2/7: "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
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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
July, 1961: Refugees from East Berlin seeking sanctuary.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Gordon Liddies, my Muse, Mother Treason. |
| 0:05.0 | 2. Meet the Palikans. |
| 0:08.0 | They were not a typical Moscow family, but what did I know? |
| 0:12.0 | What do you know? Mama worked as the night concierge on our floor at the National |
| 0:16.5 | Hotel. She was sharp-eyed, rosy, chubby, and she regarded her three children as future Lenin scholars. |
| 0:25.0 | She collected me from the Monroe's at dawn, |
| 0:28.0 | and we rode the metro and then a bus until we arrived at a drab new housing district far from Red Square. |
| 0:34.2 | Papa met us happily at the door. |
| 0:36.6 | He was a robust clerk at a tool and dye factory outside Moscow. |
| 0:41.8 | The two Grandma's were cooking breakfast while caretaking the two |
| 0:44.7 | little girls whose names I missed. Then there was Trifon, my guy, whom I liked right away. He's called Tripya at home. I mangled it okay. He called me |
| 0:57.2 | Tipya. Dear Tip. His first words to me are gone but close to was careful English. |
| 1:04.0 | I love this blouse. |
| 1:07.0 | He met my cowboy shirt. |
| 1:08.8 | I've been wearing my Boy Scout uniform over Long John since Philadelphia, and the day before it surrendered it reluctantly |
| 1:15.7 | to the hotel laundry. |
| 1:17.7 | My mother had packed my bag around the concept of death by freezing. |
| 1:21.9 | Fortunately I had convinced her to stick in one of my choice |
| 1:24.5 | possessions. Raggedy cowboy shirt, two tones, patched, studs, and worn down fringe. |
| 1:31.1 | I padded my shirt and replied to trivia in English, loudly as if you were deaf, that it |
| 1:39.2 | was what cowboys wore, you know, good guys, Roy Rogers Rogers Gene Autry the lone ranger. |
| 1:45.0 | Trippia chomped his potato can't pancakes, nodding dreamily at my explanation. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.