Finders Keepers

Finders Keepers – by Stephen King

After reading just about everything Stephen King ever wrote, I took a break from him around 2016. The reason being is that, although many of his books are great, many were downright awful. In November 2018, I picked back up where I left off, and since King writes frequently, I found myself about 5 or 6 novels “in the hole”.  Finders Keepers is part 2 of the “Bill Hodges Trilogy”. I enjoyed this one much better than the first one, Mr. Mercedes, despite the fact that the plot for this caper seemed a tad implausible.

The plot of this book could only be dreamed up by an author who has written a bazillion books over the course of half a century. The story starts off about 40 years prior to present day. A young 20-something man breaks into an elderly, retired author’s home to steal manuscripts of the author’s never released books. This kid really must love to read.  Apparently this author had a ‘series’ of books focusing on one particular character, and when the author stopped writing and ‘retired’, the diehard fans were rather distraught.  This is something that does happen from time to time, but breaking into a man’s house and robbing him at gunpoint?  Well, let’s just say things go very wrong during and after the robbery, and the thief ends up rotting away in prison before he gets a chance to enjoy his ill-gotten booty. Fortunately, he does have the manuscripts (in the form of notebooks) hidden, so when (if) he ever gets released, he’ll make a b-line for his buried treasure and bask in the glory of his loot!

Well, when we fast-forward to present day, it seems as though there’s another kid, who’s another avid reader who accidentally stumbles across the treasure.  Just like the thief 40 years prior, this kid is in awe of the finding as well as he’s a lover of serious literature.  You would think he discovered the Ark of the Covenant or something. Again, only a serious writer of books like Stephen King could fathom such devotion.  When the thief finally gets out of prison, he wants his property back, and has no problem doing whatever it takes to reclaim what he stole.

We’re well into about one-third of the story before Bill Hodges (a retired detective) and his cronies Jerome and Holly appear on the scene. Sadly, the interaction between these three is the most annoying aspect of the whole story. Their dialogue with each other seems forced and silly as is many of their personality traits.  We’re told umpteen times that Bill is on a strict diet since he had a heart attack several years ago, and we’re constantly reading about him avoiding temptations like McDonalds as he’s forced to eat gross stuff like salads.  And on and on and on.

So the Bill Hodges characters really aren’t necessary to the story, but overall, I still found this book a good read. Sure, as I mentioned, the plot is a bit silly, but when the story and action moves at the right pace, one can easily overlook such things.   I should also point out that, unlike many of King’s books, this is a straight-forward mystery that has no connections to horror, the supernatural, nor the bizarre. That’s not really a good thing, nor a bad thing, it’s just that it’s a bit unfair when King always seems to be stereotyped as a ‘horror’ writer. He’s capable of so much more.

Not one of his best, but far from his worst.  This one falls into the “overall, pretty good” category.

The Unexpected President: The Life and Times of Chester A. Arthur

The Unexpected President: The Life and Times of Chester A. Arthur by Scott S. Greenberger

Of all the biographies of the U.S. Presidents that I have read (so far I’ve read about 40 bios of about 35 presidents), this one was the most surprising in terms of enjoyment.  Let’s face it, many of the ‘minor’ presidents were minor for a reason. Perhaps they just weren’t that exciting, nor did anything spectacular happen during their tenure. History has even showed us that the really bad ones (i.e. James Buchanan) get away with being anonymous many years in the future after the memory of their deeds fades away.  We then add the fact that most of the personal letters and records about Chester Arthur were burned by himself and relatives, meaning there’s even less to know about him.  And, yes, he was an accidental president in that he was elected Vice-President, but ascended to the top role after his ticket-mate, James Garfield was assassinated.  He also only served the remainder of the one term.

What author Scott S. Greenberger does in a case where his subject matter is a bit threadbare is to, instead, tell a story of the times and places where Chester Arthur lived and breathed. There are many times when you forget you’re reading a biography of Chester Arthur because the narrative strays quite far, yet you never mind because Greenberger is a magnificent story teller. In fact, I would argue that this is a practice that many biographers should try to attempt. It’s o.k. to focus on the facts, but have a little feeling as well. Example: When we’re introduced to Arthur’s father-in-law, we’re told his occupation is the captain of a ship. The man met his demise when his vessel sunk. Does Greenberger just mention this in passing? Oh no. We get a heavily detailed telling of the account filled with emotion and sadness.  I felt like I was watching the last 30 minutes of the movie ‘Titanic’ as opposed to reading a biography of a 19^th century president.  A distraction? Sure.  Bothersome? Not in the least.

As Chester Arthur moves up in the business world during and immediately after the Civil War, he’s no saint. He’s arguably a conniving profiteer who surrounds himself with riches and pleasures of the flesh that he obtains with little scruples. He ends up as the manager of the New York City Customs House where he’s able to solicit bribes and political favors.  The ‘boss’ of the New York City political machine is a man named Roscoe Conkling. Conkling is the sleaziest of the sleaze, and anyone that wants any position of political power needs to make sure they have a heavy dose of grease when meeting this man with a handshake.  Although one could argue that things haven’t really changed in 140 years, this behavior was much more the norm during this time, and such immorality could go unchecked for a much longer period.

In fact, it seems we read about Roscoe Conkling just as much, if not more, than Chester Arthur. Again, though, you don’t mind since the book is so captivating. When it’s time to nominate a Republican candidate for president in 1880, James Garfield is mainly chosen out of compromise. No one really knows much about him, but those in power can’t seem to find an agreeable alternative.  Garfield isn’t part of the Conkling power machine, so Chester Arthur is added to the ticket as Vice-President as a compromise. This decision isn’t given much thought.  I mean, what are the odds of anything tragic happening to a sitting president?

Well……

Without going into too much detail, when Arthur ascends to the top position after an assassin’s bullet, Conkling and his cronies are salivating.  They’ve now finally gotten THEIR MAN in the White House.  Except Arthur suddenly has a change of heart. What happens to his soul isn’t quite clear, but fortunately, his morality meter sways in the opposite direction, and ends up being a much better president for the nation than most had hoped.

Again, not too much detail into the minutiae of the administration. In fact, of all the biographies I’ve read on U.S. Presidents, this one spends the least amount of time on policy and the inner workings of government.  True, a more detailed account would have pleased historians, but with the limited amount of facts we have about this man, the author manages to weave a great retrospective.

The fact that most people are unfamiliar with this man and the times, leads me to believe that this would make an excellent mini-series to be shown on Amazon Prime or Netflix. Filmmakers take note. As the title suggests, Arthur was an ‘unexpected’ president all right, but fortunately, the book was also an ‘unexpected’ joy to read as well.  In a big big way.

President Nixon: Alone in the White House

President Nixon: Alone in the White House – by Richard Reeves

I discovered this author by accident and read a book he wrote on President Kennedy (Profile in Power) and thought it was a wonderful read, so I had no problem snapping this one up on Richard Nixon. The style of writing is the same in both books; the two men, as most know, radically different.

This is not a biography. Like its ‘Kennedy’ counterpart, this retrospective focuses on Nixon’s years in the office as president. The narrative starts during his inauguration in 1969 and finishes in April of 1973 as his administration was rapidly decomposing due to the Watergate scandal.  The narrative highlights the more well-known events of the Nixon administration, good and bad, and does seem to get bogged down in places when talking about things like price controls and inflation. It’s a bit hard to stay interested when digesting such things.

There have been many books written about Nixon, and one of the things that makes this book stand out a bit from the rest is the focus on the word in the title - “Alone”.  Sadly, Nixon truly was a loner, and whereas this characteristic can aid certain people in certain occupations, being the leader of the free world really isn’t one of them. Nixon was great when it came to things like formulating world policy, but having to stand around at a cocktail party and make small talk about things such as the weather was a nightmare for him.  There were times when I read about his aloofness and I actually howled out loud with laughter. We read about, for example, when Nixon was planning the White House Christmas party, and he purposely made sure his schedule would prevent him from actually being there during the festivities. 

Of course, he had been a politician for a very long time, and his remoteness made an awful lot of people not like him over the years. Again, not a good thing for a politician. Because of this, the man developed a very unhealthy paranoia of those around him, and he methodically made daily decisions in the White House to purposely try to harm his enemies. These decisions were highly immoral and, many times, illegal. He would pour over daily summaries of the day’s news with a pen as he scribbled notes in the margins for his team to “fix these issues” at all costs.  When we read about this behavior, it really isn’t a surprise that his team actually tried to burglarize the Democrat headquarters with the aim of simply bugging the telephones.

This book is not an attempt at mudslinging. It really does give the man credit where credit is due. It mostly dismisses him from most of the responsibilities of the Viet Nam war, and provides glowing praise of the man during his summits with Communist China and Brezhnev’s Russia.  The man truly could have gone down as one of the greatest had he not been such a paranoid recluse. There were, however, other disturbing signs as well. The book portrays him to be a bitter racist (‘we shouldn’t focus on the blacks, they can’t help us win any elections’) with a particular animosity of Jews.  Maybe such behavior was more common 50 years ago, but it’s still quite sickening to read about it.

The book does its due diligence as the Watergate scandal slowly breaks and festers, yet I never really felt the emotional connection to the tragedy while reading. This is probably because I’ve read so many books about Watergate, where the reader had more time to focus on the actual situations.  Since this book is all encompassing, the tragedy never seems to sink through the skin. In fact, for some reason, this book stops in April 1973. I’m not sure why. I wish the author would have carried his narrative through until Nixon’s resignation 16 months later. Why did this book stop when it did?  It could be because the focus during this time was so narrowly on the administration coming apart, that the sources for this time were few and far between. There’s a brief ‘afterwards’ in the book that quickly summarizes the latter events, but I felt a bit cheated. I wish Richard Reeves would have cut down on much of the mundane comings and goings in the early years and filled that space, instead, with the last 1 ½ years of Nixon’s tumultuous administration.

This book really isn’t that necessary for one who may have read a lot about Richard Nixon, but it succeeds where it should, and truly shows the tragedy of the man’s character of being isolated, paranoid, untrustworthy, and simply alone.  One gets the feeling that had Nixon not been these things, he truly could have been one of the greats. Instead, he’s arguably one of the worst. 

A tragedy indeed.