6/7: "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
⏱️ 6 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
1951 US Cold War propaganda.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Cordenlity is my muse, Mother treason, six. That club, it tumbled the rest of the year. |
| 0:12.4 | I'll add a Russian metaphor. Thaw brings impassable mud. SciFi Spy calls 1985 the year of the spooked. At summer start one of our midlife cowards named John A. Walker |
| 0:27.7 | Jr. was turned in by his wife for selling out the US Navy to their 3 million stuges, not for politics, just cash. |
| 0:37.9 | At Summers end, one of their midlife cowards named Vitali Urchenko walked into the astonished arms of our Keystone |
| 0:45.8 | Ops. Importantly, Urchenko was a very high stooge at the KGB's |
| 0:50.3 | first chief directorate's operations department. |
| 0:53.8 | One of Trifia's compadres? |
| 0:55.8 | Again, Yurchenko sold out not for politics, just cash. |
| 1:00.8 | Soon Yurchenko was singing low comedy to our side. |
| 1:04.0 | It was suggested that the American Chancery Building I'd shown to Zofia that night in Moscow |
| 1:10.0 | was more bugged than Moosehead Lake. |
| 1:13.8 | Soon after, it was revealed to our keystoneers |
| 1:16.2 | that one of our junior ops in clandestine services, |
| 1:19.5 | the soulless bumbler named Edward Lee Howard was selling out our Moscow station. |
| 1:26.0 | Again, not for politics, just cash. |
| 1:29.0 | He actually buried it in the Arizona desert and of course hormones. |
| 1:34.2 | It was funny enough but then our keystoners bungled the pursuit of the coward Mr Howard, |
| 1:39.2 | so badly that he vanished into the desert a freelance clown until he wandered into the Stooges care in June 1986 at Vienna. |
| 1:48.0 | There was worse, spydust in Moscow, British-run Moscow Mole in Jeopardy, a KGB-run Washington mole at the NSA, |
| 1:57.0 | but let that pass. I've made my point. Mud season. |
| 2:01.0 | Tip knew none of this. Neither did you. Nor am I making this up. I couldn't plot such farce. |
| 2:07.0 | I did wonder, when Yurchenko's subsequent escape from our ops and repatriation of the Stuj turned up on TV how it might play in Moscow. |
... |
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