| ||||||||||
 
Dr. Ronald P. Rogers CHIROPRACTOR Support for your body's natural healing capabilities 270-384-5554 Click here for details 
  
Columbia Gas Dept. GAS LEAK or GAS SMELL Contact Numbers 24 hrs/ 365 days 270-384-2006 or 9-1-1 Call before you dig 
Visit ColumbiaMagazine's Directory of Churches Addresses, times, phone numbers and more for churches in Adair County Find Great Stuff in ColumbiaMagazine's Classified Ads Antiques, Help Wanted, Autos, Real Estate, Legal Notices, More... 
|
Tom Chaney. No. R770: An elegant stylist - politics as balance Of Writers and Their Books No. R770: An elegant stylist -- politics as balance First appeared 8 July 2007 in the Hart County Herald News. The next earlier Tom Chaney column :Tom Chaney: Oral History - behind the scene - Ed Prichard By Tom Chaney An elegant stylist - politics as balance One of the delights of living all day in a bookstore is that one is always discovering new writers who may have been there all along. A couple of weeks ago I discovered Ward Just. His name was vaguely familiar, but I had never opened one of his books. My eyes lit on his Jack Gance [1988 Houghton Mifflin Co.]. Thunk me, "It's time to try him out." And try him I did to my great pleasure. Washington novels these days have to do with national danger, lofty sentiments passing for patriotism, car chases, and close calls for O-So-Human Presidents. Just provides a refreshing change. The New York Times calls him "The Washington novelist's novelist." I do not presume to know the taste of those folks, but if the statement is not true, it ought to be. The derring-do in most novels of the capital could do with some of Just's elegance. Just was a war correspondent during Vietnam where he was wounded -- taking more than thirty pieces of shrapnel. Here is how Peter Kadis of the Boston Phoenix describes Just's behavior. "[H]e declined to be evacuated until the dozens of enlisted men wounded in the action were airlifted out. An act of courage, without doubt. But I wonder if it might not have been something simpler, more elegant: an exhibition, perhaps, of good manners." Jack Gance, the title character, is enamored with politics from his Chicago beginnings. He begins as a poll taker and strategist with the Chicago machine. From there he goes to Washington as a White House staffer and finally becomes a Senator from Illinois. Reviewing the novel for the New York Times, Judith Martin, who as Miss Manners is the epitome of elegant behavior, acknowledges Just's literary skill with the example of just one sentence which "suffices to show the impact on a hitherto unexceptionable family of the public scandal that results when Gance's father is jailed for tax evasion: " 'At breakfast we read about the previous day's testimony on the front page of the Tribune, long gray columns of quote and counterquote -- the Trib was our Izvestia, and how strange now to find it belligerent; was this how a newspaper repaid a subscriber's loyalty?' "It would be easy to criticize Gance for his unsavory ties to Chicago, for his love affairs with married women, his political deals. However, as Martin observes "one sees a man without malice or inflated ego trying to do his duty to people and institutions but finding it all tremendously complicated." In the last scene of the novel, Gance is talking to a delegation of Chicago prep students about a career of public service where "the essence of public life was compromise. . . . It was exquisite, the give-and-take making a beautiful balance. . . . In the Senate as in life you yielded, conceding ground; and your opponent did likewise and from that struggle came something durable and true-speaking." A ballet of balance which current politicians might well emulate. I just passed a good place to stop when I recalled Gance's analysis of his bachelor affairs with married women. "Arrangements were easily made and unmade, and I came to see married life from an unnatural angle of vision. I was an expert navigator who had interviewed all the best mariners but who had never been to sea, who knew about life topside and below decks, had heard the descriptions of the calms and the tempests but had never felt the deck below his own feet." I have found Ward Just -- a calm and elegant novelist amidst the swirling tempests of Washington writers from Margaret Truman to Tom Clancy to Jack Higgins and a dozen more of my favorites. I just want more Just. THE BOOKSTORE Box 73/111 Water Street Horse Cave, Kentucky 42749 270-786-3084 Email: Tom Chaney http://www.alibris.com/stores/horscave This story was posted on 2012-07-08 05:08:41
Printable: this page is now automatically formatted for printing.
Have comments or corrections for this story? Use our contact form and let us know. More articles from topic Tom Chaney: Of Writers and Their Books:
Tom Chaney directs: Holidays and Sundae: Adventures with Cat Tom Chaney. No. R769: Summer adventure with Mark Twain Tom Chaney: Oral History - behind the scene - Ed Prichard Tom Chaney, No. R767: Dr. Thomas D. Clark (1903-2005) Tom Chaney. R766 review: The Coming of Rain Tom Chaney. R765 review: Mississippi storytelling Tom Chaney. R764 review: The Piper on the Mountain Tom Chaney. R763 review: An honest politician is . . . Tom Chaney. R762 review: The Queen's Gambit, by Walter Tevis Tom Chaney. R761 review: The Gospel of Judas View even more articles in topic Tom Chaney: Of Writers and Their Books |
 
115 Jamestown St. Columbia, KY. 270-384-2496 
  
   
 Provided by the Adair Co Fiscal Court and the Adair Co. Emergency Mgt. Agency 
|
||||||||
|
| ||||||||||
|
Quick Links to Popular Features
Looking for a story or picture? Try our Photo Archive or our Stories Archive for all the information that's appeared on ColumbiaMagazine.com. | ||||||||||
|
Contact us: Columbia Magazine and columbiamagazine.com are published by Linda Waggener and Pen Waggener, PO Box 906, Columbia, KY 42728. Please use our contact page, or send questions about technical issues with this site to webmaster@columbiamagazine.com. All logos and trademarks used on this site are property of their respective owners. All comments remain the property and responsibility of their posters, all articles and photos remain the property of their creators, and all the rest is copyright 1995-Present by Columbia Magazine. Privacy policy: use of this site requires no sharing of information. Voluntarily shared information may be published and made available to the public on this site and/or stored electronically. Anonymous submissions will be subject to additional verification. Cookies are not required to use our site. However, if you have cookies enabled in your web browser, some of our advertisers may use cookies for interest-based advertising across multiple domains. For more information about third-party advertising, visit the NAI web privacy site.
| ||||||||||
