7/7: "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
⏱️ 5 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 | The DFS Winter Sale is on, so if savings on sofers and beds float your boat, now's the right time. |
| 0:08.0 | To find the right thing, at the right price. |
| 0:12.0 | And for a short time only, get four years. thing at the right price. |
| 0:13.0 | And for a short time only, get four years interest free credit on everything. |
| 0:17.0 | DFS, what's your thing? |
| 0:20.0 | According to Lydia's my muse. Mother treason. |
| 0:24.0 | Seven. |
| 0:26.0 | This is the end of a yarn without an end. |
| 0:29.0 | There will be no rescue of innocence nor of the black hat who could palm all the aces. I wasn't trying to surprise |
| 0:35.2 | you and you're not surprised. The Trippian Tina are disappeared. I told you from the first. There's no |
| 0:41.4 | trickery. Remember, I don't have details. For years now I've used the only sources I have in the genuine |
| 0:47.6 | Sci-Fi spy game, the library reading room, and I found no explanation as to why my letters go unappreciated. |
| 0:55.0 | I have learned that the returning Stoo Jorchenko was not executed, as expected, |
| 1:00.0 | and was being kept available in a reduced state for Westernized a puzzle that Glassnose might actually mean 9 grams, maybe. |
| 1:09.0 | I have also learned that our Keystone op the coward, Mr. Edward Lee Howard, is pacing in a glass cage in Moscow, a pet |
| 1:15.6 | of the stouges, rewarded like a rat on a leash for having wiped out our cow poking in Russia |
| 1:20.6 | forever, maybe. |
| 1:22.3 | I'm not joking about this. You're not so trendy that you don't |
| 1:25.4 | care that one very ordinary American lad sold out men, women, and children as if they were |
| 1:30.4 | cow chips. For a thrill, I'll suppose that Las Vegas and Atlantic City, where |
| 1:35.2 | trivia never went, maybe, or as bugged as our Moscow Chancery, which were thinking about demolishing |
| 1:41.0 | brick by brick, and that those blackjack dealers in bow ties at |
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