i>In which we review a book that was purchased, either new or used, for one American Dollar or less. Can a good read be had on the cheap?

In The National Interest
Fawcett Crest Books, 1977
Mass Market Paperback, 411 pages
Original Price: $2.50
What I Paid: 25¢
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When the average person thinks about books featuring political intrigue, globe-hopping spies, and the looming specter of armed conflict, something tells me that the name Ted Koppel is not what springs immediately to mind. Yet, if you look closely at the cover of In the National Interest you'll see his name underneath the words, "A Novel By..." What's even more surprising is the blurb from Henry Kissenger ("A great work of fiction," he apparently said) just above the title.

Co-author and fellow journalist, Marvin Kalb, is also not primarily known for his fiction-writing; and, although he was a reporter for CBS and NBC for 30 years, he's not anywhere as famous as his partner. He is a very respected individual, however, holding a senior fellowship at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

Naturally, a book written by a pair of journalists would have to be about journalists. In the National Interest follows television and radio news reporter Darius Kane as he accompanies a fictional Secretary of State and his gaggle of reporters on a diplomatic mission to the Middle East. Along the way he deals with life-threatening situations, interminable boredom, bureaucratic double-talk, corporate censorship, and casual sex, all just as he stumbles across the biggest story of his career.

One would also probably expect that a novel written by journalists might be about as artful as a wire-service report. Unfortunately, while there are a few attempts at elegance, for the most part the prose is pretty dry. When the authors do take a stab at artful prose, what you get are passages laden with adjectives that do an adequate job of allowing you to imagine the scenery, but clunk together like Newton's Cradle made out of wooden blocks.

The authors also seem to have a problem with characterization. Practically every character is given a line or single action to perform, and then everything stops while we get a paragraph or two about his or her back story. While this sort of thing might be alright when you want to make some catty observations about certain types of people via a throw-away character, it can become jarring if you do it too often. If this book were a road-trip, the driver would be pulling over at every single road-side attraction, until his passengers forget exactly what their final destination was supposed to be.

Someone dropped a sheaf of papers on Darius' lap. "Is he awake?" Darius recognized the thin voice of Carl Ellis, The Secretary's press spokesman. Darius felt pity and contempt in equal measure for Ellis, a career Foreign Service officer in his early fifties, who possessed only two discernible attributes for the job; a willingness to suffer any abuse from newsmen, and an uncanny ability to parrot even the most outrageous gibberish the Secretary could produce to justify a policy. Ellis had worked briefly for his hometown newspaper after finishing college and fancied himself "an expert on the media." Since the Secretary always considered himself to be his own spokesman, he had ignored Darius' private plea that a more capable person be hired. Ellis had learned about Darius' intervention, but, like a cautions bureaucrat, he had done nothing about it. Ellis swallowed his pride easily, on the assumption that a two-year assignment as the Secretary's spokesman could be parlayed into an ambassadorship, his life's dream.

"Is he awake?" Ellis said again.

Well, of course he said it again – he probably forgot that he said it already, one gargantuan paragraph ago.

The book is partly realistic in the way it portrays its characters faults and foibles, but it's relentlessly snide and cynical in the way that it does it; and I say "partly" here because the only person who escapes the atmosphere of dismissiveness is Darius. He's seen everything, done everything, and dispenses his wisdom at regular intervals to the barely functional man-children that populate the Secretary's mobile press-corp. Compared to his colleagues, Darius' ability to spout platitudes, breeze through high-security areas, and ferret out stories that others are incapable of perceiving makes him look like Jesus, Superman, and Edward R. Murrow all rolled into one.

Darius has what can only be described as an irritating James Bond quality. He knows somebody in every town he visits, and they all great him with a hearty "Mr. Kane!" and then proceed to give him the best table, or the best room, or the best whatever, all while kissing his feet and treating him like an English Lord. Why they like him so much is never really explained – they must be responding to his inherent worthiness as a human being or something. It actually seems like he's slumming when, at one point, he bribes a hotel switchboard operator.

What's slightly more disturbing than Darius Kane's role as the only competent reporter in this book, is the way that the few female characters are portrayed. They get maybe six speaking roles here, one of which is a reporter who gets about five lines, and two "walk-on" wives who only speak to offer sticky buns and coffee to the manly men having important conversations in their living rooms.

The two most important female characters are the Secretary's wife, and a Foreign Service agent who becomes romantically involved with Darius. Helen Vandenberg, (the Secretary's wife) gets kidnapped in the second chapter and then, except for a brief moment near the end, disappears almost completely from the story.

The other woman works in Egypt for the U.S. Government, and all we really know about her is that she takes an interest in Darius for reasons that aren't entirely clear until the end of the novel. While it's left deliberately unclear, there's an implicit appeal to the supposed untrustworthiness of women; in fact, the open-ended resolution of the relationship derives it's uncertainty from that concept. In the end, the reader is given a choice: either she's a cold, manipulative liar, or Darius is a tremendous asshole. And, since the rest of the book depicts Darius as God's gift to the journalistic profession, it seems pretty obvious as to which side the authors come down on.

Even worse is the appearance of a character whose constant refrain whenever discussing the Secretary is a knee jerk cry of, "He's trying to screw Israel! He's trying to screw Israel!" The insertion of this one-sided stereotype feels ham-handed and almost deliberately offensive.

Fortunately, the plot is relatively straight-forward for a political thriller. The problem is that readers might find themselves skimming over the dull writing to such a degree that they wind up having no idea what the hell is going on.

Was it worth the 25 cents? Not really. There's better fare out there for under a buck.