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- [00:01]
Tonya Moseley
This message comes from Capital One. Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com bank for details. Capital One NA Member FDIC this is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Moseley. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich opens his new memoir with something unusual for a public figure, an apology. An apology on behalf of his generation, the baby boomers, for failing, as he puts it, to build a decent, sustainable and just society. Reich was born in 1946, the same year as Presidents Trump, Bush and Clinton, sons of the greatest generation who came of age in a time of post war optimism when prosperity and possibility seemed endless, but was. But as Reich tells it, those promises have morphed into widening inequality, bitter political division and unchecked rise of corporate power. His new book, coming up, A Memoir of My America, argues that the choices his generation and others have made helped pave the way to today's fractured democracy and economic disparity. Depressing stuff. But Reich also points to the progress that was made and makes a case for reviving what he calls community and democratic capitalism rooted in America's founding ideals. Reich is Chancellor's professor of public policy emeritus at UC Berkeley, has served in three presidential administrations and has written 18 books, including the Work of Nations, Saving Capitalism and the Common Good. He's also the subject of a new documentary called the Last Class. Robert Reich, welcome back to FRESH air.
- [01:48]
Robert Reich
Well, thank you, Tanya.
- [01:51]
Tonya Moseley
Before we get to your book, I want to ask you about some news. President Trump recently nominated E.J. antony from the Heritage foundation as the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and that was after firing the former head and claiming without evidence that the agency's numbers were rigged. How alarmed by this move should we be?
- [02:11]
Robert Reich
Quite alarmed, Tanya. It's very difficult to talk about one particular Trump initiative that is alarming because so many of them are alarming. He has flooded the zone. But this one really did strike home for me because when I became secretary of Labor, I was very strongly urged by my predecessors, by Congress, by everybody who knew about the Bureau of Labor Statistics to make sure, above all, regardless of what else I did as labor secretary, that the Bureau of Labor Statistics would be guarded, its independent independence would be protected because it is the crown jewel of all of the data we have in America about what is happening to the economy, what's happening to jobs and wages, where the economy is going. And so it's very important that it be protected from political influence. Donald Trump's response to the very disappointing jobs report. I mean, it was disappointing. Is probably the worst thing he could have done in terms of the independence and credibility of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, because he basically shot the messenger. He fired the current Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, saying baselessly that she had cooked the books without any evidence, and then has nominated as her successor somebody who is not respected as somebody who is nonpartisan, who's drawn fire even from right wing economists as being partisan and very unreliable.
- [04:12]
Tonya Moseley
Those disappointing jobs numbers that Trump is responding to, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that there were job gains for May and June, but they were down by 258,000. And that seems to be the number that really set the president off. You're saying that this agency is nonpartisan. It's supposed to be the place where we're supposed to get accurate information. Is there any way, how likely is it that those numbers are wrong, that they've somehow been manipulated?
- [04:46]
Robert Reich
There's no likelihood that they've been manipulated. You have to understand these numbers come from a group of professionals, many of whom are working independently. They have a process that is the most accurate and careful process you can imagine for putting these numbers together. Many administrations have been disappointed from time to time with the numbers because sometimes we are heading into a recession. Presidents don't like that. They don't like to hear that job numbers are down. But that's too bad. I mean, they have to live with that reality. The recent job numbers are alarming. What Donald Trump should have done is be alarmed, as we all must be, because it looks as if we are heading into a recession. But instead of accepting that and changing what he is doing and altering his economic policies, he seems to be just becoming even more definitive. This is what he does. He digs in when he's attacked.
- [05:56]
Tonya Moseley
Former head Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said that what Trump did, firing the head of BLS in particular, is the stuff of democracies giving way to authoritarianism. Is that how you would characterize it?
- [06:10]
Robert Reich
Absolutely. I might even use a stronger word, neo fascism, because I think that authoritarianism implies a system in which a small group of people run government. But fascism, or neo fascism suggests a system in which basically one person, a dictator, a tyrant, runs everything. And we are beginning to see evidence of that.
- [06:40]
Tonya Moseley
That is an extraordinary term to apply to an American president, especially from someone like you, who have served in many presidential administrations, Republican and Democrat. What's your process to feel comfortable with saying that with that description at this moment?
- [06:57]
Robert Reich
I've done a lot of research on fascism, starting with an article in the New York Times Magazine written by former Vice president Henry Wallace. It was called American Fascism. And Wallace, in 1944 is when he wrote it, had no problem talking about fascism because of course, America was at that time dealing with Nazism fascism in Germany and spreading around the world. But nobody had talked as directly and distinctly about American fascism. I found that article extraordinarily prescient and important. Fascism is different from authoritarianism. Authoritarianism has to do with centralized authority in just a small number of people. Fascism has to do with the worship and power of basically one individual who takes an entire economic and political system over.
- [08:13]
Tonya Moseley
In your book, you talk about President Trump and how he in many ways is just a symptom of something larger that we have been seeing over the course of a few decades. Now, this book title coming up short, it has a double meaning, your own height, four'11, which we're gonna talk about a little later. And also this argument that the baby boomer generation has fallen short of strengthening democracy. This is also the generation, Robert. It's your generation that marched against Vietnam, pushed for civil rights, expanded protections, only to see that really many of its members in this moment later became elites who benefited from inequality. When did you start to see the collective breakdown?
- [09:00]
Robert Reich
I began to be aware of this, Tanya, in the late 1980s when I was just simply looking at economic data. I was also traveling around the country promoting my latest book, doing free floating focus groups, if you will. And it became very apparent to me that wages for most people were flattening. If you adjusted for inflation, people were no longer getting ahead. There was a kind of. I had seen this anger beginning earlier than that. But then when I became labor secretary and I was out in the states and talking to people in various cities and in rural areas, I became even more aware of the anger and the. The bitterness that people felt because they were doing what they thought they needed to do. They were fulfilling their side of the bargain, the social contract. They were working hard and they were following the rules. And they had assumed that if they did that they would be getting ahead, they would be moving up, they could buy a better house or at least get access to a home that they. They wouldn't have to have two wage ear necessarily. They could also look forward to their children doing better than they were doing. But it looked as if that contract had come apart. It was starting to come apart. And that angriness and bitterness only grew in subsequent years.
- [10:44]
Tonya Moseley
That process that you go through when you write a book where you go out, not just to bookstores, but you go to communities to talk to people about the issues that are in the book and the larger issues that are impacting them. We actually saw this in your 2017 Netflix documentary, Saving Capitalism. And I'm bringing that up because we got to watch you. This is in modern day, recent day, fast Forward from the mid-80s, which we're going to get back to. But in that documentary, you talk to many Americans, the same types that you did back in the 80s, who were working full time but struggling to get by. But there's this moment that really stayed with me. It is this meal that you were having with business leaders in Kansas City, I believe. And there was this woman, Annie Presley, who had built several successful small businesses. And she told you that she feels vilified by her success. She feels like she is being made to feel bad for what she's contributed to our country. So those business owners, of course, like Annie, didn't create the system, but they've benefited from them. And then at the other side of it, you're talking with people who can barely get by. And so it really does bring up this issue of how to move toward understanding if everyone feels under attack.
- [12:06]
Robert Reich
Well, exactly. And that's what we've come to. Everybody feels under attack. The process of widening inequality happens not because anybody is particularly evil or villainous or that they are doing something wrong. It happens slowly. It happens in steps. It happens because inevitably, as inequality widens, those corporations and those individuals who benefit from the widening inequality, who are taking more and more of the wealth and income of the nation, they at least some of them have the power due to their wealth and income, to begin to influence legislation, to begin to influence regulation, to influence what happens at the federal and state levels, to have and be able to afford armies of lobbyists and litigators. And it is through that process that the game, the rules of the game, the actual rules of capitalism get altered and changed to their benefit and often to the non benefit of average working people. Often average working people are actually hurt by these rule changes. Donald Trump is in many respects the consequence, the culmination of five decades of that system getting worse and worse and worse.
- [13:46]
Tonya Moseley
You took us to this time period of the late 80s. That's kind of when we were nearing the end of Reaganism, of trickle down economics. People were starting to feel things at that point. But then the Clinton administration of the 90s and that contingent of baby boomers, which included you, seemed like a great hope. But something broke down then as well, it's also when we started to see this growth in corporations. Take us back to that time period as well, when we started to see an even further fracturing and a disparity between the wealthy and the haves and the have nots.
- [14:28]
Robert Reich
Well, the 1990s are a very important period in this story because even though I am very proud and continue to be proud of the accomplishments of the Clinton administration, of which I was a part, in terms of the family and medical leaves and the widening of the Earned Income Tax Credit, making it more available to people, there were decisions made that actually did hasten the widening inequality that we suffered this century. Decisions about, for example, China's accession to the World Trade Organization, the nafta, North American Free Trade act, the deregulation of Wall street, the decision essentially to allow big corporations to get much bigger, that is to turn the administration's and the public's back on antitrust, to basically not allow labor unions to grow. Because, you see, corporations were firing people who were trying to organize unions. And you see, all of that together. All of that together and many other examples I provide in the book made it much more difficult for average working people to get ahead and loaded the dice in favor of big corporations and the very wealthy.
- [16:04]
Tonya Moseley
I bet the process of writing this book illuminated a lot of would'ves, could'ves for you. Do you ever look back and feel regretful for what you didn't do or what you didn't say or doing more?
- [16:20]
Robert Reich
All the time. When I look back at my role as Labor Secretary, I regret that I didn't fight harder. I mean, inside the meeting rooms in the Old Executive Office Building and the Cabinet Office, and even when I was talking in private to the President, President Clinton, I did try to argue my case, but I feel in retrospect, I should have argued even more passionately. Maybe I even should have threatened to resign. I don't know.
- [16:57]
Tonya Moseley
You think that it would have had an effect? There were so many forces. But I just wonder. Yeah. Do you and former President Clinton talk about these things today?
- [17:07]
Robert Reich
No. And I flatter myself thinking that if I had threatened to resign over some of these decisions, that it would have made that much of a difference. No, probably not. But inevitably, in writing about the last, particularly the last 50 years, I ask myself over and over again, what could I have done? What should I have done? Could I have made a louder noise about much of this? Could I have been more influential, more convincing? How could I have done it? I mean, you can't rewrite your own personal history. And you certainly can't rewrite the rest of history. And you don't want to. You don't want to think of yourself in grandiose ways, you know, as if you could actually change any of this history. But I have to be completely candid with you in saying that bothers me. It worries me. I'm haunted by some of this.
- [18:08]
Tonya Moseley
Is there a particular issue or decision that was made during that time period that still keeps you up at night? It's so big, so broad, so many things happened over the last 50 years, and you played small roles in all of those as we move through. But is there any one thing particular that you still think?
- [18:27]
Robert Reich
Very small roles. But yes, I think about, for example, the Chinese accession to the World Trade Organization. At the time, people argued, and these were people inside the Clinton administration, many Democrats, many Republicans argued that if you allowed China to trade and export more to the United States, that would hasten Democratic reforms. Small D in China. I was suspicious. It didn't seem likely, I think, that that Chinese system was so ingrained and so impervious to reform that I doubted that there would be any change. I also worried, frankly, about what would happen with this tsunami of imports from China to the United States, what would happen to American jobs, particularly manufacturing jobs, particularly unionized manufacturing jobs? I made some objections. I made some arguments, but, Tanya, I didn't make them as strongly as I should have, and I didn't really understand or anticipate that something in the order of 5 million American jobs, mostly manufacturing jobs, would disappear, half of them, according to many researchers, because of the Chinese imports deluging America.
- [20:08]
Tonya Moseley
Let's take a short break. Our guest today is Robert Reich. We're talking about his new book coming up, A Memoir of My America. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tonya Moseley, and this is FRESH AIR. On the next through line from NPR, the man who saw a dangerous omission in the U.S. constitution and took it upon himself to fix it.
- [20:30]
Robert Reich
If something happened to a president who was still alive, the consequences for the country would have been enormous.
- [20:39]
Tonya Moseley
The 25th Amendment. Listen in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcast.
- [20:45]
Robert Reich
I'm Peter Sagal. NPR is very serious. Mostly it treats newsmakers with all due.
- [20:50]
Tonya Moseley
Respect almost all the time.
- [20:52]
Robert Reich
It brings you the most important information.
- [20:54]
Tonya Moseley
About the issues that really matter usually.
- [20:56]
Robert Reich
And it never asks famous people about things they don't know anything about except once in a while. Join us for the great exception. Listen to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell me.
- [21:04]
Tonya Moseley
The news quiz from NPR stars, They're just like us. John Legend goes to cbs. Well, that's because he has his own skincare line.
- [21:13]
Robert Reich
It was so exciting to actually go into one of those stores. We had the end caps.
- [21:18]
Tonya Moseley
Were you like, I don't want this locked up? Joan Legend is one of many stars riding the celebrity branding wave. He tells us about it on the indicator from Planet Money. Listen in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. There's this, this one particular section of your book that you tell this story that for me, it spoke to something greater about communication and maybe the ways that progressives actually communicate ideas and how they talk to people. So you write about your Senate confirmation during the Clinton administration in the 90s and how you were coached to handle the tough questions you'd face. And it's a funny story, but there also seems to be a lesson in how to communicate with the masses, of course, also how to communicate with our representatives. But can you briefly share it?
- [22:10]
Robert Reich
I was coached as all candidates nominees are coached, presidential nominees for the Cabinet. I was coached by a group of people who kept on saying to me, you know, the goal here is not to tell the senators what they already know or to preach to them or to lecture them. What you have got to do is show them how much you respect them. And instead of trying to convince them or show them or explain, what you must do is be modest and humble. What you must do over and over again is say, senator, I look forward to working with you on that, or, senator, thank you for the work you've done on that issue. We may have small disagreements from time to time, but I really do look forward to our efforts together on this issue. Whatever you do, don't try to take them on in these confirmation hearings, because that's not what this is about.
- [23:20]
Tonya Moseley
What did you learn from that experience? I feel like I see it when you're interacting with people who might be of different opinions, but have you taken that out into your life?
- [23:32]
Robert Reich
Well, this goes back to the issue of bullying when I was very small. I've always been small, but I mean, when I was very young and small, I was bullied a great deal, as many children are. But I felt humiliated and powerless and shamed. And I think that what I tried to do, one of my techniques, strategies for dealing with those feelings, was to be a very good student, to learn a lot, to be able to reason and show analytically why somebody was wrong, why my positions were thoughtful and correct. But you see, that was not really a winning strategy either, because it's not a matter of telling people the right answer. As I became a teacher, I've been a teacher for 43 years. I love being a teacher. I love the classroom. And once I was in the classroom, I realized the issue is helping other people use their own critical thinking. It's helping other people come to their conclusions. You might coax, you might give them some help, you might use humor, you might play games with them. You might do a lot of things. But it's always very important to remain humble. It's critically important not to feel that you are smarter than anybody else.
- [25:17]
Tonya Moseley
I can imagine those are lessons that you just learn with that continual. Year after year, you're in front of a new group of students. You're interacting in real time. This is not through the Internet or social media or a high level. You're in an office, you know, in D.C. somewhere. You're like on the ground and you're interacting. So much of our world is not that anymore. I think it's part of what has been refreshing and seeing the way that you move through with people over the last few years especially. Do you see that as a challenge? I mean, there seems to be where everyone thinks that the other side is the boogeyman and that we're on polar opposites, but that ability to be able to do all of the things that you're talking about and to be humble in the face of other people, that actually requires you to be face to face.
- [26:08]
Robert Reich
It does. And it's very difficult. I remember when I was Labor Secretary, being at one of these big receptions. I hate receptions. Receptions are the worst things ever invented because I would have to be standing, and usually I was standing with people who were, you know, two feet or a foot and a half taller than I, and I couldn't hear them very well. And I'd, you know, occasionally, you know, I'd feel their breath or their spit or whatever it was fall on me. It was. It was like. I can't describe to you how awful those receptions were. One particular reception, though, I was interested in hearing somebody who. Senator, who was on the Judiciary Committee, but he was very tall, 6 foot 7. And the only way I could even get close to hearing him was, well, I finally decided to stand on a chair and our faces were just about parallel. And I said, senator, I'm very interested in what you just said, but I couldn't hear it from down there. And he laughed. His name was Alan Simpson, Senator Allen Simpson. And we discovered that we had a great deal in common. Going back to your point about face to face. I mean, we literally were face to face as long as I was on a chair. And we became great friends. Even then in the 1990s, it was considered to be wrong. It was illicit for a Democratic member of the Cabinet to be friendly, a good friend, with a Republican senator. So we used to sneak out for lunch. My staff didn't like the idea and his staff didn't like the idea. And we thought it was great fun. And we became very, very good friends. I considered him to be one of my best friends, even though we did not see eye to eye, literally or figuratively, on almost anything. But we share a sense of humor and we shared a love of our families.
- [28:26]
Tonya Moseley
I'm curious how long you worked through this idea of tying your personal experiences with being short and the country and your generation falling short.
- [28:36]
Robert Reich
I think it's been with me for, in one form or another for about 50 years. I've always been deeply in love with this country. Now it sounds hokey. I've always loved the movies of Frank Capra, for example, people who used to call it Capricorn Corny, It's a Wonderful Life. The movie affected me very deeply. And I think growing up, I felt that the country was essentially a good place. There was a moral horror to America. There was a moral authority to America. Now, believe me, I understood the sins of slavery and the sins of what we did to the Native American population. I understood how badly we behaved in many respects around the country, around the world. But I believed that there was an essential goodness to America. And I think that, in turn, was related to how I was brought up as a very, very young child because my parents smothered me with love. They made me believe that regardless of how powerless and ashamed I felt because of my height, that I was fine, I was a good person. And I guess those two parallel feelings and the feelings of love for the country and the feelings that my parents had about me fused in some way. It's hard to explain it, but I think that the book represents that kind of fusion.
- [30:55]
Tonya Moseley
Let's take a short break. Our guest today is Robert Reich. We're talking about his new book coming up, a Memoir of My America. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH air. Do you ever look at political headlines and go, huh? Well, that's exactly why the NPR Politics podcast exists. We're experts not just on politics, but in making politics make sense. Every episode, we decode everything that happened in Washington and help you figure out what it all means. Give politics a chance with the NPR Politics podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts. Short Wave thinks of science as an invisible force showing up in your everyday life, powering the food you eat, the medicine you use, the tech in your pocket. Science is approachable because it's already part of your life. Come explore these connections on the Short Wave podcast from npr.
- [31:56]
Robert Reich
There's a lot of news happening. You want to understand it better, but let's be honest, you don't want it to be your entire life either. Well, that's sort of like our show.
- [32:03]
Tonya Moseley
Here and Now Anytime.
- [32:04]
Robert Reich
Every weekday on our podcast, we talk to people all over the country about everything from political analysis to climate resilience, video games. We even talk about dumpster diving on this show. Check out here and now Anytime, A daily podcast from NPR and wbur.
- [32:20]
Tonya Moseley
You have encouraged progressives and the Democratic Party more generally to do this thing that you're saying do, to talk about power and how the economic system has been rigged against them. But there was that time period during 2019, 2020 and on, where it felt like Democrats might have been talking extensively about power, especially when it comes to systemic racism and the legacies of enslavement. And there was huge backlash from that. There was huge pushback from the right against cases like affirmative action and blm, Black Lives Matter.
- [33:00]
Robert Reich
Democrats have to understand, and this is true, not just of Democrats, but everybody who wants to push and help the nation move forward, that the white working class has felt besieged for 50 years. The white working class has felt that nobody has paid attention, nobody has helped. They haven't moved forward. They've been working hard. They've been moving and doing everything they are supposed to do, but they have not made it. In fact, they are falling further and further behind. And their children are even further behind. They are. Their children are even further behind them. So certain issues like affirmative action strike the white working class as direct insults, as direct competitors. If black people or brown people are going to get help and going to be put in front of the lions of the white working class and their children, that doesn't seem fair to a lot of the white working class. I think Democrats just have to be sensitive, have to talk about changing the structure of power in America so that white people who are working class people and black people who are working class and poor people who are white or black and lower middle class people who are afraid of becoming working class or becoming poor, all of us understand that we are being held back by a system increasingly dominated by big corporations and wealthy people who are abusing their wealth and power to rig the system against us. We have to talk differently about all of us being in the same big boat.
- [34:57]
Tonya Moseley
At this point. It feels so hard because it feels like talking about one makes the other feel one feel slighted by the other by just even broaching the subject.
- [35:08]
Robert Reich
I think that's one of the problems of our current discourse. People are so defended against what they consider to be assaults on their own position, their own identity. But look, Tanya, we've got to get over it. We have got to understand that the crucial political and economic challenge in front of us is coming together. Coming together in a way that counterbalances the enormous economic and political power of a small group of corporations and people at the top that are abusing their power. I don't want to be misunderstood here. I'm not saying that all extraordinarily wealthy individuals are bad. No, they're bad. When they abuse their wealth by turning it into political power, that rigs the system against everybody else and in their favor. That's the problem. That's the essence of the problem. The essence of the problem is when Elon Musk puts a quarter of a billion dollars into American politics to elect Donald Trump, or to elect anybody, for that matter. That's the essence of the problem. We cannot have a democracy if that goes on.
- [36:43]
Tonya Moseley
You know, when you were talking about your students that you have worked with over the years and over the decades, I mean, there's always this sentiment from older generations that, well, the future is in the hands of you, the younger generation. But what gives you the confidence that we can succeed where your generation fell short? Because that is what you're saying in this book, is that there was so much idealism from the late 60s. There was so much progress that happened that really laid the foundation for the society, all of the. Many of the great things. I'm sitting here as a black woman in part because of what happened during that time period. But what gives you the confidence that young people can succeed where your generation fell short?
- [37:33]
Robert Reich
We fell short, but we didn't lack successes. We fell short, certainly. But when we joined together and the civil rights and voting rights movements are good examples, we made huge progress. And so when I say the younger generation will pick up where we failed, it's not that we failed. It's they will pick up from where we fell short. They will pick up, and they have to. It's not a matter of will. They. They don't have any choice. We have to have them do so. Otherwise we are going to be in the dustbin of history. Otherwise we're going to find ourselves lacking all moral authority. It's not just we will be or, you know, that China will out compete us. That's not the essence of it. It's not just that. Climate change we will not deal with. That's a huge problem. Or we won't deal with nuclear proliferation, or we won't deal with artificial intelligence, or we won't deal with rising bigotry and prejudice around the world or authoritarianism. No, the problem is we won't have the moral authority to do anything about any of this. And I refuse to accept that.
- [39:12]
Tonya Moseley
Robert Reich, thank you so much for this conversation.
- [39:15]
Robert Reich
Well, Tanya, thank you for having me.
- [39:18]
Tonya Moseley
Robert Reich served as secretary of labor in the Clinton administration. His new book is coming up, A Memoir of My America. After a break, our book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews two new Rye novels. This is FRESH AIR. Pop Culture Happy Hour. NPR's Easy, Breezy Laid back pop culture podcast has brought you the best in culture for the past 15 years.
- [39:42]
Robert Reich
That means we spent the last 15 years talking about what exactly?
- [39:45]
Tonya Moseley
Bad reality TV? Actually good.
- [39:48]
Maureen Corrigan
Marvel Movies?
- [39:48]
Robert Reich
Actually awful. Marvel movies Reboots pop music, prestige dramas, Netflix Sloth?
- [39:54]
Tonya Moseley
That's 15 years of buzzy pop culture chit chat.
- [39:57]
Maureen Corrigan
And here's to many more.
- [39:58]
Tonya Moseley
With you along for the ride, listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. How would you describe the discourse around sexiness online in three words or less? I would say polarized, ideological and unrooted from reality.
- [40:18]
Maureen Corrigan
I just thought corny.
- [40:20]
Tonya Moseley
Not corny, not bad. I'm Brittany Luce. If you're surprised to hear the words sexy and horny in the same sentence as npr, you'll be shocked to hear what else I'm talking about. Listen to the It's Been a Minute podcast today. As the August heat rises, the thirst for escape reading intensifies. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan says the cool thing about her two latest picks, one a spy story, the other a crime caper is that they make you think even as they entertain.
- [40:52]
Maureen Corrigan
Last month, in a now viral opinion piece called When Novels Mattered, new York Times columnist David Brooks bemoaned what he sees as the increasing irrelevance of literary fiction to American life. Gone are the days when Updike, Mailer and Morrison dominated bestseller lists. Now fantasy and genre fiction rule. I'm not going to jump into the bear pit here, except to say that perhaps Brooks isn't reading the right stuff. Here's my recommendation for two genre novels that manage to be sly, wry and smart works of social commentary even as they entertain. Neither are in league with, say, Portnoy's Complaint or the Color Purple, but nor are they mental. Styrofoam I've been following Dan Fesperman's espionage novels since his debut in 1999 with Lie in the Dark. That novel was set during the siege of Sarajevo, which Vesperman, a former foreign correspondent, covered. Pariah, his latest spy story, also draws from recognizable real life figures and situations. Hal Knight, the antihero of this tale, is a comedian and movie star who parlayed his brand of bro humor into a political career. Knight served for two months as a Democratic congressman from California but had to resign when a video went viral of him profanely bullying an actress on set. As we're told, on a spectrum of bad male behavior that ran from, say, Al Franken at its tamest to Harvey Weinstein at its vilest extreme, Hal's transgressions fell well toward the lower end, yet still within the vast middle ground where final judgment often depended on who was doing the judging. The opening of this tale finds Hal sulking in isolation on a Caribbean island, drinking dirty martinis and, appropriately enough, reading Philip Roth. What Hal doesn't know is that the CIA is watching. Soon, a trio of agents approach him. They recruit Hal to accept an invitation to perform his comedy routine for the president of the Eastern European country of Bulrovia. It seems that something rotten is underway in Bulrovia. If Hal can keep his eyes and ears open while he's yucking it up with the despot, he may garner valuable intel. Pariah embraces a slew of spy novel tropes the flawed hero who needs redemption, double agents and the bewildering layout of the old capital city of Bolrovia, where one wrong turn can lead Hal to the ultimate dead end. In a delicious climactic moment set in an underground bar called the Green Devil, a group of former Fox News personalities even makes an entrance. As always with suspense, the greatest pleasure lies in the plot, which here has the quality of being labyrinthine but lucid. Mike Phillips, a British author born in Guyana, also has a long track record in crime writing, along with a parallel career as an art curator. That expertise comes into play in the Dancing Face, a crime novel that originally came out in Britain in 1997 and is now available for the first time in the United States. Here's the premise. A black university professor named Augustus Gus Dixon attends a committee meeting to discuss holding protests against a touring African art exhibition whose objects were the spoils of colonialism. Impatient with the academic grandstanding of his colleagues, Gus snapshot demonstrations and vigils were pointless. He told his colleagues the only result would be a few minutes on the air being patronized by a succession of young white women with microphones. Accordingly, Gus masterminds a scheme to steal the Dancing Face, a gold mask from Benin that's packed away in a London exhibition space. The plan naturally goes haywire, given that Gus's accomplices don't share his lofty motives for stealing the mask. Chief among them is the wealthy Nigerian businessman who's bankrolled the heist and who expects to add the mask to his personal art collection. The Dancing Face engages issues of reparations and identity while also holding its own with other classic crime novels about missing MacGuffins. I'm thinking of novels like the Maltese Falcon and Cotton Comes to Harlem. Like those novels, the Dancing Face offers an antic, absurdist take on the spectacle of flawed human beings attempting to set to rights a world gone wrong.
- [46:37]
Tonya Moseley
Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed Pariah by Dan Fesperman and the Dancing Face by Mike Phillips. FRESH air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shurrock, Anne Marie Boldenot, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Anna Bauman and John Sheehan. Our digital media producer is Molly Sivi Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson. Susan Yakundi directed Today's show with Terry Gross. I'm Tonya Moseley. I'm Rachel Martin, host of Wildcard from npr. I've spent years interviewing all kinds of people, and I've realized there are ideas that we all think about but don't talk about very much. So I made a shortcut, a deck of cards with questions that anyone can answer, questions that go deep into the experiences that shape us. Listen to the Wild Card podcast only from npr.
- [47:46]
Maureen Corrigan
Marlee Matlin was the first deaf actor.
- [47:48]
Robert Reich
To win an Academy Award.
- [47:50]
Maureen Corrigan
She also helped pass a bill that.
- [47:52]
Tonya Moseley
Requires captioning in movies and TV shows.
- [47:55]
Robert Reich
So if you're one of the folks.
- [47:56]
Tonya Moseley
Who uses captions, you know what to do.
- [47:59]
Robert Reich
I see people with their laptops watching movies and with captions. I want to say, are you enjoying captions, by the way, Marlee Matlin from.
- [48:05]
Maureen Corrigan
Coda, the West Wing and more on.
- [48:07]
Robert Reich
Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR.