This is overheard. [applause]. Evan thomas mallon, welcome. Thomas thanks for having me. Evan congratulations on this thomas thank you. Evan brand new book. Why reagan . Why the Reagan Administration as a setting for a novel . What propelled you to have the book be set there and then . Thomas i seem to be visiting republican president s at their lowest points. Evan you have a thing. You have a thing for republican president s kind of on the outs, or heading there. Thomas the previous book to this one was watergate. And this shows reagan in 86, which is arguably the low point in his presidency. Evan we have irancontra. We have really the coming apart of a lot of personnel things within the white house. Thomas democrats retake the senate. Evan democrats retake the senate. Thomas reykjavik, the summit. Today theres a Strong School of thought that argues that reykjavik was what won the cold war. Evan right. Thomas but at the time its perceived of something of a fiasco, something that just adds to reagans troubles. Evan right. Thomas and so its a bad year. And the country is experiencing this panoply of new social ills from crack to homelessness to aids and the administration seems somewhat out of gas. The president is aging. Evan right. Thomas and hes a bit beset. But in particular, reagan himself i mean, whether you liked him or disliked him, it was a very consequential presidency. It was a big presidency, transformative. Evan well, in fact, we sit here today, you and i, a day before the republican president ial debate about the reagan library. This man has been canonized, deified. Ronald reagan is the gold standard, the thing everybody running for office on the republican side, at least, aspires to. Thomas yeah. Evan so as a character, couldnt really ask for a better character. Thomas also because such an odd life history, starting out in the movies, winding up in the white house. Evan right. Thomas and also im not the first person to regard reagan as being curiously remote. Evan right. Thomas somewhat mysterious. He has defeated some biographers. I think he had Edmund Morris tearing his hair out. I mean, Edmund Morris resorted to a little bit of fictionalization. Im glad he didnt do a whole novel. Evan right. Thomas but in dutch, which is a very interesting book but, to say the least, an odd one. Evan right. Thomas because he could not grasp reagan. He was not available. And i felt some of that as i started to write the book. Reagan is never in this book, except for the very end in an epilogue. Hes never seen from the inside out. You know, whats called a point of view character in the creative writing biz. Hes always seen from the outside. Sort of the way gore vidal presents lincoln. Never goes inside him. I dont know what it says about me, but i never in the previous book, when i was writing watergate, i never felt uncomfortable being inside Richard Nixon. It may not say the best thing about my character but i could relate to him in a way. Evan yeah. Harder to access right. Thomas absolutely. Didnt attempt it. I think it had a lot to do with the way the administration operated. Everybody in any organization always wants to figure out what the boss is like, how to please the boss, etc. But he was so mysterious, so opaque to so many people that i think a great deal more of his subordinates energy went into that sort of thing than is evan so youre not the first to try to crack this code, as you point out, outside or inside the reagan circle. Thomas right. Evan right. This is not a work of fact. Its really a work of fiction. Its historical fiction. There are a lot of reallife events and real life its a little bit of a literary turducken, right . Its fact wrapped in fiction wrapped in fact. Its very hard to actually read this book, having lived those years and know what is fact and what is not. Youve succeeded, i suppose, in crafting a story that seems impenetrable with, you know thomas i would say that with the kind of fiction i write that when years go by after ive written a book evan yeah. Thomas somebody will ask me about a detail, was that made up or was that factual . And i have to go back to my notes. Evan you, yourself dont actually know. Thomas its a fairly small thing, you know i wont know. I dont write what is called alternate history fiction, which is a kind of genre fiction within historical fiction. Those are those books in which, you know, the south wins the civil war. Evan right. Thomas things like that. Evan fan fiction. Thomas i stick to what vidal would call the agreed upon facts. But try to show what might have had happened in addition to what we already know. Not instead of what, but in addition to and in private. Evan why . A fair question to ask, i hope, would be why . So much of whats in this book, so much of what was in watergate are the facts. The embellishments, or the additional elements, characters, and plot moments are not overwhelming relative to the rest of the work. Thomas right. Evan you kind of wonder, well why not just write the thing straight . Why not just write it as straight fact . Thomas theres an intimacy, i think, that you can try to achieve in historical fiction that you cant get even in wellwritten biography. I mean, at a certain point a biographer will have to say at this point it is not unreasonable to suppose that nixon might have thought evan right. Thomas if youre a novelist you just go ahead and evan so as a biographer, youre having to project often anyway in places where the story doesnt necessarily line out the way thomas right. Evan you want. And so youre just basically acknowledging that fully and saying im just going to insert thomas right. And historical fiction is always fiction and never history. The noun always trumps the adjective. Evan yeah. Thomas i said that the other weekend and theyre like, can we still use trump as a verb . [laughter]. Evan oh, oh, well get to him. As with all television programs, were obligated to mention him within about 15 minutes. Well get to him. I promise. Thomas but i do think that its very dangerous to read i mean, sometimes people will come up to me and theyll say, you know, i learned so much history from your book. And its a wellintentioned remark. But i always say, careful. Evan yeah, but how much of this book but i take some issue with that. How much of this book, would you say, is fictionalized . A fictionalized version of the accounts. I read it and my thought was, really the majority of it is actually based in fact. Thomas well, in terms of where people were, what they did, what they did publicly, but what they thought and what they said privately evan thats you. Thomas thats the bulk of the novel and thats the reason for doing fiction. Evan right. Thomas and i think it allows readers to speculate about the personalities, the characters of historical figures in a way that scrupulous biography has to make them refrain from doing. Evan i suppose i could ask you why not go in the entire opposite direction and just make the whole thing fiction and dont have the person be called Ronald Reagan or nancy reagan or april thomas yeah. Evan or christopher hitchens, as in the case of this book or some of the other people. But clearly you think the marriage of fact and fiction presents a compelling narrative. Thomas i mean, thats what all novelists do. If you talk about writers who set their books in contemporary times. Evan yeah. Thomas and lets say its a story of a troubled marriage or this, that, and the other thing. I dont think any character in fiction has ever been created out of whole cloth. Everybody is somebodys motherinlaw. Everybody is a combination of two cousins evan right. Thomas that a writer had. Whatever. So in a sense youre operating with a little bit less sleight of hand evan this is more honest. Thomas than literary fiction. Yes. Evan just acknowledge what it is. I mentioned christopher hitchens. You all were friends, the late christopher hitchens. Thomas yes. Evan great author. He appears as a character in this book. Thomas yes. Evan can you talk about the decision to include him . In some ways he sort of stands in for you, do you think . He offers commentary on events in the book. Thomas i wanted somebody who could fill the job that in watergate had been done by alice rooseveltlongworth. Teddy roosevelts 90yearold daughter who was still alive during watergate. Very sharp tongued, very smart. Evan right. Say whatever she thought. Thomas and i wanted that figure. And i thought i was going to go for somebody very old with this. And then suddenly hitchens was on my mind very much as i was starting the book. Christopher died in december of 2011. Evan yeah. Thomas i was starting to write this book right around that time. And it suddenly occurred to me, i didnt know him in this period. He was in his mid 30s, not too long in america, was writing mostly for political magazines. Like the nation hadnt moved on to vanity fair. Evan his politics were different then than they were in his later years. Thomas in most respects. I mean, he was definitely, by the time george w. Bush was in the white house, an apostate when it came to Something Like the iraq war. He lost and infuriated a lot of friends over that. But he remained very much a marxist evan yeah. Thomas in essence, you know, until he died. I mean, i used to be around him. And i would see these Young Conservatives around him who were thrilled to have him on their side supporting bush during the iraq war. And, you know, they had this blue chip intellectual sticking up for their side. And i always used to think, just wait. Give this five minutes. And within five minutes, you know i used to call this the Mother Teresa moment. He would then Start Talking about atheism and evan and infuriate the very people who thought they found a kindred spirit. Thomas so he remained very much himself in other political respects. Evan right. But of course he comes across as the other characters youve invented in this book come across. He comes across as quite real. Thomas i hope so. Evan yeah. Thomas and he i mean, there are even a couple of lines that, you know, i remember him saying in life, expressions he had evan yep. Thomas that i wound up having him deploy, you know, in the course of this novel. He was tremendously witty and a fierce debater. And because he was so good at debate i remember when he debated a rabbi one time about the existence of god. And the rabbi said to him, and mr. Hitchens, i didnt interrupt you. And hitchens turns to him and says, youre not quick enough. [laughter]. Thomas but because he was so good at that, i think that one thing a lot of people did not know about him was how gentle he could be. Evan yeah. Thomas christopher was a lovely, lovely man. Evan right. Thomas he was fantastic company. Evan well, its great to have him in this book. So this book, as you said, preceded, you mentioned the watergate book, which was a couple years back. Again, historical fiction set in watergate. A lot of events that we all remember, but also some fictional elements added in. You wrote a book called Dewey Defeats Truman some years ago thats sort of set at that very Pivotal Moment in 20th century history. Henry and clara, which was a book published more than 20 years ago as we sit here, was about the couple that was in the box at fords theatre on the night that president lincoln was assassinated. Something about presidencies and the fictionalizing of real events. What is it . Youre obsessed with politics or the presidency . Is there something that keeps bringing you back to this material . Thomas i liked politics from a very early age. I mean, my first real political memory is the kennedynixon election of 1960. I turned 9 the week of the election and i wore a nixon button to school. We werent very good catholics. Both of my parents were for nixon. But i loved the drama of the cold war. There was something thrilling and macabre about growing up during it. And i did, at an early age, devour these allen drury novels and, you know, the big political books of the day. But i think that these things always gripped me and once i turned to fiction with these things, its very hard, i found, to go back to nonfiction. This gets to the whole question of, you know, why historical fiction, what is it . Evan right. Thomas i wrote a little book of nonfiction about 12, 13 years ago called mrs. Paines garage. Evan right. About the kennedy assassination. Thomas yes. Evan a great book. Thomas thank you very much. A woman named ruth paine, a quaker woman who lived in irving, outside dallas. Evan yeah. Thomas who quite innocently became enmeshed in this because she had helped out the oswalds, lee and marina oswald, his russian wife, in the months before the assassination. And ruth knew as much about oswalds movements and moods as anybody. And you can imagine what this did to her life. She was in her early 30s at the time it happened. And i asked her 40 years later if she would reconstruct this and she did after a great deal of hesitation and reluctance. I put her through hours and hours of interviews. But as a writer, having written fiction about calamitous events, like the lincoln assassination, i began to find it a kind of agony. Because i couldnt have her cross the room in a scene unless i had some kind of evidence evan facts are inconvenient and burdensome. Thomas and i just, you know, i wanted to describe what she was wearing and make it up the way i do as a novelist. Evan well, actually thats the best justification ive heard so far for the fictional element to these books. Thomas and i think one reason evan it allows you to control the narrative much more than you would if you were faithful to the facts. Thomas and i think one reason ruth hesitated so much was that she knew i was a novelist and for all that i said, you know, im going to write nonfiction here, i think that she was properly wary. Evan she didnt entirely trust you. Thomas no. And nobody should trust a novelist. But she had made such an earnest effort to tell the literal truth about the assassination evan right. Thomas you know, to the authorities, to the investigating people that she did not want to blur that. Evan right. Thomas and so, you know, i assured her that i wouldnt be doing that. Evan so the research you did on that book is comparable, presumably, to research you would do in advance of one of these books, even though its a novel. Obviously so much goes into the construction of it based on facts that youre researching a book like this as if youre writing nonfiction. Thomas yes. Theres a certain kind of immersion that you have to do. And, i mean, you know this as an editor. You know, writers always want more time. They want a bigger budget. Can i stay here an extra couple of weeks evan right. Thomas so i can really soak it all up. And with historical fiction, what i generally tell people that the best thing you can do is it sounds odd, since it is historical fiction, but eliminate history. And what i mean by that is eliminate the middle man. Dont go to histories of the time youre writing about. Go to the newspaper. Go to memoirs, go to primary sources for how people actually spoke. How they actually thought. Even if its only 30 years ago, its different. Evan right. Thomas and whether its just a particular word or a whole style of thinking. Evan well, the benefit of writing a book set in the mid 80s versus a book set at the time that lincoln was assassinated is the material was so much more readily available thomas yes. Evan one imagines, for a book like this. Thomas yes. Evan lets stay with reagan for a second. So i said earlier how reagan had been deified and canonized, and reagan is almost a third rail in politics. You cant criticize reagan. The reality is Ronald Reagan would have a hard time getting through a republican primary today. Thomas yes. Evan the Ronald Reagan of myth and image and romance is actually out of sync with the reality of Ronald Reagan, given the way politics has pivoted. I find him to be doubly fascinating, actually, to go back and think about him in this period. Reagan has become this almost unrecognizable guy. Thomas i, on the whole, am an admirer of Ronald Reagan. I do think he had a tremendous amount to do with ending the cold war. That is no small thing to do with a presidency. I mean, so many presidencies since then wind up looking small compared to this. Evan small, right. Thomas but the rushmoreization of reagan i find slightly repellant. And i like to think that he would too. There were many things about the Reagan Administration that were difficult for me and that i did not agree with. I was evan too conservative for your taste . Thomas ive never been a social conservative. Evan you selfdescribe as a libertarian republican. Thomas yes. And i was a gay man living through the 80s, waiting for the president to say the word aids. You know, and it was a dark, dark time in many ways. And i was always caught between two fires. Because i would argue with my very politicized gay friends, you know, who would romance fidel castro. And i would say, oh my god. You know, go, you know, dress up like Carmen Miranda on friday night and youre going to be in a labor camp on monday morning. Please. And i was all for reagan pushing on the soviet union. And i think he did a tremendous amount for human freedom. But he had limitations and he had flaws and missteps and this strange reverence for him is something that i dont find palatable. And something that any novelist writing about history i mean, the word reverential, if you apply it to a novel, you know its going to be an awful book. Evan well you cant fall in love with your character, right. Thomas and on the other hand you have to be, i think, open enough to people, Richard Nixon included, to try to see things as they might have seen them, to try to have a certain sympathy. This too is, i think, politics is so awful right now. Everybody is so dug in. Everybody is screaming at one another. You know, red versus blue. That one thing i do think that historical fiction allows people to do is soften themselves a little bit and open their sensibilities, open their imaginations, open their sympathies to the other side. Whereas if two people are arguing about Ronald Reagan, theyre very quickly going to get dug in. Evan right. Thomas reagan was awful. Reagan was great. Whereas the necessary fuzziness of fiction, the ambiguities of it, i think they might be a good thing for people, politically. Evan yeah. Thomas because they do expand you. I think that the political rhetoric right now is very sterile. Both parties have eaten their minority wings. And by minority i mean, you know, the liberal wing of the republican party. Evan moderate wing. Thomas the conservative wing or moderate wing of the democratic party. You know, you cant be Joe Lieberman in the democratic party. You cant be nelson rockefeller. Evan right. Well, you say politics has gotten to be so terrible. If youre in the journalism business these days, come on, its like christmas every day. [laughter]. Evan and in thinking about Ronald Reagan in the context of this book, a guy who was really an entertainer, who improbably became president , its only a short walk to a guy who was on the apprentice becoming president , right . Isnt there a Straight Line from Ronald Reagan to donald trump . [laughter]. Thomas maybe if youre a lemming trying to run off a cliff. I think trump, in many ways, is the antireagan. Evan hows that . Thomas i think he is a person of very few fixed political beliefs. Reagans beliefs did evolve and he did know how to compromise. But the things that there were certain verities that he held very firmly to. And i also think he was a gentlemen. And thats not a word evan you dont think donalds not really . You dont think donald trump is a gentlemen . Thomas i mean, im really aghast at the little pout and the, you know, my numbers are huge. I mean, who can listen to this for very long . I am the worst prognosticator, politically, on the planet. Evan right. Thomas so, you know, so i fear what im about to say, because the opposite will come true. I mean, i think that this has got to evan at some point thomas give at some point, before january. Evan although weve been saying this for months. Well the good news is if it does come to pass and he becomes president , imagine the historical fictions set in the trump administration. [laughter]. Thomas well, you know, somebody asked me that the other day, are you going to do a trump novel if he makes it all the way . And i said this is already a novel. Evan yeah, it is. Thomas i dont think he could do it. You would be painting the lily. Evan right. Its a black comedy. Right. It is. So until the trump novel goes into production, you actually are getting ready to write yet another novel set in yet another republican administration, that of george w. Bush. Thomas i am. Evan youll follow up this book with that book. Thomas i mean, once again im throwing the incumbent president incumbent in the book into the lowest point in his political fortunes. Sort of 05, 06. Evan postkatrina or maybe midkatrina, right, yep. Thomas katrina. The insurgency in iraq. The second term seems to be unraveling. Evan isnt that when it always unravels . Nixon, reagan, bush. Thomas second terms, you know evan obama, in that respect, has been an outlier, right . Obamas second term has turned out to be, for him, pretty good thomas yeah. Evan right . Thomas and with reagan, i mean, you know, it nearly unravels. I mean, the irancontra nearly does him in. Evan very nearly does him in. Thomas and that was a point at which, i think, a number of things came together to save him. One was his wife evan right. Thomas who insisted that he get rid of don regan, who was not serving him very well as chief of staff. And the other was the nature of the scandal. I think what really helped reagan was the contra part of irancontra. If it had just been arms for hostages, it would, in some ways, have been worse. But the fact that the profits went to fund the contras. Evan freedom fighters. Thomas which made it a much bigger, bigger scandal. Nonetheless, in the way history will look at it is, well, this was still a skirmish within the big cold war. Evan correct. Thomas it was still us versus the soviet union. Evan right. Thomas and ultimately, even if that was a bad piece of strategy, a bad initiative, it was part of a war that he won. And i think that that was very helpful to him. And the other thing that i think saved him, finally, was his fabled charm. He finally evan right. Thomas at the urging of Richard Nixon, get out there and apologize. Put the damn thing behind you. They talked quite a lot throughout reagans presidency. And reagan does apologize. And he says, i didnt think i was selling arms for hostages. But the facts tell me i probably was. [laughter]. Thomas it was so guileless that people were willing to get past it. Evan so what is the comparable narrative tension in the bush book, as youre beginning to think about it . Thomas too early for me to tell. Evan too early, yeah. Thomas and certainly too early for history to tell. You know, im not really certain exactly how thats all going to play out. But i think an interesting complicated man. Bill clinton was complicated but hes not mysterious to me. You know, we always talked about bill clintons being compartmentalized. Evan right. Thomas and there are a lot of compartments and that makes for complexity, but i think hes more transparent, in some ways, as a character, than george w. Bush is, necessarily, and certainly than reagan. Evan did you ever think about doing a clinton book . I mean, it sounds like youve also decided just to stick with, you know, nixon, reagan, bush. Thomas it seems as if i have a franchise here. Evan no carter, no clinton. Thomas yeah. Evan why do you hate democrats . [laughter]. Thomas i guys, and this is the part of me that liked reagan. I dont want to relive the carter administration. At all. On any terms. Imaginative or otherwise. I mean, i think there are fascinating democratic president s to write about. I mean, the incumbent it probably wont be me, but the discipline of barack obama. Theres a kind of tautness to him. Evan yep. Low highs, high lows, you know. Thomas hes going to be very good to some novelist. And the type of president who is also a writer will be interesting, i think. Evan so just not you. To somebody else. Thomas not me. I think ive got a couple of more of these in me. Evan so bush and then trump, weve decided that, right . [laughter]. Evan okay. Very good. Thomas mallon, wonderful to get to sit with you and talk about this. Congratulations on the book. Thomas thank you so much. Evan wish you much success. Thomas mallon. Thank you very much. [applause]. Evan wed love to have you join us in the studio. Visit our website at klru. Org overheard to find invitations to interviews, q as with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes. Thomas in reagans diary, on the trip he said, got some when he goes to the first banquet. Got some great advice from dick nixon on the china trip, and we took it. When the platters of food came by, he told us, dont ask what it is, just take it and swallow it. [laughter]. Funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by mfi foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. Also by hillco partners, a texas Government Affairs consultancy. And by the Alice Kleberg reynolds foundation. n . nosnc