Tom Fool by David Stacton

Tom Fool by David Stacton

'Yes, it was a crusade. But just what was it the people out there feared and hated so much? Not surely the candidate. He was a decent man. Or was that it?'

With Tom Fool (1962) David Stacton concluded a triptych of novels drawn from the history of America. For this final panel he turned his eye on politics. The titular protagonist is a fictional rendering of Wendell Wilkie, unlikely Republican challenger to Franklin D. Roosevelt in the presidential election of 1940. As 'Tom Fool' endures an epic campaigning tour of thirty-one states - assisted (or dogged) by his political advisor 'Sideboard' and husband-and-wife PR consultants the Pattersons - he finds himself uncomfortably reminded that America, in its vastness and contradictions, is more than one country, and a unique conundrum to one who would be President.

David Stacton (1923-1968) was born Lionel Kingsley Evans in San Francisco. He attended Stanford University before serving in the Civilian Public Service as a conscientious objector during World War II, eventually graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in 1951. Stacton went to Europe after college and ended up staying, in his words, 'because I liked it and because I could not get my books in print in America.' His first novel, Dolores, was published in England in 1954. Among the wide-ranging historical and biographical novels for which he would become best known are Remember Me, about Ludwig of Bavaria; On a Balcony, about Nefertiti and Pharaoh Akhenaten; Segaki, set in feudal Japan; A Signal Victory, about the Spanish conquest of the Yucatán; Old Acquaintance, set at a film festival and telling of the loves of a star resembling Marlene Dietrich; and People of the Book, set during the Thirty Years' War. In 1968 he moved to Fredensborg, Denmark, but ten days later he was found dead in his new home. He was forty-four years old.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780571320820
ISBN 10	0571320821
Title	Tom Fool
Author	David Stacton
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Faber & Faber
Year published	2014-11-20
Number of pages	210
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.