Advise and Consent (105 page)

Memorandum on
Advise and Consent

Prepared by Allen Drury on sending pertinent papers to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. March 18–19, 1961

HISTORY OF THE NOVEL

The idea of a novel on Washington politics and the United States Government began to stir in my mind sometime toward 1950, after I had been covering the Hill, for United Press and
Pathfinder Magazine
, since November of 1943. I had already kept a day-by-day diary of the Senate during the first couple of years that I covered it (this Diary appears elsewhere in the Archive), and some of the themes later expanded fictionally first appear there.

My reasons for writing A & C were many; among the principal was a desire to show people that this was how their government worked, that it had great strengths and great weaknesses, and that although the weaknesses sometimes seemed to predominate the strengths usually won out. I also wanted to show that their legislators are very human people as subject to the ills and uncertainties of human flesh as all the rest of us. I also had certain thoughts on foreign policy in the period of crisis through which the U.S. was passing vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, and, of course, is still passing. This theme continues--all of these themes continue, as a matter of fact, in the subsequent volumes of the
Advise and Consent
tetralogy:
A Shade of Difference
,
Capable of Honor
, and
Preserve and Protect
. This tetralogy became definite in my own mind, after many preliminary thoughts, in February of 1960 and was publicized shortly thereafter as a plan of work.

Because I said in my speech to the National Press Club on August 18, 1959 (see elsewhere) that I wanted to show things as they were, to say, “This is how it is,” many colleagues and critics more hasty than perceptive assumed that by this I meant only this is how it is in Washington. Of course, like any novelist a still more basic aim was to record the this is how it is of human living—this is how people are, whether they be in government or elsewhere. A judgment of A & C on that basis has not yet been made, and I expect it may be some years before it is.

So, then: In 1950 I wrote the first two chapters of the novel. I then laid them aside, except for casual notes and jottings, for several years. From time to time, like all newspapermen, I told myself that I really must get at it, but it was only after a sequence of events that I finally did so in the fall of 1957.

The first contributory factor was a long period, the better part of four years before it was finally cleared up, of increasingly severe illness having such symptoms as sudden dizziness, continuing respiratory infection, indigestion, diarrhea, etc. At the peak of this, which reached a point eventually where I was in almost constant pain and had lost some fifteen pounds, I made a little promise to the Lord that if I came through all right, I would finish at least one of the several embryo novels that I had been nursing along for years. Because I had the two chapters of A & C done, that seemed the logical one to continue with, assuming my health eventually improved. By a series of fortunate chances I came into the hands of Dr. Harry Carlton and Dr. V. John Murgolo of Washington, who correctly diagnosed the ailment as a combination of streptococcus, hemolytic pathogenic staphylococcus and allergies to dust and mold, complicated by a deviated septum which had the effect of backing all this infection up into my sinuses and ears, thereby causing the dizziness and starting a general chain reaction throughout my system. An operation on the septum, a series of shots to relieve the staph, strep and allergy symptoms, and by summer of 1957 I was back in reasonably good health, which of course continued to improve until I once again, on a rising curve of about two years, came back into general excellent health, which I now enjoy.

I list these clinical details only because a promise to the Lord, made at a time when I was beginning to wonder in some desperation whether I ever would know good health again, really was a basic moving element in getting me started on A & C.

Therefore, by mid-summer of 1957 I was ready to start serious work. At just about that time Evelyn Petersen Metzger, an old friend from
Pathfinder
days, called to ask if I would like to meet Ken McCormick, editor in chief of Doubleday & Co., for which she was the acting as Washington scout. I figured nothing ventured, nothing gained, and also, nothing to lose by making contacts in the publishing field, so we met, had a pleasant chat, and I told him of the Senate diary,
What the Hell, They’re Human
(see Archive), and my ideas for a Washington novel. He asked to see the first two chapters of A & C and the diary; was polite but uninterested in the diary, largely because of the time element—it concerned the last couple of years of World War II in Washington, ’43-’45, and as a publisher he was bothered by the time element, etc.; but expressed real interest in the novel and urged me to go ahead with it. He felt that the second chapter was too full of names, and in time I took out a few, one of the very few concessions I made to the publisher in this novel. The second chapter still bothered him, still does, and many readers have complained that it was slow. Others have said they loved it. One learns in publishing a novel that every critic is balanced by a fan, and that therefore one can only write what seems best to one and let nature take its course. Providing one has a firm enough conception of what one wanted to do, oneself, and enough faith to go ahead with it, regardless. I do.

Under the spur of my own determination and Ken’s lively interest—he offered me an advance of $500 and a contract on the strength of the first two chapters, but I turned it down because I knew it would be a long book and some native caution, compounded by a newspaperman’s caution, made me leery of signing on any dotted lines until I was really sure I could carry it through. I went home and in late September or early October of 1957 began steady writing. I soon found that I was falling into what is apparently my personal writing pattern, to write form about 9 a.m. to noon or 1 p.m. on most days (sometimes, of course into afternoon or evening if things really get rolling well, but normally the pattern as stated), at a clip of about 1,500 words a day. At this pace I had finished the first section of
Advise and Consent
,
Bob Munson’s Book,
247 mss. pages, by the end of the year and on January 1, 1958 sent it to Ken. He immediately offered me an advance of $2,500 and a contract, and being by then sure that the momentum could carry me forward, I signed. I wrote steadily until mid-November of 1958, at which time I was able to send Ken a wire that I had reached those magic words “The End.”

There then began a long siege to get me to cut the novel. Ken called in great excitement one day that he had had some weekend visitor from Connecticut, whose identity he has refused to tell me to this day, who was such an expert that I simply had to listen when he proposed cuts. Ken sent me some samples of them: the net effect would have been to remove everything favorable to the Senate and the American government and also everything in the slightest critical of some of the phonier intellectual fads and freaks of the current day. I said the hell with that, and since the author always has the last word providing a publisher really wants his book, my decision stood.

The novel was then taken by the
Readers Digest
Condensed Book Club. (All of these events occurred before publication, while the novel was either in manuscript or proofs.) The next excited call came from Ken to the effect that the Book of the Month Club would take it, subject to cuts. The cuts would total 150 to 200 pages, and I blew up. Nonetheless at this request I went down to Southern Pines, NC to see J.P. Marquand, one of the Book of the Month Club judges, who wintered there.

Mr. Marquand, then in his late sixties and within about a year of his death, proved to be a delightful soul, and we had a delightful day, largely because he was really on my side and his heart was not in the task allotted him by the Book of the Month Club. “I think you ought to cut a little bit here,” he’d say, and “a little bit there, and—no God damn it! Don’t let us hold a gun to your head? Do what you think is right for your book!” We had a most enjoyable day, and at the end of it, so I heard from Ken in a couple of days, he turned in a “completely unsatisfactory report” to Harry Sherman, president of the club. (“Why, God damn it, do you know what we’ve just selected? A story about a little girl in love with: a lion.” “Why,” I said, “Now, God damn it, Harry, this is a lot of God damned nonsense.” Harry said, “Bernardine likes it.” Bernardine was Mrs. Sherman. I found my talk with Mr. Marquand an interesting revelation of the inner workings of the BMOC.)

At any rate, the next man to be loosed upon me was the great Clifton Fadiman, who happened to be married to Annalee Whitmore, who was managing editor and everybody’s sweetheart when I first came on
The Stanford Daily
as a cub reporter in 1935. After a brief old-school chat with Annalee, her husband came on the phone. “Now,” he said, “we don’t want to bring pressure to bear upon you by dangling $40,000 in front of your eyes—” “Oh, you’re not,” I said cheerfully and I think he thought I didn’t mean it.

His suggestions were vague—“The newspapermen are good, but you ought to cut, there’s too much of them. The dialogue is good, but there’s too much of it. Maybe it’s just because I don’t like children in books, but I think that little girl (Pidge) ought to come out of there.” And so on. Our conversation concluded politely with the suggestion that I write a letter on these points for the Book of the Month Club to consider at its next meeting, which I believe was May, 1959.

I did so (see Archives), yielding one one-sixteenth of an inch on one one-hundredth of the points he had made, and concluding that the best I could promise was to go over the manuscript carefully in galley, and if I conscientiously could, to make cuts. But, I would make no promises, and if the Book of the Month Club wished to take it on that basis, fine, if not, goodbye and God bless you. The next thing I knew, about a week later, was that Ken was calling joyfully to cry, Congratulations! The Club had taken it, I did not make the cuts they has wanted. Ken told me later that your letter was not very well received over there. I told him angrily that I couldn’t care less, and that I would always resent the arrogant and unconscionable pressures applied to a beginning novelist by the Book of the Month Club, and only thanked God that I had the character to withstand such vicious and inexcusable tactics.

The novel was published Aug. 11, 1959, on the heels of the Senate battle over the confirmation of Admiral Lewis Strauss to be Secretary of Commerce. I covered this for
The New York Times
, and have had naïve souls ask me since if I hadn’t been embarrassed by the fact that the Strauss case came along just before the book was published, and that you had to cover it. I said no, nothing could have been more ideal from the standpoint of publicity for the book a fact perceived by Senator Clinton P. Anderson of New Mexico, who led the successful fight to stop Strauss. I called him up the day after the vote to get a post-mortem story for
The Times
on how it was done. Well, good morning, Champ, I began. All I’ve been doing is promoting your damned book, he shot back.

The book was very favorably received by the overwhelming majority of critics, and its publishing history, culminating in the 1960 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, is a matter of record. It was also very favorably received in the United States Senate and in Washington generally (see letters from Senators in archive).

In the last week of August, 1959 when I was in San Francisco with my parents on a promotion tour for the book. Robert Fryer of the producing firm of Fryer and Carr, flew up from L.A. to see me. His firm wanted to buy the dramatic production rights for a Broadway play. After the sort of negotiations dear to Lawyers and Agents, this was finally worked out, and very shortly Otto Preminger purchased the movie and dramatic rights to a movie to be released sometime after June of 1962.

The selection of a playwright was left largely up to me by the producers. At the producers behest I talked to several candidates, including Elmer Ride, Joseph Kramm, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, etc. (Max Gordon the producer also talked to me prior to signing with Fryer & Carr: David Merrick the producer made a date for coffee one morning at the Plaza Hotel in New York and told me, You know, of course, Mr. Drury, that I don’t often come to meet authors like this. Usually they come to see me. But I liked the Fryer & Carr approach, and so decided to take their bid.)

Midway in the process of selecting a playwright, I wrote to William Gibson, whose book,
The Seesaw Log
, which I had read about the time of my own troubles with the Book of the Month Club, had impressed me. He wrote back that he would not have time to do the dramatization himself, but if he were in my place would not select a playwright until he had talked to a Loring Mandel, whom he did not know but who had written the two best things I have seen on television in the past year. I put in a call at once to Loring at his home in Huntington, Long Island; we had a series of four lengthy meetings, the last occurring, quite fittingly, in the Senators Reading Room right off the chamber one afternoon when they were out of session and I wanted to find a quiet place for us to talk, and in due course I notified the producers that I was pleased with Loring’s approach to the material and his plans for handling it in dramatic form, and if this was all right with them, he was my choice. The selection of one who was known to TV but entirely unknown to Broadway was characterized archly by my former employer,
The New York Times
, as a daring step. Subsequent events proved it to have been well taken.

WRITING OF THE NOVEL

It will be seen from the first original chapter, and from working notes in the collection, that the first concept changed somewhat as I went along.

In the first place, as per the first chapter, the nomination was not to State but to the National Security Resources Board. I think it was in 1957 when I really began steady work that the idea came to me, why not State, that way it can be a pivot for describing Congress, politics, foreign policy, and the whole wide world. State it became.