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"I believe that one's sexual appetite corresponds in part to one's abilities in
other fields." If that statement, uttered by the protagonist of THE COLUMNIST, is
true, then Brandon Sladder, the journalist in Jeffrey Frank's book about a fictional
writer's life in the heaving bosom of the beltway, is not a genius but certainly most
prolific in his work. When Brandon Sladder is advised by a visibly well-meaning George
Herbert Bush to tell his own life story --- he says that he and "Bar" always
loved Sladder's columns and perspectives --- Sladder embarks on a journey back to his
beginnings.
He begins his life in Washington at a most auspicious time: The Kennedy White House is in
power, and his view of the DC underworld is limited at first. As he goes from job to job,
meeting more and more of the high and mighty of the inner circle politicos and blowhards,
Sladder learns the ins and outs of the intricate layering of the social scene and the
difficulties and extravagances of the print world as it fights the good fight against
television journalism. "People born in an age of television may not understand what
it meant to get a column of one's own," Sladder says, and he is right --- although
there is still some of the same high-mindedness about political columnists and their views
in these days of constant scandal and bad maneuvering by the big boys. However, as
Sladder's career zooms towards its zenith, his personal life takes some distinctive twists
and turns, as when he finds himself on the phone in the middle of his 29th birthday party,
discussing the war with President Lyndon Baines Johnson, and his angry wife hangs up the
receiver. Things go right down the drain from there.
Frank gives Sladder a nice, easygoing tone that makes THE COLUMNIST really fun to read. He
doesn't try to extrapolate any unnecessarily melodramatic material from the politics that
are going on around his character --- the wars and scandals make a mark, certainly, in
Sladder's career and life, but it is Sladder and the way he wrenches himself from his
personal strife to continue his ego-driven ride to the top of the journalistic pyres that
makes the book so amusing. If J. D. Salinger had cheered up and gone on to write about
mature human beings, instead of suicidal post-adolescents, this is a book he would have
written. A very entertaining first novel.
--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano
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