1/7: "Mother Treason," a story from the collection, "Gordon Liddy Is My Muse," by John Calvin Batchelor. January 1, 1990. Read by John Batchelor.
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 31 December 2023
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Gordon-Liddy-Muse-Calvin-Batchelor/dp/0671690787
From Publishers Weekly
Posing as hack writer Tommy "Tip" Paine, Batchelor ( The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica ) offers a comic and often provocative look at contemporary America in this episodic "autobiographical" novel. In eight chapters, each self-contained, Tip roams from Moscow to Hollywood to New England to his ultimate destination, G. Gordon Liddy's Firearms Security Academy in Arizona. While in Russia, he watches a boyhood friend progress, over the years, from awed admirer of American western movies to KGB superstar to an official non-person, "disappeared" as part of that nation's changing politics. In Hollywood, despite the warnings of his decidedly offbeat agent, Tip falls into the clutches of a woman who is not what she seems. In New England, together with his "imaginary best friend, McKerr," Tip solves a multiple murder and uncovers what is possibly a relic of American history. Finally, in the Arizona desert, he posits an arguable identity for the still-elusive"Deep Throat" of the Watergate scandal. Other tales in this totally engaging work recount run-ins with famous literary personages, wealthy Texans and restless Vietnam veterans, or suggest a dark and ancient secret hidden in the heart of Germany. This may be Batchelor's breakthrough novel to the wide audience he deserves.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
The narrator of this inventive picaresque novel is Tip Paine, formerly a spook for the National Security Agency and now a moderately successful sci-fi/spy writer. In eight exuberant episodes Tip ranges from Moscow to Hollywood. He provides mystery (a tale of murder and mayhem in a small New England town), commentary on international politics (an elegiac account of a Russian KGB agent who falls victim to glasnost), and wickedly funny satire of pomp and foolishness in Texas high society, a university writing workshop, and a desert training academy for mercenaries. By alluding frequently to the classics of American literature (e.g., Moby Dick, The Last of the Mohicans ), Batchelor creates illuminating but highly entertaining commentary on contemporary society.
- Albert E. Wilhelm, Tennessee Technological Univ., Cookeville
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc
August, 1961. American reinforcements arrive during the Berlin crisis.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Gordon Liddy is My Muse by Tommy Tipp Payne, a novel by John Calvin Bachelor, read by John Bachelor. |
| 0:10.0 | Part 1, Mother Treason |
| 0:16.9 | Tip grows up my red and black paladin |
| 0:19.6 | 1 |
| 0:24.0 | Russia in winter is the time of gambling and treason. Moscow, at the pinnacle of 11 centuries of Russian winters, |
| 0:28.0 | is the best place to find both. |
| 0:31.0 | Russians love gambling. They hate treason. And because human nature is as |
| 0:36.7 | upside down as not, they are as good at what they favor as they are at what they |
| 0:41.7 | despise. This is a yarn of a boy and a girl who were very good |
| 0:46.2 | gamblers who betrayed their country, Holy Mother Russia, who let me watch it happen for 25 years, |
| 0:53.4 | and whom I can write about now because they're gone, |
| 0:55.9 | and I miss them. |
| 0:57.4 | Also, Tip wants to make some guesses, |
| 1:00.1 | because I believe I lost my two friends to sci-fi spy guys like me, |
| 1:05.0 | though they are not make-believers, agents of our agency, CIA, |
| 1:10.0 | and their state security. |
| 1:12.0 | When I get to those rude bunches, they shall be rudely identified |
| 1:16.6 | as the Keystone Ops and 3 million Stooges. Who is Tip? Tip is I. Now middle-aged, a traveling salesman of make-believe. Nothing |
| 1:27.0 | high-hat, I promise. I've sold a deal of gleeful spy books, and I've put my name on a few movies. If you bought them, thanks. |
| 1:36.6 | I make it all up on small elegant machines and I travel on big amazing ones. Mostly I travel. My first trip out of America was to Moscow |
| 1:47.0 | when I was 11. And I've been going back and back ever since like a fellow who's gotten turned |
| 1:52.3 | around so that the return fair is ticketed the wrong way. |
... |
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