Books in Brief: Washington in Pieces

Washington in Pieces, by John Nollson (Doubleday, 249 pp., $11.95). Washington in precisely 46 pieces, each about five pages or so long, and all funny. Nollson, whose work appears regularly in The American Spectator, knows Washington well: he was an assistant to Senator Moynihan. Nevertheless, he prefers the madcap Washington of his own invention, which does not seem so very distant from the real thing, after all. Though this collection is uneven, as is typical of a young writer’s assembled works, there are sketches here that rank with the best Washington wit being produced today. For instance, in “Sport,” the author brings the powers of the armed services into the playing fields of Washington’s athletic teams, with lethal results. In “Entertainment,” he shows the proper method of throwing a party, and whom to invite. In “Literary Persuasion,” he concocts a head- to-head confrontation between Gabriel Garcia Marquez and one Senator Larethan Jerome Wimbol (age 146). The good senator, who is featured in several of the author’s pieces, accuses the Latin American writer of stealing his title One Hundred Years of Solitude from such notable American works as Norman Vincent Peale’s One Hundred Routes to Certitude and Don Rickles’s One Hundred Jokes, All verycrude. Nollson offers a tour of the District of Columbia’s “Houses of Worship,” including the Church of Our Lady of the Legislature, the Shrine of St. Accountus the Counselor, and the Cathedral of St. Hilda of the Canape. But the best piece may well be “A Little Bit of Soul,” wherein the author relates a visit to a supper club: “The jazz group was outstanding. The more I listened, the more I realized that it was the piano player who made the difference. His music had a clean sound, assertive but not overstated. His interpretation of some of the old standards, though clearly original, still struck one as definitive. What’s more, he looked very familiar. . . . Suddenly I realized that it was Spiro Agnew.”

JM

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Joe Mysak

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Washington in Pieces, by John Nollson (Doubleday, 249 pp., $11.95). Washington in precisely 46 pieces, each about five pages or so long, and all funny. Nollson, whose work appears regularly in The American Spectator, knows Washington well: he was an assistant to Senator Moynihan. Nevertheless, he prefers the madcap Washington of his own invention, which does not seem so very distant from the real thing, after all. Though this collection is uneven, as is typical of a young writer’s assembled works, there are sketches here that rank with the best Washington wit being produced today. For instance, in “Sport,” the author brings the powers of the armed services into the playing fields of Washington’s athletic teams, with lethal results. In “Entertainment,” he shows the proper method of throwing a party, and whom to invite. In “Literary Persuasion,” he concocts a head- to-head confrontation between Gabriel Garcia Marquez and one Senator Larethan Jerome Wimbol (age 146). The good senator, who is featured in several of the author’s pieces, accuses the Latin American writer of stealing his title One Hundred Years of Solitude from such notable American works as Norman Vincent Peale’s One Hundred Routes to Certitude and Don Rickles’s One Hundred Jokes, All verycrude. Nollson offers a tour of the District of Columbia’s “Houses of Worship,” including the Church of Our Lady of the Legislature, the Shrine of St. Accountus the Counselor, and the Cathedral of St. Hilda of the Canape. But the best piece may well be “A Little Bit of Soul,” wherein the author relates a visit to a supper club: “The jazz group was outstanding. The more I listened, the more I realized that it was the piano player who made the difference. His music had a clean sound, assertive but not overstated. His interpretation of some of the old standards, though clearly original, still struck one as definitive. What’s more, he looked very familiar. . . . Suddenly I realized that it was Spiro Agnew.”