The Columnist
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品牌: Jeffrey Frank
基本信息出版社:Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 (2002年6月15日)丛书名:Harvest Book平装:240页正文语种:英语ISBN:0156011980条形码:9780156011983商品尺寸:20.6 x 13.8 x 1.7 cm商品重量:231 g品牌:Mariner BooksASIN:0156011980商品描述内容简介In Brandon Sladder, author Jeffrey Frank has created one of the most memorable rogues in contemporary fiction. A prominent Washington columnist, Sladder has known just about everyone of importance. He has spoken on intimate terms with world leaders, been a witness to enormous change, and expressed weighty opinions on important matters of state. When former President Bush encourages him to write his memoirs, Sladder believes that his life story could add much more than a footnote to our age and attempts to burnish his image for posterity. What emerges instead is the story of an irresistibly loathsome man and the misadventures that got him to the top. Self-important, social climbing, and dangerously oblivious, Brandon Sladder is the type of character everyone loves to hate. By turns hilarious and dismaying, The Columnist is a dead-on, elegantly written portrait of the media and politics of the second half of the twentieth century.媒体推荐Frank's debut is a curious blend of ribald, tongue-in-cheek narrative and political tell-all that winds up evoking an odd sense of nostalgia for a bygone era. Former President Bush remarks to pompous, amoral columnist Brandon Sladder that he ought to write a memoir and so Sladder does. Now in his 60s, Sladder has left a trail of sources, lovers, wives and erstwhile colleagues in his wake while climbing to the top of the newspaper heap. His adventures start in his hometown of Buffalo, where he gets his father fired from his job as an insurance salesman by using confidential information from his father's files to break a big story, then capitalizes on his newspaper boss's indiscretion to blackmail his way up the ranks. When the paper is sold, Sladder moves to Washington, D.C., where, before writing for a political magazine and then a major daily, he uses a prostitute to get dirt on local elected officials. Later, it's on to the world of TV and roundtable reporter shows, but the unctuous Sladder's personal life is a mess a merry-go-round of affairs, marriage for money and ill-advised alliances with the constants being his relentless ambition and a remarkable ability to justify his own heinous behavior. Frank's smooth, fast-moving and often hilarious prose makes this a quick read, although much of the humor is dark, and the repulsive narrator makes the journey a bit thorny. The political material is enlightening and well delivered, as Sladder reveals the way things work within the Beltway in the postwar era. The result is a witty, racy and fast-moving novel that remains compelling despite its odious protagonist. Agent, Tina Bennett. (June)Forecast: Frank's current job as a New Yorker senior editor will help generate buzz, as will speculation as to which (if any) real columnist his narrator might be based on. (Publishers Weekly)The innocuous, limp title is the single failure of this searingly satiric portrait of the hyperactive Washington, DC, news scene. Frank, onetime staff member of the Washington Post and its defunct rival, the Washington Star, and currently a senior editor for The New Yorker, has etched with acidic precision the story of Brandon Sladder, a mock maven who latched onto a journalism career with a bit of handy blackmail. Over a period of 40 years or so, this blot trashes two wives, two children, and a multitude of colleagues yet is never perceived as the one rotten apple spoiling the bushel. With pious quotes from Bartlett's, he whines about the trials of his successful life and claims as his confidante any famous person who ever shared an elevator with him. This book will surely be a hit in all the news capitals as insiders try to identify the true names masked behind the socialites, politicos, and other characters. Frank's mudslinging hits a media truth or two, but he plays it for laughs, and so will savvy readers in most public libraries. Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress --(Library Journal)
