![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
"Advise and Consent"
Sep. 6th, 2019 04:32 pmAllen Drury's "Advise and Consent" was one of the books I bought in my nostalgia spree a while back. I'm about 80% of the way through it; the central tragic event has occurred, and what remains is the playing out of the repercussions.
I won't be continuing with the series. The polemic and strawmanning that I remembered from the later volumes is already present here - not as acerbic or arrogant, but definitely present. No thanks.
I did find one item of some interest. One part of the book has Sen. Orrin Knox of Illinois as its POV character. Knox is, if anyone is, the hero of the series as a whole. The series has two alternate endings, one Good and one Bad. The Good ending - which involves, I might mention, a nuclear exchange between the PRC and the USSR - is entitled "The Promise of Joy: The Presidency of Orrin Knox". At any rate, part of that section includes a skim through Knox's earlier career, and mentions an episode from just after he came to the Senate.
"'If you do that you won't be liked', a fatherly fellow Senator had advised him on some controversial matter soon after he arrived. 'I don't give a damn about being liked,' he had retorted impatiently, 'but I sure as hell intend to be respected.'"
Reading that, I immediately thought of Caligula's infamous "Oderint dum metuant" - "Let them hate, so long as they fear". I seriously doubt that Drury intended that rather mild echo, but I certainly heard it!
I won't be continuing with the series. The polemic and strawmanning that I remembered from the later volumes is already present here - not as acerbic or arrogant, but definitely present. No thanks.
I did find one item of some interest. One part of the book has Sen. Orrin Knox of Illinois as its POV character. Knox is, if anyone is, the hero of the series as a whole. The series has two alternate endings, one Good and one Bad. The Good ending - which involves, I might mention, a nuclear exchange between the PRC and the USSR - is entitled "The Promise of Joy: The Presidency of Orrin Knox". At any rate, part of that section includes a skim through Knox's earlier career, and mentions an episode from just after he came to the Senate.
"'If you do that you won't be liked', a fatherly fellow Senator had advised him on some controversial matter soon after he arrived. 'I don't give a damn about being liked,' he had retorted impatiently, 'but I sure as hell intend to be respected.'"
Reading that, I immediately thought of Caligula's infamous "Oderint dum metuant" - "Let them hate, so long as they fear". I seriously doubt that Drury intended that rather mild echo, but I certainly heard it!
