Why do the right people keep writing the wrong books? A few years ago Jonathan Winters, a comedian whose biography has been sought by publishers for several decades, put out a collection of short stories. This fall Bob Dylan will publish his … drawings. And right pow we have Marilyn Quayle-a fascinating woman for both who she is and the company she keeps-promoting a book that absolutely no one has been waiting for. “Embrace the Serpent,” which she wrote with her sister, Nancy T. Northcott, is a Ludlumesque thriller set largely in Cuba, a place where neither woman has ever been. You pick up this work of fiction hoping that Quayle and Northcott have created thinly veiled versions of the powerful people you always wondered about. Sorry. This is the kind of book in which the wee bit of Washington pillow talk has all the snap and sparkle of silent-movie titles: “But chemical warheads-what a dreadful thought. Surely it won’t come to that.”
The authors do have an interesting way of handling the decline of communism and the new world order. They pay such things a little lip service, then ignore them completely. The Russians in these pages smoke stinky cigarettes, love spying for it’s own sake and talk of controlling the world. The Arabs talk of controlling the Russians and are fond of shouting “Allah be praised!” The good Cubans are humble yet proud, the bad ones spit food when they speak. You might not be riveted but-unless you try to figure out what the title means-you’ll rarely be confused.
The action starts on page one’ no doubt so that the reader doesn’t have to wait, as one of the characters later must, with “Patent patience.” Anyway, what happens is, Fidel Castro drops dead while smoking a “physician-prohibited” cigar. That sets in motion an international power grab that, if it gets out of control, could bring about a nuclear holocaust. It does get out of the authors’ control, but nothing untoward happens, thanks to our hero, a conservative senator from Georgia named Bob Grant. Why, you may be wondering, is everyone so covetous of Cuba? The answer has something to do with drugs and “intelligence information,” two undeniably excellent political-thriller ingredients. Still, the significance of Cuba remains vague. As one character says, “We’re only ninety miles from that li’l ol’island, but gettin’news from there is like gettin’ sugar from a rattlesnake–dangerous if not downright impossible.”
The moral of this story seems to be that a certain kind of 1960s political conservatism is its own reward. Take, for example, Senator Grant, who, by the way, is an African-American. (We know this because soon after we meet him, he grins, “his straight teeth white in his black face.”) Grant doesn’t just have all the answers that the dimwitted Democratic president lacks; he has an incredibly happy 23-year marriage and the platonic devotion of his apparent one-woman staff, a widow whose husband was “shot by a druggie.” Grant also serves as a vessel for what may be Quayle’s “Washington insider” type thoughts. Does this excite you? If so, take a sample thought to calm yourself down: “Looking disengaged was forbidden in modern polities. Disengaged, indeed! Omnipresent television had become a stern dictator, even affecting language.” One can only wonder: how will omnipresent television affect the language in Quayle and Northcott’s next book? And, make no mistake, there will be another. These authors are drawn to their word processors like rattlesnakes to sugar.
