) are essentially satirical—and satire often dates rather quickly (see: <i>Primary Colors</i>).<br /><br />My candidate for the Great Washington Novel is Andrew Holleran’s <i>Grief</i>, which reminds me in turn of Gore Vidal's short story "A Moment of Green Laurel," also set in the District. Ostensibly about a man mourning the death of his mother, <i>Grief</i> is also an ode to our nation's capital. Instead of being obsessed with the political sideshows of the day, the unnamed protagonist is haunted by the city’s history and its ghosts and becomes especially engrossed in a book of post-assassination letters by Mary Todd Lincoln. And Henry Adams figures prominently in the novel as well; Adams’s numbness after his wife had killed herself is echoed by the grief of Holleran’s understated hero. In the novel, the city’s museums, parks, townhouses, and residents matter more than whatever transient administration has set up camp in government offices.D. Cloyce Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12017407200533790119noreply@blogger.com