Books in Brief

Mark the Glove Boy: The Last Days of Richard Nixon, by Mark Harris (Macmillan, $3.95). Mark Harris has written some beautiful novels, notably The Southpaw and Bang the Drum Slowly, both of which used major league baseball settings. His latest book should have been meant as a joke, but wasn’t. Commissioned by Life in 1962 to write an article on California politics, Harris (alias, Mark the Glove Boy) spent several days traveling with Nixon’s gubernatorial campaign. And, it turns out, Mark the Glove Boy harbored an obsessive hatred for Nixon so intense as to conjure up dreams of assassinating the former vice president: “I could carry a little silver revolver somewhere up my sleeve, cleverly attached by strings and wires to the important muscles of my arm, so that when, meeting Mr. Nixon, my hand should come forward to shake his, the revolver would spring out, I’d fire thrice and cry, ‘Sic semper tyrannis!’ and flee.” Harris’ fleeting encounters with Nixon are described in Norman Mailerish terms—where a brief meeting with a celebrity is imagined to be a monumentally significant “confrontation” for both. Life can take heart that Harris’ meetings with Nixon were few, and Mark the Glove Boy can take heart that, after President Kennedy’s murder, the cherished dream of killing Nixon appeared less attractive “on November 23 than … on November 21.” That is encouraging for us all.

A. E. GOLLAN

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Mark the Glove Boy: The Last Days of Richard Nixon, by Mark Harris (Macmillan, $3.95). Mark Harris has written some beautiful novels, notably The Southpaw and Bang the Drum Slowly, both of which used major league baseball settings. His latest book should have been meant as a joke, but wasn’t. Commissioned by Life in 1962 to write an article on California politics, Harris (alias, Mark the Glove Boy) spent several days traveling with Nixon’s gubernatorial campaign. And, it turns out, Mark the Glove Boy harbored an obsessive hatred for Nixon so intense as to conjure up dreams of assassinating the former vice president: “I could carry a little silver revolver somewhere up my sleeve, cleverly attached by strings and wires to the important muscles of my arm, so that when, meeting Mr. Nixon, my hand should come forward to shake his, the revolver would spring out, I’d fire thrice and cry, ‘Sic semper tyrannis!’ and flee.” Harris’ fleeting encounters with Nixon are described in Norman Mailerish terms—where a brief meeting with a celebrity is imagined to be a monumentally significant “confrontation” for both. Life can take heart that Harris’ meetings with Nixon were few, and Mark the Glove Boy can take heart that, after President Kennedy’s murder, the cherished dream of killing Nixon appeared less attractive “on November 23 than … on November 21.” That is encouraging for us all.

A. E. GOLLAN