Say what you will about the shit that Liberals think up, but they have a fine bullpen of gifted scribes. It's a treat lately to see them carving up their turkeys as they try to navigate the muddled mess of the 2018 election season and decide upon whom to throw their weight behind. Amusingly, some of them are looking at Centrists and Moderate Conservatives like it's 2200 and outside the bounds of coyote ugly and early.
Here's a few paragraphs from The New Yorker about "The President is Missing," by Willy the Slick, et al.:
Clinton’s unlikely collaboration with James Patterson yields mysteries, thrills, and a topdressing of moral rumination.
Illustration by Barry Blitt
Collaboration is a murky trade, and it covers quite a range. Whether you’re siding with the enemy in Nazi-occupied France or laying out the lyrics to “Edelweiss” so that Richard Rodgers can devise a tune to match, you’re a collaborator. But no joining of forces is more difficult to fathom than the partnership between two writers. Writing, like dying, is one of those things that should be done alone or not at all. In each case, loved ones may hover around and tender their support, but, in the end, it’s up to you. So, when two writers decide to merge, what do they actually do?
Well, I’ve heard rumors of novelist couples who produce alternate chapters: one for you, one for me. A tidy scheme for twin souls but otherwise, assuredly, a prelude to divorce. Also, how can you guarantee that the cracks won’t show between your styles? John Fletcher, a popular and gifted playwright, once hooked up with some old slacker named Shakespeare to bring us “Henry VIII,” which was first performed in 1613, and linguistic analysis can propose, scene by scene, who delivered which slices of the cake. (Fletcher, who liked to get by with a little help from his friends, later conjured a play with three other writers. I bet that was peaceful.) Even so, nobody is sure about the sequence of events—whether Fletcher rounded off what Shakespeare couldn’t be bothered to complete, or whether the play was genuinely conceived in perfect harmony, with one guy sitting on the other’s lap, their fingers interlaced around the quill.
All of which brings us to another famous William. Bill Clinton, who can write, has hooked up with James Patterson, who can’t, but whose works have sold more than three hundred and seventy-five million copies, most of them to happy and contented customers for whom good writing would only get in the way. This unlikely pact has resulted in “The President Is Missing” (Knopf and Little, Brown), which we must, not without reservations, describe as a thriller. Get a load of this: “The stun grenades detonate, producing a concussive blast of 180 decibels.” A hundred and eighty, mark you, and not a decibel less! If that isn’t thrilling, I can’t imagine what is.
The book itself is a concussive blast of five hundred and thirteen pages. Though not as massive as “My Life” (2004), Clinton’s autobiography, which was twice as long, it’s a welcome return to bulk after his slender offerings of recent years—“Giving: How Each of Us Can Save the World” (2007) and “Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy” (2011). Neither of these volumes, it is fair to say, was a thriller. Both contained plenty of sage advice but were scandalously short of car chases, eruptive fireballs, and missile-bearing helicopters, and that is where the new book has the edge: “The Viper arrives, firing another Hellfire and completely incinerating the attack boat.” The world is saved, not by giving, still less by economic strength, but by the efforts of one man. Guess who.
Jon Duncan is the President of the United States, “fifty years old and rusty.” The events in the novel are designed to put the shine back on. Duncan is, by his own account, “a war hero with rugged good looks and a sharp sense of humor,” not to mention a beguiling modesty. He served in Operation Desert Storm, in Iraq, where he was wounded. He is also a former governor of North Carolina. His wife died not long ago, and now it’s just him and his daughter: the exact situation, as it happens, that confronted Michael Douglas in “The American President,” Rob Reiner’s 1995 movie, a direct precursor of “The West Wing.” The President in that show, played by Martin Sheen, suffered from multiple sclerosis, and Duncan, too, has a medical burden, grave yet controllable, to bear: immune thrombocytopenia, which means that his blood won’t clot as it should, and which leaves him with bruising on the legs. His physician warns that he could have a stroke at any moment, especially if he is under stress.
Cue the stress. Duncan is facing possible impeachment ...
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/...and-james-pattersons-concussive-collaboration
Here's a few paragraphs from The New Yorker about "The President is Missing," by Willy the Slick, et al.:
Clinton’s unlikely collaboration with James Patterson yields mysteries, thrills, and a topdressing of moral rumination.
Illustration by Barry Blitt
Collaboration is a murky trade, and it covers quite a range. Whether you’re siding with the enemy in Nazi-occupied France or laying out the lyrics to “Edelweiss” so that Richard Rodgers can devise a tune to match, you’re a collaborator. But no joining of forces is more difficult to fathom than the partnership between two writers. Writing, like dying, is one of those things that should be done alone or not at all. In each case, loved ones may hover around and tender their support, but, in the end, it’s up to you. So, when two writers decide to merge, what do they actually do?
Well, I’ve heard rumors of novelist couples who produce alternate chapters: one for you, one for me. A tidy scheme for twin souls but otherwise, assuredly, a prelude to divorce. Also, how can you guarantee that the cracks won’t show between your styles? John Fletcher, a popular and gifted playwright, once hooked up with some old slacker named Shakespeare to bring us “Henry VIII,” which was first performed in 1613, and linguistic analysis can propose, scene by scene, who delivered which slices of the cake. (Fletcher, who liked to get by with a little help from his friends, later conjured a play with three other writers. I bet that was peaceful.) Even so, nobody is sure about the sequence of events—whether Fletcher rounded off what Shakespeare couldn’t be bothered to complete, or whether the play was genuinely conceived in perfect harmony, with one guy sitting on the other’s lap, their fingers interlaced around the quill.
All of which brings us to another famous William. Bill Clinton, who can write, has hooked up with James Patterson, who can’t, but whose works have sold more than three hundred and seventy-five million copies, most of them to happy and contented customers for whom good writing would only get in the way. This unlikely pact has resulted in “The President Is Missing” (Knopf and Little, Brown), which we must, not without reservations, describe as a thriller. Get a load of this: “The stun grenades detonate, producing a concussive blast of 180 decibels.” A hundred and eighty, mark you, and not a decibel less! If that isn’t thrilling, I can’t imagine what is.
The book itself is a concussive blast of five hundred and thirteen pages. Though not as massive as “My Life” (2004), Clinton’s autobiography, which was twice as long, it’s a welcome return to bulk after his slender offerings of recent years—“Giving: How Each of Us Can Save the World” (2007) and “Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy” (2011). Neither of these volumes, it is fair to say, was a thriller. Both contained plenty of sage advice but were scandalously short of car chases, eruptive fireballs, and missile-bearing helicopters, and that is where the new book has the edge: “The Viper arrives, firing another Hellfire and completely incinerating the attack boat.” The world is saved, not by giving, still less by economic strength, but by the efforts of one man. Guess who.
Jon Duncan is the President of the United States, “fifty years old and rusty.” The events in the novel are designed to put the shine back on. Duncan is, by his own account, “a war hero with rugged good looks and a sharp sense of humor,” not to mention a beguiling modesty. He served in Operation Desert Storm, in Iraq, where he was wounded. He is also a former governor of North Carolina. His wife died not long ago, and now it’s just him and his daughter: the exact situation, as it happens, that confronted Michael Douglas in “The American President,” Rob Reiner’s 1995 movie, a direct precursor of “The West Wing.” The President in that show, played by Martin Sheen, suffered from multiple sclerosis, and Duncan, too, has a medical burden, grave yet controllable, to bear: immune thrombocytopenia, which means that his blood won’t clot as it should, and which leaves him with bruising on the legs. His physician warns that he could have a stroke at any moment, especially if he is under stress.
Cue the stress. Duncan is facing possible impeachment ...
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/...and-james-pattersons-concussive-collaboration
