Clark Gifford's Body

Back in Print After Fifty Years "I have not developed the habit of reading thrillers, but I have read enough of them to know that from now on Mr. Fearing is my man."The New Yorker Is there such a thing as political noir? The Manchurian Candidatemight qualify. So might some of the novels of Don DeLillo. But the precursor to them all is perhaps this next-to-unknown 1942 novel by the maverick master Kenneth Fearing, best known for his ingenious tale of detection, The Big Clock. Fearing's title echoes that great anthem of the dispossessed, John Brown's Body. But Clark Gifford is no John Brown. He is a disaffected politician in a nameless but thoroughly familiar media-driven modern state where representative politics has dwindled to the corrupt transaction of business as usual and a foreign war is always breaking out on the horizon. One night Gifford and some of his followers seize radio stations to broadcast a call for freedom. Nobody pays attention except the government. The troops quickly suppress the uprising and capture its leaderyet the rebellion will lead to twenty years of war. Fearing's novel skips freely through those years, interspersing newspaper clippings and court transcripts with the reactions and reminiscences of the politicians, generals, businessmen, journalists, waiters, and soldiers who double as the actors and the chorus in a drama over which, finally, they have no control. Who here is leading? Who is being led? Fearing creates a pseudo-documentary of a world given over to pseudo-politics and pseudo-events, and all the more deadly for that. In such a world, a world far closer to the one we live in now than that of Orwell's 1984, what counts is not the truth but the story that's on record. Because in the end, as Fearing says, "the story alone is the true thing." Out of print for over fifty years, Clark Gifford's Bodyis a prophetic glimpse of the future as a poisonous fog.

KENNETH FEARING (1902-1961) was born in Oak Park, Illinois. Voted wittiest boy and class pessimist in high school, he moved to New York City after graduating the University of Wisconsin. He published several well received volumes of poetry in addition to his novels, including Angel Arms, Dead Reckoning, and Stranger at Coney Island and other poems.

ROBERT POLITO is the author of Doubles, A Reader’s Guide to James Merrill’s The Changing Light at Sandover and Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson. He edited the Library of America volumes, Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 1940s and Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s, and directs the Graduate Writing Program at The New School. He lives in New York.

Introduction

ix

1 A Resident of Bonnfield, Thirty Years after the Attack on the Radio Station WLEX

11

(4)

2 The Chandler Bulletin, Five Years before the Attack

15

(4)

3 George Parkes, a Lieutenant in the Attack at WLEX

19

(6)

4 Alexander Cookrider, Assistant Chief of Operations for WLEX, at the Time of the Attack

25

(12)

5 Elwood Kirby, Secretary to the Board of Directors of Universal Airwaves, on the Evening of the Attack

37

(8)

6 Archibald Danton, Production Director at WRO, Two Years before the Attack

45

(24)

7 The Chandler Bulletin, Three Years after the Attack

69

(4)

8 A Resident of Chandler, Twelve Years after the Attack

73

(4)

9 Clark Gifford's Trial, Two Months after the Attack

77

(8)

10 Residents of Freyburg, at the Time of the Attack

85

(6)

11 Members of the Radii) Audience, during the Attack

91

(4)

12 More Members of the Radio Audience, during the Attack

95

(2)

13 Universal Airwaves Executives, during the Attack

97

(4)

14 Chief Conductor 0. R. Bradley of the Intercity Merchant, on the Night of the Attack

101

(4)

15 The Chandler Bulletin, the Day after the Attack

105

(6)

16 General F. Johan Esteven, Three Years before the Attack

111

(14)

17 Richard Hinton, in the Office of Governor Holling, during the Attack

125

(28)

18 The Esteven Proclamation, Five Years after the Attack

153

(2)

19 Continental Press Service Flashes, Three Months after the Attack

155

(4)

20 Ernest Stosser, Waiter in Fenchon's, Five Years after the Attack

159

(12)

21 Letter from Clark Gifford to His Son on the Eve of His Execution, Three Months after the Attack

171

(4)

22 Troop Review by Minister of War Gerald Macres, Eight Years after the Attack

175

(6)

23 Harry Tabor, Head Bartender in Fenchon's, Eight Years after the Attack

181

(14)

24 Emory Wallach, Short-Wave Operator at WLEX, during the Attack

195

(12)

25 Eddy, in Charge of a Smuggling Convoy, Ten Years after the Attack

207

(32)

26 Leon Gard, Three Months after the Attack

239

(12)

27 The Family Companion, Monthly Magazine, Four Months after the Attack

251

(4)

28 Major Ogden Ditmars, Radio Bureau of the War Ministry, Fourteen Years after the Attack

255

(8)

29 Catherine Kallinbeck, Thirty Years before the Attack

263

(8)

30 Larry Cullen, Fifteen Years after the Attack at WLEX

271

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Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials