Allen Drury

Allen Stuart Drury (September 2, 1918 – September 2, 1998) was a U.S. novelist. He wrote the 1959 novel "Advise and Consent", for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1960. [http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Fiction Pulitzer Prize Winners: Fiction (1948-present) - Pulitzer.org] Retrieved October 1, 2008.]

He was born in Houston, Texas, and died in San Francisco, California on his eightieth birthday.

"A Senate Journal"

In late 1943, he was a 25-year old army veteran looking for work. A position as the Senate correspondent for United Press soon provided Drury not only with gainful employment, but also with the opportunity "to be of some slight assistance in making my fellow countrymen better acquainted with their Congress and particularly their Senate."

In addition to fulfilling his duties as a reporter, Drury also kept a journal of his views of the Senate and individual senators. Drury freely offered his first impressions of many senators: "Alben Barkley, the Majority Leader, acts like a man who is working awfully hard and awfully earnestly at a job he doesn't particularly like."

He considered Minority Leader Robert Taft "one of the strongest and ablest men here," and felt that "Guy Gillette of Iowa and Hugh Butler of Nebraska vie for the title of Most Senatorial. Both are model solons, white-haired, dignified, every inch the glamorous statesmen."

Harry Truman was featured as his position changed from junior senator from Missouri to vice president to president in the course of Drury's narrative. Given the period it covered, it is natural that Drury’s diary devoted considerable attention to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his contentious relations with the Senate. Drury wrote: "If he appears in a critical light, that is because this is how we saw him from the Hill."

In addition to the chamber's personalities, Drury's journal captured the events, large and small, of the 78th and 79th Congresses. He characterized this period as "the days of the War Senate on its way to becoming the Peace Senate."

At times the events Drury described had a national impact, such as FDR's death or the Senate's consideration of the United Nations Charter. In other cases, the effects were felt more clearly within the Senate community, such as the resignation of Majority Leader Barkley, the Senate's rejection of a congressional expense allowance, or the death of Secretary of the Senate Edwin Halsey.

Although written in the mid-1940s, Drury's diary was not published until 1963. "A Senate Journal" found an audience in part because of the great success of "Advise and Consent", Drury's 1959 novel about the Senate's consideration of the nomination of a controversial individual as Secretary of State. With the subsequent publication of Drury's diary, readers could look for clues about the identity of the fictional senators Drury depicted in his novel (which was made into a film in 1962).

Later works

Drury followed "Advise and Consent" with several sequels. "A Shade of Difference" is set a year after "Advise and Consent". Drury then turned his attention to the next presidential election after those events with "Capable of Honor" and "Preserve and Protect". He then wrote two alternate sequels to these (the difference being which politician survived an assassination attack at a joint appearance), "Come Nineveh, Come Tyre" and "The Promise of Joy".

In 1970, Drury published "The Throne of Saturn", a science fiction novel about the first attempt at sending a manned mission to Mars. He dedicated the work "To the US Astronauts and those who help them fly." Political characters in the book are archetypal rather than comfortably human. The book carries a strong anti-leftist/anti-communist flavor. The book has a lot to say about interference in the space program by leftist Americans.

Having wrapped up his political series by 1975, Drury began a new one with the 1977 novel "Anna Hastings", more a novel about journalism than politics. He returned to the timeline in 1979, with the political novel "Mark Coffin U.S.S." (though the main relationship between the two books was that Hastings was a minor character in "Mark Coffin U.S.S."'s sequels). It was succeeded, by the two-part "The Hill of Summer" and "The Roads of Earth", which are true sequels to "Mark Coffin U.S.S." He also wrote stand-alone novels, "Decision" (about the Supreme Court) and "Pentagon", as well as several other fiction and non-fiction books.

Drury's political novels have been described as page-turners, set against the Cold War, with an aggressive and determined Soviet Union seeking to undermine the US at every turn.

Bibliography

;Novels

*"Advise and Consent" (1959)
*"A Shade of Difference" (1962)
*"That Summer" (1965)
*"Capable of Honor" (1966)
*"Preserve and Protect" (1968)
*"The Throne of Saturn" (1970)
*"Come Nineveh, Come Tyre" (1973)
*"The Promise of Joy" (1975)
*"A God Against the Gods" (1976)
*"Anna Hastings" (1977)
*"Return to Thebes" (1977)
*"Mark Coffin, U. S. S." (1979)
*"The Hill of Summer" (1981)
*"Decision" (1983)
*"The Roads of Earth" (1984)
*"Pentagon" (1986)
*"The Destiny Makers" (1988)
*"Toward What Bright Glory" (1990)
*"Into What Far Harbour?" (1993)
*"A Thing of State" (1995)
*"Public Men" (1998)

;Non-fiction

*"A Very Strange Society" (1967)
*"Courage and Hesitation" (1972)
*"" (1980)

References

External links

*cite web |url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9906E3D7103FF930A3575AC0A96E958260 |title=Allen Drury, 80, Novelist; Wrote "Advise and Consent" (Obituary) |accessdate=2008-10-07 |author=Smith, Dinitia |date=1998-09-03 |work=The New York Times |publisher=
*cite web |url=http://web.archive.org/web/20060925184355/www.policyreview.org/oct99/kaplan.html |title=Allen Drury and the Washington Novel (Obituary) |accessdate=2006-09-26 |author=Kaplan, Roger |date=October/November 1999 |work=Policy Review |publisher=Internet Archive
* [http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/d/allen-drury/ List of Allen Drury works - FantasticFiction.co.uk]
* Parts adapted from [http://www.senate.gov/reference/reference_item/Senate_Journal.htm The U.S. Senate website, a production of the US Government]