Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years

by Thomas Mallon

Overview

A New York Times Notable Book
A Washington Post Notable Book
 
One of the Best Books of the Year: San Francisco Chronicle, The Daily Beast, The Miami Herald, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Before there was Reagan the conservative icon, there was Reagan the president: genial, unknowable, faced with doubters, scandals, and the final throes of the Cold War. In this extraordinary novel, Thomas Mallon takes us to the tense, high-stakes months in 1986 when—with the Iran-Contra affair, the AIDS epidemic, and the Reykjavik summit with Gorbachev—Reagan and those around him were shaping history. We see Nancy Reagan—brooding, protective, consulting her astrologist at every turn. We see the young Christopher Hitchens—his incisive, acerbic voice lending a powerful counterpoint to events as they unfold. And we see Reagan himself: apparently warm but in fact distant and mercurial, by turns seeming to know more than he lets on and let on more than he knows. Written with impeccable language and savage wit, Finale is historical fiction of the highest order, brilliantly rendering the human drama behind these famous—and familiar—faces.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101872550
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/09/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	560
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Thomas Mallon is the author of nine novels, including Henry and Clara, Dewey Defeats Truman, Fellow Travelers, and Watergate. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Times Book Review, and in 2011 he received the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award for prose style. He has been the literary editor of GQ and the deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He lives in Washington, D.C.

www.thomasmallon.com

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 9
October 1, 1986
 
 “This has given us a lot of ideas for ours,” said a smiling Ronald Reagan to an unsmiling Rosalynn Carter, as the incumbent president concluded a quick tour of his predecessor’s new library.
 
“Yes,” agreed Nancy, who was thinking: ideas for what not to do. All these kitsch displays: the “Peanut Brigade” banner from ’76; the kids’ letters—“Please stop people from killing the whales”—and worse, Carter’s replies to them, signed “Jimmy.”
 
“Good,” said Rosalynn, without adding any words or warmth.
 
The two presidential couples filed out into the sunshine, toward the speakers’ platform, as the Fort McPherson army band played “Hail to the Chief.” Nancy looked over the four circular pavilions that had just been constructed on this hillside and thought they looked like a monotonous world’s fair.
 
Still, as much as she tried, it was hard for her to dislike the Carters themselves. No matter how prudish and pickle-pussed the two of them might be, there was no getting away from how much they had done for her and Ronnie—first, by defeating the Fords, whom she had no trouble at all disliking; and then, once in the White House, by screwing up so badly they seemed to have spent their whole four years rolling out a red carpet for the Reagans. Someone on Mike Deaver’s staff used to refer to the thirty-ninth president as “the Mastermind,” insisting that Jimmy Carter was the greatest Republican strategist of all time.
 
Nancy looked back at the building they’d just exited, as if to pay the design a compliment with some extra attention. She was actually trying to take comfort in the thought of how Carter’s papers were now neatly stored in towering rows of banker’s boxes that ran along a huge curving wall. Even failure could be made to look like accomplishment; something settled, achieved. So maybe there was hope for her and Ronnie if things really did fall apart.
 
No, things could fall to such smithereens that even an illusion became impossible to construct. Nixon’s library still wasn’t built, and from what she heard it would be a penny arcade of cheap statues and props, while the documents it ought to house remained far away under the government’s lock and key, serving the prison term that Nixon had avoided.
 
She and Ronnie, along with the Carters, reached the platform. Applause—and jeers—could be heard from the crowd of spectators on the hillside. Nancy for a moment couldn’t tell if the disapproval related to the Sandinistas or South Africa—probably the latter, given that most of Atlanta’s black establishment was here for the dedication. She looked over at Carter, who had just taken his seat; today was the first time she’d seen him in five years, since the night Ronnie had sent all the ex-presidents off to Sadat’s funeral. She regarded his pursed preacherly lips and thought of the handwritten notes to Sadat and Begin now on display in the library behind them, signed “JC,” as if they were memos from Christ himself, ordering the tribes in his Holy Land to make peace.
 
Well, she thought, it was decent of him to pout over the disrespect the protesters were showing Ronnie. But after a few more seconds she realized the reason for his sour expression: he was being protested, too! She strained to make out the chant that had gone up:
 
          YOU TAKE THE HIGH ROAD! WE’LL TAKE THE NO ROAD!
 
On the flight down, one of the advance men had told her that a lot of locals opposed the four-lane highway being built to bring people here; the courts had actually halted construction for a while. These boos must be putting a bit of a damper on JC’s sixty-second birthday—not that his successor’s unavoidable presence hadn’t already cast a pall over it. Ninety percent of the news cameras here would be leaving halfway through the program, as soon as Ronnie finished his speech.
 
She waved hello to Carter’s little strawberry-blond granddaughter, who would cut the ribbon. The girl looked just the way awful little Amy, who’d grown up into more of a slob than Patti, had looked during JC’s White House days. His deciding to quote her on “nuclear proliferation,” as if she were some Quiz Kid, during the ’80 debate! Another gift from the gods.
 
In one way it was good that she and Ronnie hadn’t gotten to the White House sooner than they did. Had that happened, Patti, who actually did talk about nuclear proliferation, might have been living with them, as the world’s most impossible college student, foisting people even worse than that horrible Caldicott woman on her soft touch of a father.
 
Nancy looked at her tiny platinum wristwatch.
 
### 
 
“I often get invited to library dedications,” spoke the president. “There aren’t that many people still around who knew Andrew Carnegie.”
 
Jimmy Carter displayed his large, recently whitened teeth to the crowd, imitating amusement while he stole a glance at Mondale, the other person here who’d had the experience of playing straight man to this dunce on a national debate stage. Carter noticed, to his dismay, that Fritz’s stomach, larger than when he’d last seen it, was shaking agreeably. His own vice president was actually enjoying this.
 
I can think of no other country on Earth where two political leaders could disagree so widely yet come together in mutual respect.
 
The old actor was sounding generous while really paying himself a compliment, letting the audience trick itself into thinking that the thirty-ninth president had a peanut shell’s worth of respect for the fortieth. This business of pretending that we’re “all Americans” just trivially separated by party labels was the domestic version of the “moral equivalence” that Reagan and his kind—chief among them Jeane Kirkpatrick, former Democrat—were always deploring on the international plane.
 
Reagan was now praising Carter’s mother, “Miss Lillian,” as well as his sister, Ruth, recently swallowed by the pancreatic cancer that stalked the family—and was likely to get them all before long. He himself was expecting a short ex-presidency, and he was determined to do something different and redemptive with it.
 
Jimmy Carter spoke these words in his inaugural address as governor of Georgia: “I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.”
 
The man being quoted adjusted his smile to something grave and appreciative; he avoided meeting Coretta King’s gaze, so as not to appear to be fishing for additional compliments. But a part of him longed to have a lapel microphone into which he could say to Reagan: “Yes, and you started your 1980 campaign against me talking about states’ rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi.” The thought of that murderous hamlet, with three civil rights workers buried in an earthen dam, left him righteous—and ever so slightly uneasy. He had come a long way in his ideological life, as far forward as Reagan had gone backward, but he still hoped the papers from this gubernatorial campaign Reagan was referencing would remain unprocessed a while longer, lest some zealous researcher become intrigued by a few leaflets that might suggest why Jimmy Carter had actually gotten only five percent of the black Georgia vote in 1970.
 
. . . using his gifts—in particular, his superb intelligence . . .
 
Reagan made intelligence sound like a handicap, the way his aides had mocked his predecessor for actually reading the Air Force budget instead of just approving it. Looking out into the audience, Carter observed Sam Nunn, the sort of conservative Democrat on his way to extinction and thus, like a liberal Republican, highly respected. He knew that Nunn considered Reagan’s supposed toughness to be the proper antidote to Jimmy Carter’s own now-legendary weakness, and his jaw jutted forward at the thought of the false comparison. If he’d made a deal for Daniloff like the one announced yesterday, there’d have been a dozen cartoons in the papers this morning depicting him as a frightened bunny rabbit. Eight years ago, on his watch, two Russian spies had gotten fifty years in jail apiece, whereas Zakharov had just been allowed to leave the U.S. with a plea of nolo contendere—and been given permission to come back in five years! That was Reagan’s toughness.
 
. . . your countrymen still have vivid memories of your time in the White House . . .
 
He could see two aides smirking, as if to say “Do they ever,” and then realized that one of them wasn’t even Reagan’s but a guy who’d worked for him!
 
. . . repairing to a quiet place to receive the latest word on the hostages you did so much to free, or studying in your hideaway office for the meeting at Camp David . . .
 
It was as if the class football hero had been ordered to pay tribute to the class grind.
 
And there’s only one thing left to say. From the fortieth president to the thirty-ninth, happy birthday. And, Mr. President, if I could give you one word of advice: Life begins at seventy!
 
As everyone laughed—including Fritz, with god-awful gusto—the former president realized that this was the line that would play on the evening news. There you go again, you son of a bitch. He had to trump him, or at least come up with something sufficiently gracious to guarantee a few words of his own on tonight’s broadcasts. So at the top of his typewritten remarks, he quickly penciled in a new lead:
 
Having heard you speak, Mr. President, I finally, for the first time, understand why you won and I lost.
 
It was the sort of lie he’d once promised never to tell the American people. The truth was he’d come to understand this long ago. 
 
###
 
 

Reading Group Guide

The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years by Thomas Mallon. The book is the fictionalized account of the tumultuous administration of the most consequential and enigmatic president of modern times. Several figures—including a humbled, crafty Richard Nixon; a young, acerbic Christopher Hitchens; and an anxious Nancy Reagan—become the eyes through which readers see the last convulsions of the Cold War, the AIDS epidemic, a clash of ideologies, and a political revolution. At the center of it all is Reagan himself, whose genial remoteness confounds everyone. 

1. Why were you interested in reading Finale?

2. Why do you think the author chose to set the book in 1986?

3. Is the novel, finally, about President Reagan? Does the subtitle (A Novel of the Reagan Years) suggest other intentions of the author?

4. Which characters are invented by the author and what do they add to the narrative of the novel? Are they foils to the other characters based on real people or invented to keep the story moving along or to add extra intrigue?

5. What do historical novels such as this add to our knowledge of history? And in the case of Finale, how does it add to recent American history and to your memories of the events and those months in 1986 if you lived through and remember them? What were you doing at the time? Were you following the news closely? Do you remember the Reykjavik Summit, the early days of AIDS, and the Iran-Contra Affair?

6. Newsday praised Mallon’s previous novel, Watergate:  “Like the best historical novelists, Mallon uses great public events as superstructure for classic themes of ambition and power, rivalry and envy, love lost and yearned for.” Do you believe Mallon is able to do the same with this novel? How? How does he makes those few momentous months come alive again?

7. What do you think are the difficulties and complications of writing about fairly recent historical events and figures, including some who are still alive?

8. Why do you think the author has chosen to use several different points of view instead of a single narrative perspective? Do you think this made the novel a more compelling story? What effect do the various viewpoints and voices have on your reading experience?

9. In Finale, how does Hollywood play into the actions and drama of Washington, D.C.? 

10. Describe and compare the important players/voices in the book. Whom do you like the best and why? Do you trust them all? Why do you think Mallon has chosen this particular cast of characters instead of others?

11. Why do we not hear directly from President Reagan until the end?

12. Has the novel changed your view on any of the well-known historical figures? Nancy Reagan or Christopher Hitchens or Richard Nixon? How?

13. Describe the relationship between Gorbachev and Reagan, and between the aides of both men. Does one really come out of the summit ahead of the other?

14. What role does former president Nixon play in the novel? Do you view him differently after reading this book than you did previously? How? Did you read Thomas Mallon’s Watergate? Do you think this is the natural successor to that book?

15. Pick one of the main political issues/topics of the book and discuss as a group. The Cold War, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan’s public friendship, the Iran-Contra Affair, the AIDS epidemic.

16. Have you read anything by Christopher Hitchens (books, Vanity Fair articles, etc.)? What do you think of the portrayal of him here? What does he add to the narrative? How does he evolve, or does he, over the course of the novel?

17.  What about Pamela Harriman? She adds to the comic side of the novel. What are her motivations and do they change during the novel? How has her past shaped the way she is and her goals for the future?

18. There are also a number of humorous passages between Nancy Reagan and Merv Griffin. What propels Nancy forward? Describe her relationship with the president and compare it to his relationships with his children.

19. Even though you know the outcomes of the Reykjavik Summit and other news in the book (or you can look them up), were you surprised by the plot’s complications and the ending?

20. How has the novel broadened your view of the period and the events of 1986?

21. What are the main conflicts or points of intrigue in the novel?

22. Describe the Nick Carrollton–Anders Little plotline in Finale. Why does Mallon invent them and tell their story in the context of political events in 1986?

23. What role does Anne Macmurray play? Do you sympathize with her? She also appears in an older Mallon novel, Dewey Defeats Truman, as one of the main characters. Why do you think Mallon has brought her back to this novel? How to do feel about what happens to her and her ex-husband (her suitor in the earlier novel), Peter Cox? Do you think Mallon will write about her again?

24. If you could ask Thomas Mallon a question, what would it be?

Editorial Reviews

“Sly and penetrating. . . . Mallon’s most audacious and important work yet.” —The New York Times Book Review

“[A] scintillating comic epic of politics. . . . Mallon follows his troupe across thousands of miles, capturing what happens with rapier wit.” —San Francisco Chronicle 

“A story about the limits of human ambition. . . . Wicked good, that Thomas Mallon.” —The Washington Post
 
“Finale offers a certifiable slice of the recent past but teases its readers with subtle fictionalization . . . Mallon handles it with an easy mastery.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Richly imagined. . . . Mallon offers a useful reminder that Presidential reputations often improve with the passage of time.” —The New Yorker

“Masterful performances, by the author and by his subject.” —Dallas Morning News

“Gorbachev, Thatcher, the Gipper himself—the gang’s all here and ready to party like it’s 1986 in this propulsive and often very funny novel that portrays political upheaval through the eyes of some of recent history’s most formidable players.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“Full of witty, sometimes withering and often surprisingly sympathetic portraits of the characters clustered around the ever-unknowable president.” —Chicago Tribune

“Vivid. . . . Mallon impressively blends his singular knowledge of political history with his limitless imagination to capture an era.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

“[Mallon] sculpts characters who embody the folly and frustration of political power. . . . Mallon has become a master of such political theater. . . . Combin[es] broad historical accuracy and fictional verisimilitude with aplomb.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“Mr. Mallon isn't just a gifted novelist; he also has a sound working knowledge of Washington ways. . . . A splendid example of the genre at its best.” —Washington Times

“Captur[es] the texture of the times with a dry wit and a keen eye for subtle insights. . . . His renderings of Hitchens’s tartness are dead on, and many of the one-liners about other figures zing off the page. . . . He has captured the mood and feel of the late 1980s perfectly.” —National Review

“What a pleasure it is to enter the rough-and-tumble politics of Thomas Mallon’s historical novels. . . . Mallon captures that uncertain tenor of the times while portraying the complex drama of high-level politics with real clarity and energy.” —The AV Club

“One of this novel’s many joys is the beauty and elegance of its prose. . . . [Mallon] reminds us that history is not about facts and dates; it’s the greatest story ever told.” —The Miami Herald

“Mr. Mallon can twist language like a knife. . . . [He] skillfully interweaves the personal and the political. . . . Mr. Mallon’s vivid take on this period in American politics rings true.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“An intriguing, humorous, even catty backstage view of the Reagan presidency from an artisan of the historical novel.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“A scrupulously researched novel that gives readers a front-row seat on world-changing events—a combination that proves irresistible.” —Booklist (starred review)

From the Publisher

…sly and penetrating…Mallon is a poised storyteller who traffics in history's ironic creases. His novels don't upend conventional wisdom so much as remind us that history is a rickety architecture of human endeavor—that today's statues commemorate yesterday's frail and fumbling mortals. Less capable practitioners of historical fiction are often all too eager to demonstrate their archival mastery of the era in question. Mallon's novels, in contrast, never come off as feats of plodding research…Mallon gravitates naturally toward political melodrama, from Lincoln's assassination to McCarthyism to Watergate. Compared with these searing episodes, the waning years of the Reagan presidency would seem to constitute rather banal fare. It's perhaps for this reason that Finale represents Mallon's most audacious and important work yet…As in his previous novels, Mallon works deftly with an ensemble cast, employing both real-life and fictitious characters, with the effect that his portrait of the Reagan years is rendered as a beguiling collage. His characters are relentlessly witty…and are often deployed as cameos just for the comic hell of it…

The New York Times Book Review - Robert Draper

07/13/2015
In this novel, Mallon (Watergate) fixes his wide-angle historical lens on the presidency of Ronald Reagan, in particular the events leading up to the exposé of the Iran-Contra affair in 1986. As befitting the author’s usual literary mode, Reagan himself is a minor character in his own story. The major characters include such real-life personalities as rising English journalist Christopher Hitchens, the much-married English socialite Pamela Harriman, and would-be presidential assassin John Hinckley Jr. Worked in among these are several fictional characters, including Anders Little, an arms-control expert with a sexual secret; his friend, Anne Macmurray, an anti-nukes advocate; and her dying ex-husband, Peter Cox, a Texas contributor to Republican candidates. And of course, hovering in the background is “tan, rested and ready” Richard Milhouse Nixon in all his tragic Shakespearean glory, ever trying to restore his blackened legacy. Although largely plotless, the novel boasts a telephone book–sized cast of characters and fits them inside a chronicle large enough to encompass the Reagan-era gay revisionism of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America and the gossip of Truman Capote’s “La Cote Basque, 1965.” What Mallon does best is dramatize the bizarre ’80s intersection of Hollywood and Washington, D.C., as equal weight is given to Merv Griffin and Eva Gabor as to Pat Buchanan and Jeane Kirkpatrick, creating in the process a crazy, quilted depiction of a contradiction-filled presidential administration. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

08/01/2015
Mallon, a longtime master at fictionally realizing history (Watergate), here takes on the "Reagan years," specifically 1986. A few fictional subplots backdrop the main action, wherein a number of historical figures are given voice: Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Christopher Hitchens, even Bette Davis and John Hinckley. Except for Hinckley, the characters are nuanced, not simple pasteups. Take one of the principals, Nancy Reagan: astrology obsessed for sure but also self-aware ("The Gaze" is a ruse), reflective, and genuinely human. Those who absolutely adore or detest her will probably both be disappointed. So it is with the others. The book's centerpiece is the Iceland disarmament summit with Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and the tension is manifest. Readers who didn't experience this time in history—or who aren't familiar with the myriad luminaries who appear here, from Lindy Boggs through Jeanne Kirkpatrick and from Pat Moynihan to Mort Zuckerman—may feel at sea at times. But it's worth it for this well-developed snapshot of an important year. Oh, Reagan himself? He comes across as vaguely charming but unreadable to friend and foe alike. As Kirkpatrick "says" to Nixon: "You're complex, yes, but palpable. Reagan is smoke." VERDICT For all devotees of historical fiction and this time period.—Robert E. Brown, Oswego, NY

Library Journal

★ 2015-07-01
Covering a momentous several months in 1986, this is an intriguing, humorous, even catty backstage view of the Reagan presidency from an artisan of the historical novel.Mallon (Watergate, 2012, etc.) picks up the political narrative a couple of years after his previous, Nixon-era novel. Reagan is preparing for his second summit with Gorbachev on nuclear disarmament. His wife, Nancy, who confers with her astrologer about the president's actions and with Merv Griffin on everything else, wields considerable influence in the White House. Also perfectly coiffed and politically muscular is the $100 million widow of Averell Harriman, Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman, whose funding and machinations on the Democratic side expose the complex horse-trading ahead of that year's midterm election. To a four-page list of historical figures, Mallon adds a few fictional ones tied mainly to the Iran-Contra spectacle and Washington's gay insiders—dubbed the Homintern by Christopher Hitchens. The late journalist, a major character here and a subplot unto himself as he pursues the early inklings of Iran-Contra, was the dedicatee of Watergate and is described in this book's acknowledgements as a "beloved friend." The main plot, aside from history itself, concerns a popular president's sudden faltering amid crises abroad and at home. Mallon doesn't go far in plumbing the Reagan enigma that has stumped so many, but he creates revealing moments in the first couple's marriage. Historical fiction at this high level satisfies the appetite for speculation or even titillation through restraint as much as research, and Mallon rarely overdoes it—though he seems to have a weakness for insults, as in this small sample: "Pity anyone near Teddy's Cutty-Sarked breath during the delivery of all those aspirated aitches" (Hitchens on Edward Kennedy); "that little patent-leather martinet" (Nancy on John Tower); "a Fabergé egg that talks" (Pat Nixon on Nancy). Mallon's version of history is close enough to fact to revive faded memories, while his imagining of who thought and said what presents some of the coherence and delights of fiction without the excesses of those "what if" rethinks scribbled by Newt Gingrich et al.

Kirkus Reviews