Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., by Robert J. Hensler, is a novel that I wouldn't ordinarily read, so I'm counting it as a Critical Monkey contest entry. What compelled me to read it? It was found in a rented beach house, and it wasn't even my beach house. FreshHell mailed it to me; it was almost like a dare to read the whole thing.

Published in 1977, this novel, Washington, D.C., has everything. Power! Sex! Sixties-style revolutionaries who want to blow everything up but are too inept!

The power guy is a senator from Connecticut who thinks he can make the world better by exposing corruption in government. He also wears bell-bottom pants. Readers can guess that at the end of the novel, he'll emerge a sadder and wiser man. When he goes to a party full of political movers and shakers, the hostess greets him:
"Oh Royce," she gushed expansively, "it's so chic to have a real folk hero at one of my parties."

The sex is called "balling" by both men and women. It occurs only between the revolutionaries or the politically corrupt. But don't worry, there are plenty of those, and it's very explicit. The anatomical terms are all correct.

The leader of the inept sixties-style revolutionaries is Leo Phast, a really hep cat who despises almost everyone:
"These kids. Talking revolution. As if revolution was something you talked about. It was more than simple semantics, his mind raced. It was something you did. Revolution was something that took hold of you and filled your mind and body with elation. That force, that letting yourself do it, that was the God-head speaking. Right to you. In terms that your body could understand. Not just your mind."

The writing, wooden throughout, occasionally plunges to this level:
"Sims walked to the parking lot behind Martin's office on Oakleaf Drive in Silver, Spring, Maryland, a short drive from metropolitan Washington. He found his car key in his pocket, opened the Mercedes' door, and slid into the seat. The car was hot, and Sims started the engine and the air conditioner immediately."

Another pleasure of the mid-1970's setting is the up-to-the-minute use of slang:
"Back at the kitchen table, she opened the Herald and turned immediately to Madison Bock's column. Sure enough, she thought to herself as she read, the bum had gigged Lynn."

In the end, Royce, the honest politician, tells his wife that she can't leave him because "I have my plans. I have my career. And you have yours. Your job is being my wife. Being with me. Being mother to Jess and Adam." And there is, finally, some pleasure for me in this novel, in imagining his wife remembering this speech years later, especially the part where he tells her "I have to get in there and hustle my ass off, just to be able to say I'm a man. That's what this Linde affair was all about. And that's what nineteen seventy-six will be about." Okay, maybe so, fella, but it's nice to think that, like the cigarette commercial from your day prophesied, "you've come a long way, baby!"

I'll pass this book on to anyone who's a glutton for punishment--a genuine discard from the 70's that wasn't worth taking home after a beach trip and hasn't been read since.