THE ROMAN-a-THIEF

...You have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to turn perjury into literature with a never-to-be-forgotten corking good yarn, a tale of malfeasance, misfeasance and nonfeasance, set in a romantic locale.' "After he said that I went to work with a will...

...The young contractors have met a romantic young ward heeler who has become their friend and he asks the same question: In an imperfect world can there be perfect ward heelers...

...Each unhappy campaign is unhappy in its own way, and so the campaign in 1972 can be said to have been...

...The setting is perfect...

...THE ROMAN-a-THIEF STEPHEN DARST "The first thing you'll probably want to (know is whether I write on the typewriter or do I use a pencil or a quill pen and how many hours a day do I write and all that David Eisenhower kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into that...

...I know what it feels like in your gut to be assistant undersecretary of commerce, and, of course, that's the thing that I've got to get down on paper so that the reader can feel it in the pit of his stomach-how the weather was, so to speak, in the halls of the Commerce Department...

...A roman a thief-everyone is excited as hell about it...

...When they hand down that indictment it can seem like the end of the world but I realize now that they handed me a lot more than an indictment-they gave me a bonanza really...

...And it sings...

...It seems funny now but the thing we were sweating out for a while was that I might have told my story too well-that the grand jury would go on believing me and refuse to indict...

...Until it occurred to me one day that God breaks in on each and every one of us every day of our lives and you might say he has us bugged from the day we are born until the day we die...

...One of the things that excited my publisher most is that this isn't a typical first novel, not a war novel or a young-man-loses-himself-at-Choate-but-finds-himself-later-at-Princeton novel...

...Because no indictment, no big advance, no movie sale, no paperback, no four-figure lecture fees...

...I found out that an IBM typewriter sounds like a Republican while a Democrat sounds like an Underwood standard...

...So I'm producing, making good progress...

...I'm not kidding myself...

...Hell, if they had run consecutively I would have been in the slammer for 56 years-the copyright would have run out on my book by then...

...I happen to like the way I write, I mean I think that my sentences have a cadence that is entirely me, but I guess I'd have to agree that the most important thing about my sentences is that they are concurrent...

...Anyway the idealistic young road contractors talk things over...

...To begin with it introduces the reader to a whole new set of characters never before presented in American literature, much the way Twain introduced readers to the men on the Mississippi...

...grandmother for Jesus...

...My editor told me they haven't been as excited about a young writer for years...

...The Democrats all become Republicans and the Republicans become Democrats...

...One young contractor asks whether in an imperfect world like this, can there be perfect road contractors...

...to tell you God's truth the way I got a publisher for the novel was I just sent it in over the transom, as they say in the publishing business...

...Hell, they know I've seen it all, done it all...

...Later, they will send for their principles to rejoin them, to live happily together ever after...

...They help a little but the main thing is you have to have a story worth telling and you have to put your faith in Jesus...

...This wasn't prison, this was the Johnstown Minimum Security Detention Farm and while there were no walls, only a low fence that couldn't really keep you in if you wanted out, that low fence worked both ways...

...The reader remembers me, hat over face in the dock taking the sentences, ducking the television cameras, the whole marvelous mystique of it "I was a little down at first, as you might expect, wondering whether there was a God and if so just what kind of Republican He was...

...I told my publisher I'd talk to you about the book, the novel, give you maybe a little bit of the plot, tell you a little about my ideas on writing and answer any intelligent questions...

...It's the first new development in the novel form in years...

...They all agree-it's the big scene of the novel with blood oaths and all-that they will never compromise their principles...

...The kind Spiro is writing and I'm writing...

...In the last scene the Governor-it's years later now and the ward heeler has been elected Governor-the Governor walks at twilight down the new highway, the whole scene symbolizing the highway of life and man's journey down that-I should have said first that the concrete is already cracking a bit on the highway because of sub-standard materials-imperfect highway...

...I checked that out and it's true, but I can go old Hemingway one better...

...I don't mind passing on a few tips- hell, I've learned a lot from reading how other writers do it...

...Communists remain Communists, of course...

...Washington...

...And the outline and that one chapter are all I've done, but it was good enough to fetch an advance of one hundred thousand big ones from Enoch Bigelow...

...To begin with, the first words are a grabber, if 1 do say so: 'All happy campaigns are alike...

...I mean there was a network television crew jumping that fence every five minutes, coming in to interview me...

...But I didn't really pull out of it until my editor said to me, 'George, don't you realize that your dishonor as a public servant is your glory as a writer...

...There's this group of highly-principled, idealistic young road contractors, guys who grew up together, went to all the wrong schools together-wrong schools, wrong dances, married the wrong girls, although they didn't know any of this until later when they tried to land the big road jobs and found themselves out in the cold while the old epicene, elitist road contractors took all the cushy jobs...

...Independents sound like Smith-Corona portables, by the way...

...I'll tell you a few things I've discovered about writing...

...Instead, they will send their principles away for a few years while they get theirs...

...The first thing I did when I finally got down to the writing was to change the names in order to protect the not-as-yet-convicted...

...I've still got a long way to go before anyone puts me in the same league with Spiro Ag-new or John Dean...

...And how the weather was at the campaign committee...

...The plot is important, of course, ditto the characterization, the setting, the theme...

...I know you guys are interested in tricks like that, helpful things for other writers, but the fact is that tricks don't matter so much in the end...

...They claim prison is a great place to write and I guess it must be but only in a real prison...

...That's where the action is and I've got it all down in Lead Us Not...

...And so on...

...You know what they're calling this kind of novel at the bar, at Elaine's...

...And, of course, knowing some of our crowd, after that manuscript came in over the transom the publisher was expecting to see five or six Cubans piling in after it, bristling with guns, bugging equipment, phone taps...

...For the first month I was there I thought Mike Wallace was a trusty...

...Don't ask me why, I'm just telling you what I know...

...Not that there weren't distractions...

...I think I can give you a little of the plot...

...You can't overlook any of these...

...In a real prison you can't get out, of course, but other people can't get in at you either...

...I'd walk over my grandmother for Jesus...

...Then the titles of office holders-for example, if a character was Secretary of the Interior in real life, in the novel I make him Secretary of Transportation...

...So I write my dialogue that way, a line of IBM, a line of Underwood standard and a few lines of Smith-Corona...

...I found that I was praying all the time, praying and trying to understand what had happened to me, to all of us...

...Even more of that...

...But you could say with some justification that the sentences are still the thing...

...That's just the outline...

...I've gotten to know all the editors at Enoch Bige-low and Company pretty well by now and we've had a few laughs about it, but believe me at first they didn't know what to expect "Those editors couldn't have been nicer through all of this...

...The break-ins, the buggings, the phone taps...

...Although, I guess deep down we're all religious...

...No agent, no advance word, nothing...

...Six, ten years from now who wants the confessions, fiction or nonfiction, of an ex-assistant undersecretary of commerce...

...If you have a story a grand jury will buy, you probably have a story the average reader will buy...

...For example, Hemingway said that he composed all his dialogue on the typewriter because a typewriter sounds like someone talking...

...I prayed a lot, I can tell you that, although I've never been what you'd call a praying man...

...When I thought of that it gave me some comfort...

...On the other hand if they had put me away for six, ten years, that's no good either...

...But I think I've shown some promise...

...I know that right now I'm not one of the Big Talents...

...Naturally, though, for that kind of dough they want you to produce...

...I think I'm catching on quickly...

...So the way it worked out was ideal -a lot of light sentences to run concurrently...

...I suppose the line between good perjury and good fiction is thinner than any of us imagined...