>> funding for "overheard" with evan smith is provided in part by mfi foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. also by hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy. and by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation. >> evan: i'mvan smith. he's a veteran academic and critic and an acclaimed author of both fiction and nonfiction, whose latest book, "finale: a novel of the reagan years", has just been published. he's thomas mallon, this is "overheard". [applause]. >> evan: let's be honest. is this about the ability to learn or is this about the experience of not having been taught properly? and how have you avoided what has befallen other nations in africa? you could say that he made his own bed, but you caused him to sleep in it. no, you saw a problem and, over

time, took it on. let's start with the sizzle before we get to the steak. are you going to run for president? i think i just got an f from you, actually. this is "overheard." [applause]. >> evan: thomas mallon, welcome. >> thomas: thanks for having me. >> evan: congratulations on this -- >> thomas: thank you. >> evan: -- brand new book. why reagan? why the reagan administration as a setting for a novel? what propelled you to have the book be set there and then? >> thomas: i seem to be visiting republican presidents at their lowest points. >> evan: you have a thing. you have a thing for republican presidents kind of on the outs, or heading there. >> thomas: the previous book to this one was "watergate". and this shows reagan in '86, which is arguably the low point in his presidency. >> evan: we have iran-contra. we have really the coming apart of a lot of personnel things within the white house. >> thomas: democrats retake the senate. >> evan: democrats retake the senate. >> thomas: reykjavik, the summit. today there's a strong school of thought that argues that reykjavik was what won the cold war. >> evan: right. >> thomas: but at the time it's

perceived of something of a fiasco, something that just adds to reagan's troubles. >> evan: right. >> thomas: and so it's a bad year. and the country is experiencing this panoply of new social ills from crack to homelessness to aids and the administration seems somewhat out of gas. the president is aging. >> evan: right. >> thomas: and he's a bit beset. but in particular, reagan himself -- i mean, whether you liked him or disliked him, it was a very consequential presidency. it was a big presidency, transformative. >> evan: well, in fact, we sit here today, you and i, a day before the republican presidential debate about the reagan library. this man has been canonized, deified. ronald reagan is the gold standard, the thing everybody running for office on the republican side, at least, aspires to. >> thomas: yeah. >> evan: so as a character, couldn't really ask for a better character. >> thomas: also because such an odd life history, starting out in the movies, winding up in the white house. >> evan: right.

>> thomas: and also i'm not the first person to regard reagan as being curiously remote. >> evan: right. >> thomas: somewhat mysterious. he has defeated some biographers. i think he had edmund morris tearing his hair out. i mean, edmund morris resorted to a little bit of fictionalization. i'm glad he didn't do a whole novel. >> evan: right. >> thomas: but in "dutch", which is a very interesting book but, to say the least, an odd one. >> evan: right. >> thomas: because he could not grasp reagan. he was not available. and i felt some of that as i started to write the book. reagan is never in this book, except for the very end in an epilogue. he's never seen from the inside out. you know, what's called a point of view character in the creative writing biz. he's always seen from the outside. sort of the way gore vidal presents lincoln. never goes inside him. i don't know what it says about me, but i never in the previous book, when i was writing "watergate", i never felt uncomfortable being inside richard nixon. it may not say the best thing about my character but i could relate to him in a way. >> evan: yeah.

harder to access -- right. >> thomas: absolutely. didn't attempt it. i think it had a lot to do with the way the administration operated. everybody in any organization always wants to figure out what the boss is like, how to please the boss, etc. but he was so mysterious, so opaque to so many people that i think a great deal more of his subordinate's energy went into that sort of thing than is -- >> evan: so you're not the first to try to crack this code, as you point out, outside or inside the reagan circle. >> thomas: right. >> evan: right. this is not a work of fact. it's really a work of fiction. it's historical fiction. there are a lot of real-life events and real life -- it's a little bit of a literary turducken, right? it's fact wrapped in fiction wrapped in fact. it's very hard to actually read this book, having lived those years and know what is fact and what is not. you've succeeded, i suppose, in crafting a story that seems impenetrable with, you know -- >> thomas: i would say that with the kind of fiction i write that when years go by after i've

written a book -- >> evan: yeah. >> thomas: somebody will ask me about a detail, was that made up or was that factual? and i have to go back to my notes. >> evan: you, yourself don't actually know. >> thomas: it's a fairly small thing, you know i won't know. i don't write what is called alternate history fiction, which is a kind of genre fiction within historical fiction. those are those books in which, you know, the south wins the civil war. >> evan: right. >> thomas: things like that. >> evan: fan fiction. >> thomas: i stick to what vidal would call the agreed upon facts. but try to show what might have had happened in addition to what we already know. not instead of what, but in addition to and in private. >> evan: why? a fair question to ask, i hope, would be why? so much of what's in this book, so much of what was in "watergate" are the facts. the embellishments, or the additional elements, characters, and plot moments are not overwhelming relative to the rest of the work. >> thomas: right. >> evan: you kind of wonder,

well why not just write the thing straight? why not just write it as straight fact? >> thomas: there's an intimacy, i think, that you can try to achieve in historical fiction that you can't get even in well-written biography. i mean, at a certain point a biographer will have to say at this point it is not unreasonable to suppose that nixon might have thought -- >> evan: right. >> thomas: -- if you're a novelist you just go ahead and -- >> evan: so as a biographer, you're having to project often anyway in places where the story doesn't necessarily line out the way -- >> thomas: right. >> evan: -- you want. and so you're just basically acknowledging that fully and saying i'm just going to insert -- >> thomas: -- right. and historical fiction is always fiction and never history. the noun always trumps the adjective. >> evan: yeah. >> thomas: i said that the other weekend and they're like, can we still use trump as a verb? [laughter]. >> evan: oh, oh, we'll get to him. as with all television programs, we're obligated to mention him within about 15 minutes. we'll get to him. i promise. >> thomas: but i do think that it's very dangerous to read -- i mean, sometimes people will come up to me and they'll say, you know, i learned so much history from your book.

and it's a well-intentioned remark. but i always say, careful. >> evan: yeah, but how much of this book -- but i take some issue with that. how much of this book, would you say, is fictionalized? a fictionalized version of the accounts. i read it and my thought was, really the majority of it is actually based in fact. >> thomas: well, in terms of where people were, what they did, what they did publicly, but what they thought and what they said privately -- >> evan: that's you. >> thomas: -- that's the bulk of the novel and that's the reason for doing fiction. >> evan: right. >> thomas: and i think it allows readers to speculate about the personalities, the characters of historical figures in a way that scrupulous biography has to make them refrain from doing. >> evan: i suppose i could ask you why not go in the entire opposite direction and just make the whole thing fiction and don't have the person be called ronald reagan or nancy reagan or april -- >> thomas: yeah. >> evan: -- or christopher hitchens, as in the case of this book or some of the other people. but clearly you think the marriage of fact and fiction presents a compelling narrative. >> thomas: i mean, that's what

all novelists do. if you talk about writers who set their books in contemporary times. >> evan: yeah. >> thomas: and let's say it's a story of a troubled marriage or this, that, and the other thing. i don't think any character in fiction has ever been created out of whole cloth. everybody is somebody's mother-in-law. everybody is a combination of two cousins -- >> evan: right. >> thomas -- that a writer had. whatever. so in a sense you're operating with a little bit less sleight of hand -- >> evan: this is more honest. >> thomas: -- than literary fiction. yes. >> evan: just acknowledge what it is. i mentioned christopher hitchens. you all were friends, the late christopher hitchens. >> thomas: yes. >> evan: great author. he appears as a character in this book. >> thomas: yes. >> evan: can you talk about the decision to include him? in some ways he sort of stands in for you, do you think? he offers commentary on events in the book. >> thomas: i wanted somebody who could fill the job that in watergate had been done by alice roosevelt-longworth. teddy roosevelt's 90-year-old daughter who was still alive during watergate. very sharp tongued, very smart. >> evan: right. say whatever she thought. >> thomas: and i wanted that figure.

and i thought i was going to go for somebody very old with this. and then suddenly hitchens was on my mind very much as i was starting the book. christopher died in december of 2011. >> evan: yeah. >> thomas: i was starting to write this book right around that time. and it suddenly occurred to me, i didn't know him in this period. he was in his mid 30s, not too long in america, was writing mostly for political magazines. like the nation hadn't moved on to "vanity fair." >> evan: his politics were different then than they were in his later years. >> thomas: in most respects. i mean, he was definitely, by the time george w. bush was in the white house, an apostate when it came to something like the iraq war. he lost and infuriated a lot of friends over that. but he remained very much a marxist -- >> evan: yeah. >> thomas: -- in essence, you know, until he died. i mean, i used to be around him. and i would see these young conservatives around him who were thrilled to have him on their side supporting bush during the iraq war. and, you know, they had this blue chip intellectual sticking up for their side. and i always used to think, just

wait. give this five minutes. and within five minutes, you know -- i used to call this the mother teresa moment. he would then start talking about atheism and -- >> evan: and infuriate the very people who thought they found a kindred spirit. >> thomas: so he remained very much himself in other political respects. >> evan: right. but of course he comes across as the other characters you've invented in this book come across. he comes across as quite real. >> thomas: i hope so. >> evan: yeah. >> thomas: and he -- i mean, there are even a couple of lines that, you know, i remember him saying in life, expressions he had -- >> evan: yep. >> thomas: -- that i wound up having him deploy, you know, in the course of this novel. he was tremendously witty and a fierce debater. and because he was so good at debate -- i remember when he debated a rabbi one time about the existence of god. and the rabbi said to him, "and mr. hitchens, i didn't interrupt you". and hitchens turns to him and says, "you're not quick enough". [laughter].

>> thomas: but because he was so good at that, i think that one thing a lot of people did not know about him was how gentle he could be. >> evan: yeah. >> thomas: christopher was a lovely, lovely man. >> evan: right. >> thomas: he was fantastic company. >> evan: well, it's great to have him in this book. so this book, as you said, preceded, you mentioned the "watergate" book, which was a couple years back. again, historical fiction set in watergate. a lot of events that we all remember, but also some fictional elements added in. you wrote a book called "dewey defeats truman" some years ago that's sort of set at that very pivotal moment in 20th century history. "henry and clara", which was a book published more than 20 years ago as we sit here, was about the couple that was in the box at ford's theatre on the night that president lincoln was assassinated. something about presidencies and the fictionalizing of real events. what is it? you're obsessed with politics or the presidency? is there something that keeps bringing you back to this material?

>> thomas: i liked politics from a very early age. i mean, my first real political memory is the kennedy-nixon election of 1960. i turned 9 the week of the election and i wore a nixon button to school. we weren't very good catholics. both of my parents were for nixon. but i loved the drama of the cold war. there was something thrilling and macabre about growing up during it. and i did, at an early age, devour these allen drury novels and, you know, the big political books of the day. but i think that these things always gripped me and once i turned to fiction with these things, it's very hard, i found, to go back to nonfiction. this gets to the whole question of, you know, why historical fiction, what is it? >> evan: right. >> thomas: i wrote a little book of nonfiction about 12, 13 years ago called "mrs. paine's

garage". >> evan: right. about the kennedy assassination. >> thomas: yes. >> evan: a great book. >> thomas: thank you very much. a woman named ruth paine, a quaker woman who lived in irving, outside dallas. >> evan: yeah. >> thomas: who quite innocently became enmeshed in this because she had helped out the oswalds, lee and marina oswald, his russian wife, in the months before the assassination. and ruth knew as much about oswald's movements and moods as anybody. and you can imagine what this did to her life. she was in her early 30s at the time it happened. and i asked her 40 years later if she would reconstruct this and she did after a great deal of hesitation and reluctance. i put her through hours and hours of interviews. but as a writer, having written fiction about calamitous events, like the lincoln assassination, i began to find it a kind of agony. because i couldn't have her cross the room in a scene unless

i had some kind of evidence -- >> evan: facts are inconvenient and burdensome. >> thomas: and i just, you know, i wanted to describe what she was wearing and make it up the way i do as a novelist. >> evan: well, actually that's the best justification i've heard so far for the fictional element to these books. >> thomas: and i think one reason -- >> evan: it allows you to control the narrative much more than you would if you were faithful to the facts. >> thomas: and i think one reason ruth hesitated so much was that she knew i was a novelist and for all that i said, you know, i'm going to write nonfiction here, i think that she was properly wary. >> evan: she didn't entirely trust you. >> thomas: no. and nobody should trust a novelist. but she had made such an earnest effort to tell the literal truth about the assassination -- >> evan: right. >> thomas: -- you know, to the authorities, to the investigating people that she did not want to blur that. >> evan: right. >> thomas: and so, you know, i assured her that i wouldn't be doing that. >> evan: so the research you did on that book is comparable, presumably, to research you

would do in advance of one of these books, even though it's a novel. obviously so much goes into the construction of it based on facts that you're researching a book like this as if you're writing nonfiction. >> thomas: yes. there's a certain kind of immersion that you have to do. and, i mean, you know this as an editor. you know, writers always want more time. they want a bigger budget. can i stay here an extra couple of weeks -- >> evan: right. >> thomas: -- so i can really soak it all up. and with historical fiction, what i generally tell people that the best thing you can do is -- it sounds odd, since it is historical fiction, but eliminate history. and what i mean by that is eliminate the middle man. don't go to histories of the time you're writing about. go to the newspaper. go to memoirs, go to primary sources for how people actually spoke. how they actually thought. even if it's only 30 years ago, it's different. >> evan: right. >> thomas: and whether it's just a particular word or a whole style of thinking.

>> evan: well, the benefit of writing a book set in the mid '80s versus a book set at the time that lincoln was assassinated is the material was so much more readily available -- >> thomas: yes. >> evan: -- one imagines, for a book like this. >> thomas: yes. >> evan: let's stay with reagan for a second. so i said earlier how reagan had been deified and canonized, and reagan is almost a third rail in politics. you can't criticize reagan. the reality is ronald reagan would have a hard time getting through a republican primary today. >> thomas: yes. >> evan: the ronald reagan of myth and image and romance is actually out of sync with the reality of ronald reagan, given the way politics has pivoted. i find him to be doubly fascinating, actually, to go back and think about him in this period. reagan has become this almost unrecognizable guy. >> thomas: i, on the whole, am an admirer of ronald reagan. i do think he had a tremendous amount to do with ending the cold war. that is no small thing to do with a presidency. i mean, so many presidencies since then wind up looking small compared to this. >> evan: small, right. >> thomas: but the

rushmoreization of reagan i find slightly repellant. and i like to think that he would too. there were many things about the reagan administration that were difficult for me and that i did not agree with. i was -- >> evan: too conservative for your taste? >> thomas: i've never been a social conservative. >> evan: you self-describe as a libertarian republican. >> thomas: yes. and i was a gay man living through the '80s, waiting for the president to say the word aids. you know, and it was a dark, dark time in many ways. and i was always caught between two fires. because i would argue with my very politicized gay friends, you know, who would romance fidel castro. and i would say, oh my god. you know, go, you know, dress up like carmen miranda on friday night and you're going to be in a labor camp on monday morning. please. and i was all for reagan pushing on the soviet union. and i think he did a tremendous

amount for human freedom. but he had limitations and he had flaws and missteps and this strange reverence for him is something that i don't find palatable. and something that any novelist writing about history -- i mean, the word reverential, if you apply it to a novel, you know it's going to be an awful book. >> evan: well you can't fall in love with your character, right. >> thomas: and on the other hand you have to be, i think, open enough to people, richard nixon included, to try to see things as they might have seen them, to try to have a certain sympathy. this too is, i think, politics is so awful right now. everybody is so dug in. everybody is screaming at one another. you know, red versus blue. that one thing i do think that historical fiction allows people to do is soften themselves a little bit and open their sensibilities, open their

imaginations, open their sympathies to the other side. whereas if two people are arguing about ronald reagan, they're very quickly going to get dug in. >> evan: right. >> thomas: reagan was awful. reagan was great. whereas the necessary fuzziness of fiction, the ambiguities of it, i think they might be a good thing for people, politically. >> evan: yeah. >> thomas: because they do expand you. i think that the political rhetoric right now is very sterile. both parties have eaten their minority wings. and by "minority" i mean, you know, the liberal wing of the republican party. >> evan: moderate wing. >> thomas: the conservative wing or moderate wing of the democratic party. you know, you can't be joe lieberman in the democratic party. you can't be nelson rockefeller. >> evan: right. well, you say politics has gotten to be so terrible. if you're in the journalism business these days, come on, it's like christmas every day. [laughter]. >> evan: and in thinking about

ronald reagan in the context of this book, a guy who was really an entertainer, who improbably became president, it's only a short walk to a guy who was on "the apprentice" becoming president, right? isn't there a straight line from ronald reagan to donald trump? [laughter]. >> thomas: maybe if you're a lemming trying to run off a cliff. i think trump, in many ways, is the anti-reagan. >> evan: how's that? >> thomas: i think he is a person of very few fixed political beliefs. reagan's beliefs did evolve and he did know how to compromise. but the things that -- there were certain verities that he held very firmly to. and i also think he was a gentlemen. and that's not a word -- >> evan: you don't think donald's not really? you don't think donald trump is a gentlemen? >> thomas: i mean, i'm really aghast at the little pout and the, you know, my numbers are huge.

i mean, who can listen to this for very long? i am the worst prognosticator, politically, on the planet. >> evan: right. >> thomas: so, you know, so i fear what i'm about to say, because the opposite will come true. i mean, i think that this has got to -- >> evan: at some point -- >> thomas: -- give at some point, before january. >> evan: although we've been saying this for months. well the good news is if it does come to pass and he becomes president, imagine the historical fictions set in the trump administration. [laughter]. >> thomas: well, you know, somebody asked me that the other day, are you going to do a trump novel if he makes it all the way? and i said this is already a novel. >> evan: yeah, it is. >> thomas: i don't think he could do it. you would be painting the lily. >> evan: right. it's a black comedy. right. it is. so until the trump novel goes into production, you actually are getting ready to write yet another novel set in yet another republican administration, that of george w. bush. >> thomas: i am. >> evan: you'll follow up this book with that book. >> thomas: i mean, once again i'm throwing the incumbent president -- incumbent in the book into the lowest point in his political fortunes. sort of '05, '06.

>> evan: post-katrina or maybe mid-katrina, right, yep. >> thomas: katrina. the insurgency in iraq. the second term seems to be unraveling. >> evan: isn't that when it always unravels? nixon, reagan, bush. >> thomas: second terms, you know -- >> evan: obama, in that respect, has been an outlier, right? obama's second term has turned out to be, for him, pretty good -- >> thomas: yeah. >> evan: -- right? >> thomas: and with reagan, i mean, you know, it nearly unravels. i mean, the iran-contra nearly does him in. >> evan: very nearly does him in. >> thomas: and that was a point at which, i think, a number of things came together to save him. one was his wife -- >> evan: right. >> thomas: -- who insisted that he get rid of don regan, who was not serving him very well as chief of staff. and the other was the nature of the scandal. i think what really helped reagan was the contra part of iran-contra. if it had just been arms for hostages, it would, in some ways, have been worse. but the fact that the profits

went to fund the contras. >> evan: freedom fighters. >> thomas: which made it a much bigger, bigger scandal. nonetheless, in the way history will look at it is, well, this was still a skirmish within the big cold war. >> evan: correct. >> thomas: it was still us versus the soviet union. >> evan: right. >> thomas: and ultimately, even if that was a bad piece of strategy, a bad initiative, it was part of a war that he won. and i think that that was very helpful to him. and the other thing that i think saved him, finally, was his fabled charm. he finally -- >> evan: right. >> thomas: at the urging of richard nixon, "get out there and apologize. put the damn thing behind you". they talked quite a lot throughout reagan's presidency. and reagan does apologize. and he says, "i didn't think i was selling arms for hostages. but the facts tell me i probably was". [laughter]. >> thomas: it was so guileless that people were willing to get past it. >> evan: so what is the comparable narrative tension in the bush book, as you're

beginning to think about it? >> thomas: too early for me to tell. >> evan: too early, yeah. >> thomas: and certainly too early for history to tell. you know, i'm not really certain exactly how that's all going to play out. but i think an interesting complicated man. bill clinton was complicated but he's not mysterious to me. you know, we always talked about bill clinton's being compartmentalized. >> evan: right. >> thomas: and there are a lot of compartments and that makes for complexity, but i think he's more transparent, in some ways, as a character, than george w. bush is, necessarily, and certainly than reagan. >> evan: did you ever think about doing a clinton book? i mean, it sounds like you've also decided just to stick with, you know, nixon, reagan, bush. >> thomas: it seems as if i have a franchise here. >> evan: no carter, no clinton. >> thomas: yeah. >> evan: why do you hate democrats? [laughter]. >> thomas: i -- guys, and this is the part of me that liked

reagan. i don't want to relive the carter administration. at all. on any terms. imaginative or otherwise. i mean, i think there are fascinating democratic presidents to write about. i mean, the incumbent -- it probably won't be me, but the discipline of barack obama. there's a kind of tautness to him. >> evan: yep. low highs, high lows, you know. >> thomas: he's going to be very good to some novelist. and the type of president who is also a writer will be interesting, i think. >> evan: so just not you. to somebody else. >> thomas: not me. i think i've got a couple of more of these in me. >> evan: so bush and then trump, we've decided that, right? [laughter]. >> evan: okay. very good. thomas mallon, wonderful to get to sit with you and talk about this. congratulations on the book. >> thomas: thank you so much. >> evan: wish you much success. thomas mallon. thank you very much. [applause].

>> evan: we'd love to have you join us in the studio. visit our website at klru.org/overheard to find invitations to interviews, q&as with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes. >> thomas: in reagan's diary, on the trip he said, "got some --" when he goes to the first banquet. "got some great advice from dick nixon on the china trip, and we took it. when the platters of food came by, he told us, don't ask what it is, just take it and swallow it". [laughter]. >> funding for "overheard" with evan smith is provided in part by mfi foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. also by hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy. and by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation. 7j7n7o?o/o/o?o?o/u/uot+u+u/uooo>