Customer Reviews

Elvis and Nixon

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I never would have picked up this novel, but it was given to me as a gift by someone who I trust. Jonathan Lowy writes like he's channeling Elvis and Nixon--their voices are amazingly real and unstereotyped. He also perfectly recreates what Washington DC was like in the Vietnam era when I was a student there. I was moved on one page and laughing out loud on the other. This is a great cultural satire about two famous and infamous men as well as a very genuine novel about America.

As if enough wasn't being written in the non-fiction department about Richard Milhous Nixon and Elvis Aron Presley, Jonathan Lowy has taken the time to write a fictionalized account of the bizarre meeting between the twosome. Fortunately, Lowy has infused his tale with enough interesting characters, both real and fictional, as well as enough meandering plot lines, and psychedelic writing to keep the reader's interest level from beginning to end.

The odd pairing of Elvis and Nixon occurred when Presley went to Washington D.C. in search of a Federal Narcotics at large Agent badge to help control and bring back the counter culture of hippies, yippies, panthers, and other anti-establishment organizations. The novel's main task is to fictionalize the settings and situations that brought forth such an unlikely meeting in the first place. However, much like the play "Nixon's Nixon" by Russell Lees, this work uses this instant of Nixon's life to bring forth his views on other issues. Good versus evil is shown quite clearly. Though misguided in many of his efforts, and often in his methods, Elvis and his brood are typically shown to be good hearted in nature. Nixon and his henchmen however are drawn through Lowy's obvious distaste. Pat Buchanan in particular could not appear more satanic. The Mai Lai massacre is also drawn into the fray.

The two main figures are virtually caricatures in real life but Lowy pushes the envelope with his fictional versions. With Elvis, he takes real life stories of Presley sermonizing to his bodyguards, popping pills, large and unique appetite, and supposed obsession with the Beatles and crams them all into a few day period with zeal. With Nixon, he doesn't push nearly as far, seemingly because just exploring the Tricky Dick side of Nixon gets exactly what Lowy wants the reader to see.

The fictional extras are exposed to the reader throughout the novel, in many of the short, fast-paced chapters. There are no wasted characters in Lowy's writing. Ben Rollins, a Viet Nam veteran with only one arm refuses to accept an award in the Rose Garden; his sister fell under the spell of drugs while he was in Nam and has become a hooker; she helps Colonel Sitorski, who is being framed as the White House leaker of pertinent Mai Lai information to the press; his son Junior was at Mai Lai, and so on in a plot that stretches credulity at times.

The pace of the novel keeps things rolling along; the short chapters enticing you to go forward and not put the book down. The plot lines and their interweaving, while again occasionally drawing attention to themselves, are very entertaining. The writing itself is clear, and Lowy even inserts an authorial decision statement into the work with a quick flourish of metafiction. Even without high interest levels in Nixon, Elvis or even to a small degree the early seventies, this one will make a good weekend or summer read.

In this rather creative novel, Lowy has expanded a famous but certainly schlocky pop-culture event, Nixon's meeting with Elvis, into a dark and satirical commentary on the larger issues of the day. The actual meeting doesn't take place until the end of the book, when Elvis volunteers to help Nixon spy on the types of characters inspired by the events covered in the rest of the story. This is essentially a story about the Vietnam War and its destructive effects on the American culture of the period. Lowy's characters run the gamut of all the types of people who were affected - former soldiers scarred by the horrors of the war, hippies in the new counterculture of dissent, reactionary squares who would say anything to disagree with the hippies (no matter how hateful), a military commander who has realized that blood is on his hands, and representatives of the increasingly paranoid clan of Nixon cronies. A social examination of all these troubling trends is really the focus of this novel. Plus we get a wonderfully muddleheaded Elvis, though Lowy seems to be stretching a bit when imaging how a drug-induced mind operates. Meanwhile, Lowy attempts a highly tangled web of conspiracies and political intrigues among the paranoid government spooks who haunt the book, but has bitten off more than he can chew, as the subplots get unnecessarily dense and tangled. Some annoyingly heavy-handed moralizing is lurking around beneath Lowy's writing style. But this book is still a fun read that can be unexpectedly disturbing and thought-provoking. [~doomsdayer520~]

Vivid, vibrant, often times hilarious -- other times poignant -- portrayal of the 60s counterculture, the held-over King of Rock and Roll, Tricky Dick, and the Vietnam war era soul-searching of our nation. A dazzling novel with near-mythic overtones and a raucous cast of characters.

Although I have grown weary of books about Nixon era and Vietnam, I thought I would give this novel a try because of the recent Bob Kerrey revelations and the points made in "Vietnam 1960-65, A Prelude to Tragedy" about the inaccuracies of McNamera's point of view. This novel succeeds spectacularly on many levels. It pulls the major events of the era into a convincing fable about right and wrong. It is extremely thought provoking on what has happened to the American Dream. Lowy's writing style is engaging and demonstrates sharp wit with a keen sense of the ironic. A great read. Take it to the beach.

Vivid, vibrant, often times hilarious -- other times poignant -- portrayal of the 60s counterculture, the held-over King of Rock and Roll, Tricky Dick, and the Vietnam war era soul-searching of our nation. A dazzling novel with near-mythic overtones and a raucous cast of characters.

The writer's okay with that kind of brisk prose that glides along but in the end I wondered if he ever really had a story in mind or if he just stared at that photo that graces the book jacket and imagined it all out. I mean, sure, that's a valid starting point for a novel but I got bored after awhile and wanted a plot. Something to twist the narrative in a direction I wasn't expecting. I mean, sure, Nixon was sweating My Lai at the time but then that's such an obvious choice for an author. A better writer would have skipped past that and dove deeper into Nixon's myriad of complexities and not played him off as a simple fool surrouded by unthinking gobots.

Shame, because the cover is terrific.

In his afterword, Lowy calls this a "novel" and a product of his imagination. He then goes on to cite a string of actual events that closely parallel his imagined ones. So is it a historical novel then, or a pure figment of his imagination? Lowy plays fast and loose with this line in order to make it fit one of his themes: Nixon's the Evil Thing and his henchmen even worse. The major characters whose names have been changed all have one thing in common: they're alive. ("Don't sue me! I didn't even use your name(s)! Plus, if you do please note I'm a UVA lawyer and I bite back!")

To top it all off, he couldn't have written this thing without referencing Bud Krogh's "The Day Elvis Met Nixon" which is the actual account of the actual meeting. I guess it wasn't interesting enough the first time. And then in the ultimate act of ingratitude (and startling inaccuracy) Lowy turns Krogh into one of the most depraved slimeballs imaginable (Max Sharpe.) Anyone who's done ten minutes of research on the guy knows he's one of the few Good Guys in that administration. What's up with that, Lowy? Shame on you. ("But it's just a novel!" Baloney.)

Stylistically, we're treated to Creative Writing 201 zingers like this: "Elvis felt his entire body quivering now, like some girl had sucked on his big toe, then rammed it into a socket and the voltage was wending its way up from his tapping feet to his vibrating legs, all the way to his neck, which was now rocking back and forth from Vernon to Priscilla like of of those Rock 'm Sock 'm Robots after taking an uppercut, head teetering on a thin springy wire, back and forth, back and forth."

Ooh! It's almost like being there! I feel that way all the time! Go back to law, Lowy, you don't have to use so many active verbs in your prose and there's a judge and jury to mediate your efforts. God willing, the buying public will do the same with your book.