Advise and Consent

by Allen Drury

  The first chapter is also dated by obvious indications: the quote from the second page, Congressional Record, Mr. Ennis in the Chair, is fictitiously dated May 17, 195—. Bob Munson wakes up in the then Wardman Park Hotel, which by the time the novel was fully written had become the Sheraton Park Hotel; etc.

  My original subtitle, A Novel of the Western World, was changed at the publisher’s insistence to A Novel of Washington Politics which struck me flat as a pancake and much too limiting. It is a novel of the Western world, in that only in the Western world could a parliamentary struggle such as this occur; the book has much to say of the ills of the Western world; and so on. This was one of the very few, minor, points on which I made concessions to the publishers. I regret it now, because I think my original subtitle expressed very well what I was driving at when I wrote the book.

  Many, many things in the turns and twists of the plot seemed to come out of the typewriter as I went along, as I have described elsewhere. Originally Leffingwell was going to the be confirmed; and so on. But by sticking to the local progression of events as they occur in Washington on a major nomination, and by bearing in mind always the Senate that I knew after 17 years reporting, many things developed as I went along that were not there when I began. The material I submitted to Ken McCormick in the fall of 1957 included the first two chapters and an outline of not more that 100 words; that was the extent of my detailed planning as I sat down to write the book.

  But, it came, as its successor seems to be, at present date.

  I kept my promise to the Lord, and He was kind enough to see me through.

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