Bob Graham, a former Democratic Senator from Florida, is promoting his new book, a work of fiction that draws heavily from his years in government service.
What sort of techniques? The technique of dialogue. There’s a tendency, I found when I started writing, to write dialogue more as if it were a briefing session, a long stilted block of conversation. I started through reading how other novelists dealt with dialogue and, frankly, just listening to how people talk to see that they don’t talk in long paragraphs and frequently don’t talk in sentence length and the language which is used tends to be more colloquial than academic.
How has the book been received? It’s been very strong. I’ve been on a promotional tour since the 6th of June. This period here is the first little downtime, and it’s been very well received commercially and, with some exceptions, critically.
What a lot of people comment on is the fact that this book has given them an insight into important events of recent American history, generally starting with the buildup to 9/11, and some analysis of future events, such as post-U.S. involvement in Iraq and why Pakistan is maybe the most dangerous country in the world.
Has there been any talk of movie rights? I’ve been approached by one person who has been both a producer and a screenwriter, but I told him I wanted to wait until after Labor Day because I’ve got more promotional activities — I’m going to be ... in Washington on Aug. 1 at the National Press Club and then the following day in Baltimore, so I’ve got a lot of things like that that run through Labor Day and right now, it’s the book that’s my focus.
Who would you like to play the Senator in the movie? Robert Redford. Well, he’s about the right age, a little bit younger. I’ve always liked his style. Unfortunately, he won’t be on the screen very long — the Senator gets run over by a truck fairly early in the novel, and other than his funeral, he disappears.
Did you have yourself in mind when you wrote the Sen. Billington character? I have to say there are some similarities with Sen. Billington, but there also are differences — most significant is he is dead and I am not.
What’s fictional and what’s not? It’s not that one part of the book is all fact or another part is all fiction. They are weaved together, but the most significant factual parts involve the degree to which the Saudi government and entities affiliated with the Saudi government assisted two of the 19 hijackers, raising the question of why did they do it, and did they provide similar assistance to the other 17 hijackers and why did the United States government go to such lengths to hide the connection to the Saudi government?
The second half of the novel — as they answer the questions from 9/11 and in the course of that find out about this much more dangerous threat to the U.S. than even 9/11 — I was chair[man] in 2008 and 2009 of the Congressional commission on [weapons of mass destruction], and much of the facts in that second part of the book are a result of the experience of trying to evaluate how well America was protecting itself against the worst weapons falling into the worst hands.
A man from Kentucky attends a Tea Party Patriots rally on the West Front of the Capitol to protest the IRS' targeting of conservative political groups.
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