Gallahad’s Quest by Dixon Arnett, Xlibris, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4653-5707-6, 342 pages, Price Unlisted.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO–Gallahad’s Quest is a political thriller without sex, without domestic violence, without dramatic surprises. It’s a thriller without thrills.
Yet there is a point.
If you happen to be a wonk who loves the political process — or perhaps a student wondering how it works — this novel by Dixon Arnett, a former state assemblyman who headed California’s Department of Aging (among other federal and state posts) before settling down in San Diego, spells it out in all-so-civil fashion.
The subtitle of the book is “Can A Candidate For President Win As An Independent?” and in taking more than 330 pages to answer that question, Arnett offers us a nice-guy California governor, running as an independent, facing a nice-guy, incumbent, Jewish, Democratic president; and a nice-guy, Hispanic, Republican U.S. Senator. And just to make things more interesting, one of these nice guys nominates a nice lady to be his vice presidential running mate.
These nice guys are competitive, but not cut-throat. It is as if the Marquess of Queensbury, bored with the gentle art of boxing, had devised rules for the more rough-and-tumble sport of politics
San Diegans may get an insider’s kick out of the book, which obviously was influenced by Arnett’s familiarity with Pete Wilson, the former San Diego mayor who became a U.S. Senator and later as California governor appointed him to head up the Aging Department.
Wilson’s long time chief of staff was named Bob White; in the book, Governor Hansen’s chief of staff is Bob Green. Like Arnett, himself, the fictional Governor Hansen lives near the San Diego State University campus — although Hansen supposedly lives on a large nearby estate, whereas Arnett’s home is not nearly so grandiose.
The Jewish president has a Middle East peace plan intended to prevent Syria and Iran from smuggling missiles and other armaments to the Hezbollah in Lebanon. The independent governor, who increased his inherited family fortune by developing water treatment systems, demonstrates his international credentials with a bid to pull up water from an underground lake in the Darfur area. The Republican, whose Hispanic background is largely unexplored, says before tackling such overseas dreams, America should fix its own economy first.
I’ve known Dixon Arnett for a long time, having covered the state Assembly as a reporter while he was there, and having written much later in his life about his decision to convert to Judaism. In reading his book, I winced at some of the mistakes that good proof reading might have eliminated (it’s “Ark of the Covenant,” not “Arch of the Covenant,” for example), yawned as Arnett got lost in minutiae (like the campaign itineraries that went on and on yet did not advance the book’s plot) and grinned at some of the insider jokes.
Ultimately, I decided that each of the nice guys in the book was a personification of Arnett himself. The moderate Republican was Arnett past. The ethically-minded Jew is Arnett present. And the altrusitic independent is Arnett in the hoped-for future.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com
(Relayed from email)
To Don Harrison:
Your thoughtful review is on target (including Ark instead of Arch — aaaargh!). I hope you found the novel interesting, but I must admit that I set forth to make the three main characters “nice guys” rather than the kind of clownish mess the current GOP candidates are displaying. Fundamentally, my point is that we won’t get far in addressing or solving our major problems or challenges in our nation today unless we first fix our political system. And that won’t be done by tweeking around the edges. If an Independent were elected president, every right-winger and left-winger in the House and Senate would know it could happen to them in their districts or states. With that kind of pressure, there might be more who, in their own political self-interest, might become part of the solution instead of continuing to be part of the problem. Ah! I’m an optimist; “nice guys” don’t always finish last.
Cheers!
Dixon