To write a first-rate novel requires serious dedication, frequently years devoted to craft - reading widely, honing language, developing an ear for dialogue, a feel for a story's atmosphere, arc of action, subtlety, nuance and, of course, creating fully developed characters. It ain't easy, just ask any accomplished novelist.
What happens when someone lacking the necessary skills and background decides to write a novel to trot out their views on politics? Well, you get a a piece of superficial crap like Embrace the Serpent.
Here's one of the funniest book reviews I've come across, written by a much accomplished writer - Roy Blount, Jr..
EMBRACE THE SERPENT by Marilyn T. Quayle and Nancy T. Northcott
The question people keep asking me is, "Did she really write it?"
I don't know why they think I would know. Perhaps because -- to clear away what may strike some as a Pirandelloesque aspect of this review -- Marilyn T. Quayle is an offstage but pivotal character in a novel I wrote. But this is not a review of that character's novel, because that Marilyn Quayle is imaginary, and also imaginative.
This Marilyn Quayle is the wife of the Vice President of the United States. With her sister, Nancy T. Northcott, she has written "Embrace the Serpent," which is presented as a thriller but isn't one, if thrillers may be expected to have semi-rounded characters, surprising twists, nice turns of phrase and, hey, thrills.
Plot, neatly worked out, "Embrace the Serpent" has. Also enough insider detail about Senate facilities and intelligence files and so on to convince the reader that at least one of the authors has in fact enjoyed close access to at least one high-placed Government official.
But don't be misled by the title. There is no sex, except for two quick kisses that the characters don't really have time for and occasional withering allusions to adultery among Democrats. I would love to read an "Embrace the Serpent" by Mrs. Quayle and her sister that lived up to its title. In fact, I would like to write one. But this is not it. This is an "Embrace the Serpent" whose most riveting passage is "With a mental wrench, he reverted to the conundrum of Cuba."
What this is is a best-case scenario, assuming you are a conservative Republican, of what would happen if Fidel Castro dropped dead and the President of the United States were a soft-headed Democrat.
I am myself, by nature, more nearly a soft-headed Democrat than a conservative Republican. But I have taken measured pleasure in thrillers by other notable patriotically correct writers: Tom Clancy, E. Howard Hunt and William F. Buckley Jr. If this review be narrowly partisan, it is surely, surely, less so than this novel.
The Democrats and their news media sympathizers in the novel are not only geopolitically naive and spendthrift on everything but defense; they are also humorless snobs, unfaithful spouses and bad parents who are preoccupied by spin control. The Republicans are clear-thinking, principled -- virtually apolitical, really -- and gloriously familial except where widowed because a spouse was "shot by a druggie."
None of these perfect examples, nor any of the freedom-loving Cubans (backed by the conservatives), nor any of the totalitarian Cubans (backed by the Russians, by a B.C.C.I.-like cabal that is plotting to restore the Persian Empire and by, of course, the liberals) have much texture. They might all, base and noble, men and women, be Dan Quayle in various get-ups.
The President, never named, is the first Democratic one "in a decade," which would suggest (hmmm) that he was elected in 1992. He is prejudiced against soldiers and black people. The American hero is a conservative Republican Senator from Georgia, a retired Navy man who is black. He might almost be the international politics of the North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms embodied in his 1990 Democratic opponent, Harvey Gantt. This seems a bit much.
This Senator, named (ironically?) Bob Grant, reflects upon a colleague from across the aisle: "Grant had trouble reconciling Westlake's adherence to the liberal agenda with his affectionate personality, almost as if he didn't really understand the implications of his votes. Grant had often wondered if he just wasn't bright, but even that didn't explain everything."
What does explain a great deal is subversion throughout a United States intelligence system "emasculated" by Congressional micromanagement. Conservatives have their own intelligence sources (by definition the only reliable ones), which they cannot share with the Democrats for fear of compromise. The most deeply implanted foreign agent is an American operative of the shadowy "Ivy Halls network," which may or may not -- no explicit indication is given -- implicate Yale.
The press is summed up as follows: "Gaining an advantage -- the unwritten code of the journalist." If that may not be read as projection, I don't know what may.
The prose is mostly flat, but sometimes cliche bleeds out into something distinctly, or rather indistinctly, odd:
"With the outdoor lights habitually broken, the area was shrouded with dark shadows against an even darker night."
"Now she lived for today, not tomorrow or even this afternoon and certainly not for yesterday."
Strong language, in every sense, is embraced fleetingly and uncertainly. Once the word "hornswoggle" is used as an exclamation. I believe the authors had in mind "hogwash."
And here, at last, is my answer to the question people keep asking me:
I am afraid that she, or rather they, did.
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