E.F. Watley, Editor
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The Coup author Jamie Malanowski. |
In today's climate of ever-increasing absurdity, it is more and more challenging for satirists to devise
scenarios that actually go beyond the bounds of the possible. Even the most ludicrous twisting of the
facts is often overshadowed by actual events. But Jamie Malanowski's recent satirical novel,
The Coup, does manage to venture into the realm of the fictional, for now. The biting
narrative chronicles the campaign of a ruthless vice-president, Godwin Pope, to move up to the
number one seat by any means necessary.
"The inspiration for the book lies in events that have been part of our politics for the last
fifteen years or so," said Malanowski. "It's a willingness to let scandal nullify the results of
elections and to disqualify people from public office, a willingness to jump to conclusions about
things we hear, a willingness to allow sensation to substitute for reason. To me, the great point
of the book is that I get to portray a Washington turned upside down by nothing. But we have seen
that happen over and over."
Malanowski is no stranger to political humor; in addition to time served on the original Spy
magazine team and humorous articles written for The New Yorker and Vanity Fair,
he is the author of the novel Mr. Stupid Goes to Washington and co-author of the play and book
Loose Lips. However, The Coup is in many ways his most ambitious effort to date,
a more sophisticated and viciously imagined world where the stubborn partisan divisions within the
Beltway lend themselves all too easily to lies and blackmail with huge stakes.
"A lot of the magazine pieces that I wrote that I'm most fond of seemed to spring out of my head
and were written in a kind of fever," Malanowski said. "This was a deeper experience; I had to slow
down, and think about the characters, who they were, what they'd be doing when I needed them to
react to something. Short pieces of satire bounce off a world; here, I really had to create the world."
Although the ambitious Godwin Pope is the principal plotter, it's the power of scandal itself that
takes center stage.
"I think we're in a time when we face huge issues that are almost beyond the ability of a
democratic society to analyze rationally," Malanowski observed. "So what do we do? We put our
faith in political leaders. We pick a candidate who we think is like us - who comes from where we come
from, who has been on our side in the past, who seems to respond to our values and anxieties. But
it's an act of faith. And scandal is the Great Revealer, the event that says this person is not
the person you thought him to be."
The Coup has received enthusiastic reviews from political journalists, as well as at
least once former director of the National Security Council, although Malanowski ruefully adds
that he's "still waiting to hear from someone currently on a government payroll."
He points out that a major part of the book focuses on the failure of the public to be more
discriminating in its judgment. "It would be great if people would think about the characters
and what they represent. I guess the point of the book is that nobody is who we think they are,
that we ought to be more realistic about what we expect from our leaders, and we ought to be more
demanding of ourselves to figure out answers and avoid being bamboozled."
"What would make me really happy is if everyone who read The Coup would look at a
politician and ask 'what's he really up to?'"
Jamie Malanowski is the managing editor of Playboy and a former editor
at Time and Esquire. His most recent novel, The Coup, was published by Doubleday; it retails for
$22.95 and
is available at major book sellers everywhere. For more
information, visit jamiemalanowski.com.
E.F. Watley is the founding editor of Check Please! and the current administrator
at HumorFeed; his own website is The Watley Review.
