Eddie Whitlock's Blog: Reader and Writer - Posts Tagged "fdr"

Do you have a book in you? I mean that question figuratively and not literally. If you literally have a book in you, please turn off your computer and seek medical help.

No, I am asking if you have within you the desire to write a book.

I did. I always have. Well, at least since I realized that the only job that really combined my love of lying with making an income was that of being a writer.

I worked on several books over the years.

One, called "Hell," was going to be about a race war in the United States. Yeah. I never had a central character. It was just vignettes about the horrors of a new Civil War. It was inspired by the riots after the Rodney King verdict and hearing Mike Bowers mention the riots in a speech he gave to the Griffin Kiwanis Club.

I worked on "Hell" for several years.

One day I had the epiphany-after hearing a news report-that the US was no longer divided between African-Americans and Caucasions. It was also divided between Asians, Hispanics and others. It was divided by sex, by gender and by sexual preference, by age and by generation.

After "Hell," I worked on a book about Franklin Roosevelt. I could never get the purpose of the novel straight. Was it alternate history? Was it horror? I struggled with it for years. Someday I may work on it again.

Last year I decided to try National Novel Writing Month. Basically, I set aside everything I had been working on and started a new story.

The inciting incident was based on something my grandfather had told me. Poppa Mack, Maxie McCullough, said that his father had taken him to see the last public hanging in Spalding County.

That incident became the starting point for a story that I called "Hanging" and that became "Evil is Always Human."

I was pleased with the final product. Here's why: the characters.

I have read about authors who plot out their stories with elaborate outlines. I cannot do that, apparently. I wrote my book as if I were following real people and merely telling what happened to them. They seemed real. When they would sometimes do something that did not seem real, I would let the character tell me the right action to put in.

The characters, particularly the mother, are paradoxes. They don't always do what I would expect them to do, but they do what people do. Sometimes, that is unexpected. Sometimes they are strong; sometimes they are weak, evil, lazy and even inattentive.

"Evil is Always Human" is a story that I am happy with as it stands. Some of the folks who have read it have specifically asked for a sequel. It is a story that I already know. It's not a pretty story. The characters who survived the first book don't become better people who recognize the errors of their ways. They just keep going like people do.

I humbly ask that you buy my book. Read it. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

For whatever reason, I enjoy reading about our nation's Presidents. There are only forty-four and I would like to memorize them in order, along with their dates in office, but I have not been able to do that so far.

The men (and so far they've all been men) we have select as the leader of our country reflect something about the times in which they were selected.

My favorite is Franklin Delano Roosevelt and I've read quite a few books about him. I find the most fascinating aspect of his presidency to be the fact that he was elected, re-elected, re-elected and re-elected without his paralysis being a campaign issue. Amazing.

Of course, George W. Bush was elected and re-elected, despite being mentally challenged.

Just kidding, my Republican friends, just kidding.

I'm currently reading about the assassination of James Garfield, whom many people believe was our first lasagna-loving feline President. He was not.

His election, detailed in the book DESTINY OF THE REPUBLIC by Candice Millard, was a fluke. His assassination was likewise an unlikely event. If it had not been for his germs-are-a-theory-not-a-reality medical care, he would have lived.

Up next I'm hoping to read about William Henry Harrison, whose 30-day presidency by all rights should have the fewest number of detractors. We'll see.

Today I saw the new movie "Hyde Park on Hudson" at Cine Athens. The movie stars Bill Murray as my hero Franklin D. Roosevelt. The advertisements suggest that the film is all about the weekend in 1939 when FDR hosted the King and Queen of England at his New York home.

The movie is really more about the brief romance between FDR and his distant cousin Daisy Suckley. It's kind of based on the book Closest Companion, which was a compilation of Daisy's diaries that were published after her death.

The movie-makers use the book as a jumping-off point, I guess. They put in a few events that are not in the book - like Daisy giving FDR a hand job and Daisy discovering a naked Missy LeHand having a tryst with the POTUS at a secret hideaway.

I have read a few books about our 32nd President. I am more intrigued by his private life than the public stuff. In particular, I like to read about how his paralysis impacted his life and made him a better person than he would have probably been otherwise.

I was watching for how the paralysis was dealt with. Overall, it seemed accurate to me. There were a couple of times when FDR got around better than he really could have. Still, the paralysis was neither ignored nor trivialized. It was even something he was able to use when talking with the King to say that his stuttering was simply a facet of him and not a terrible thing to be ignored or denied.

I was also pleased with how the film dealt with the busy-ness of FDR's life as President. He relied on a lot of people to be his legs. Two of these, Missy and First Lady Eleanor, are given prominence in the film. Eleanor, interestingly, is treated as if her homosexuality were a fact of which most inner circle folks were aware. I don't really know that this was the case.

Bill Murray did not do an imitation of FDR. He captured many mannerisms, but he never seemed to be attempting the upper-crust New England dialect of Roosevelt's.

In appearance, they chose to make Murray look like FDR in 1943. By then, he had lost weight and the possibly-cancerous mole over his left eye was noticable. In the movie, that mole is a little too prominent. By the time it was that size, FDR had secret surgery to have it removed.

I was disappointed that the movie chose to diverge from reality at a few points, but I cannot complain a lot about that. The fact that this movie gives an inside view of the life of FDR is pretty amazing.

One of the writing projects I'm currently working on is a zombie apocalypse story set in 1980 and featuring Jimmy Carter and my dog Marvin as major characters.

Marvin, of course, is only 9 years old now so this would be a fictional version of Marvin. To my knowledge, he has never met Jimmy Carter or any other POTUS.

The story has stalled for two different reasons:

First, I am not happy with the other characters in the story. There's a main character who is pretty much a standard noble protagonist. There is a jerk character who serves as foil to the protagonist.

I had two good female characters who didn't work out. I painted myself into a corner with the protagonist's wife and found her far too stereotypical as the woman-in-a-zombie-story who is bound to eventually fall while running because she is wearing high heels.

I am exaggerating, of course. I just wanted a better, stronger female. I tried to get that with the other female character, but the plot killed her off too soon. It was logical, but still it undermined my desire to have a strong, non-stereotypical woman.

My second problem has been Jimmy Carter. I met him a few years ago. He's a nice fellow with a strong presence that you don't get in the media portrayals of him, I don't think. As I try to write a fictional version of him, I found it to be difficult to latch onto an angle that worked.

Be aware that I have not followed my own political opinions in developing real political figures as fictional characters. In other words, the story I wrote about George W. Bush shows him as stronger in character than I really think he is.

I wanted to make Jimmy Carter a distant, bureaucratic figure, but I kept being drawn to having him personally and humanely interact with others.

The story is so screwed up now that I may leave it out all together. We'll see.

If you want to read my story about George W. Bush, you can find it in the NOTES section of my Facebook page.

By the way, I'm working on other tales featuring William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, James Buchanon, FDR and Nixon. Maybe those will go better.