Missing Molly; or, How The Nation got me to buy a book -- actually two

For $9.99 you can get Molly as a PDF or ePub download, or for $11.99 plus shipping you can get the book Molly Ivins: Letters to The Nation as an actual paperback book. I decided I wanted Molly preserved between the covers of an actual book, and Kurt Vonnegut too.


"As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can't drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against 'em anyway, you don't belong in office."

-- Molly Ivins (of course)

by Ken

Maybe it was post-election-season blues, but the marketers at The Nation punched a hole right through my normal "I've got too much stuff and way too much stuff to read" defenses by sending out another e-announce of the publication of Molly Ivins: Letters to The Nation, a collection of stuff she wrote for the magazine over the period 1982-2007. "Dear Friend of the Nation," the pitch began,

MOLLY IVINS: Letters to The Nation, a collection of articles by the esteemed Texas journalist and gadfly who graced our pages for twenty-five years, is available in paperback and in digital format for tablets, smartphones and computers.

Writing in her native "Texlish," Ivins planted herself squarely in the tradition of American vernacular humor, which includes such writers as Mark Twain, Will Rogers and Ring Lardner. The Nation was the grateful beneficiary of her mordant wit, as you'll see in this collection of consistently sharp and funny pieces from 1982 to 2007 covering political developments in the great state of Texas, and featuring exotic and idiosyncratic characters like "The Gibber," "The Breck Girl" and "Governor Goodhair."

Ivins also wrote highly literate essays and book reviews such as "Ezra Pound in East Texas," included in this collection. The book's editor, Richard Lingeman, advises readers to prepare to "laugh out loud" (and often) at MOLLY IVINS: Letters to The Nation.

Best of all, by purchasing e-books through eBookNation, you'll help to sustain The Nation's journalism while supporting our writers and progressive ideals.

I'm sure I read a bunch of Molly's Nation pieces when they were first published, but I'll be happy to read them again, and of course to fill in those I somehow didn't read.

That word "happy" is important -- no, crucial. Because among the great writers I've read, Molly belonged to the special company of those whose writing always made me happy. And she never did it by ducking the tough subjects. She just had a gift for looking stupidity and evil squarely in the eye and making them entertaining without diminishing their horribleness. Usually you came away understanding that horribleness much better than you did at other writers' hands.

If ever there was a time when we needed a Molly Ivins, it's now. Unfortunately, there was only one, and she's gone. And if ever there was a time when I'm missing Molly, it's now. As it happens, though, most of the stuff she wrote in her enormously prolific career for a profusion of publications, even when anthologized in book form, was never read by anywhere near the number of people who should have read it, and would have benefited richly from reading it. I'm thinking that a healthy dose of recycled Molly is going to tell us more about our current political world than spanking-new just-about-anybody-else.

At the same time, I recalled that there were some earlier Nation book anthologies I'd been meaning to get hold of, and a glance reminded me that at the top of the list was Vonnegut by the Dozen: Twelve Pieces by Kurt Vonnegut, from the period 1978-98. Same deal: Some of those pieces I know I've read but would happily reread, and then there are bound to be pieces I haven't read. And my recollection of Kurt V's political writings is that they tended to be mind-blowing.

Give the folks at The Nation credit for realizing that their archives contain material of this quality. (I might also mention the collection Gore Vidal's State of the Nation: Nation Essays 1958-2005. I should also mention that the Ivins, Vonnegut, and Vidal volumes are all edited by Richard Lingeman.)

For a lot of writers of the Unapologetic Left, The Nation was about as hospitable place to publish as they were going to find for things they really wanted to say in print -- and at The Nation's pay scale you can be sure they weren't doing it for the money. Calvin Trillin has written often enough about his, er, "negotiations" with the magazine's then-editor and publisher, "the wily and parsimonious" Victor S. Navasky, when he began writing a regular column for The Nation. Trillin had a long history with the wily and parsimonious Victor N, and so wasn't entirely surprised when the aforementioned negotiations began and ended with the quoting of an amount "in the high two figures."

For the full range of eBookNation offerings, go here.

Meanwhile, here's a grab bag of Molly-isms, courtesy of Wikipedia (lots of links as well as sources onsite):

On the subject of Pat Buchanan's famously combative Culture War Speech at the 1992 Republican Convention, which attracted controversy over Buchanan's aggressive rhetoric against Bill Clinton, liberals, supporters of reproductive and gay rights, and for his comparison of American politics to religious warfare, Ivins famously quipped that the speech had "probably sounded better in the original German," noting the similarity between the concept of "culture war" and the Kulturkampf of Otto von Bismarck's Germany.

"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war...We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!' " (from her last column)

"Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that.

"So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was."—quoted by John Nichols for The Nation (Original source: "The Fun's in the Fight," column for Mother Jones, 1993)

On Bill Clinton: "If left to my own devices, I'd spend all my time pointing out that he's weaker than bus-station chili. But the man is so constantly subjected to such hideous and unfair abuse that I wind up standing up for him on the general principle that some fairness should be applied. Besides, no one but a fool or a Republican ever took him for a liberal." (Introduction to You Got to Dance With Them What Brung You)

On James M. Collins, U.S. Representative, R-Dallas: "If his IQ slips any lower we'll have to water him twice a day." Collins had said that the current energy crisis could be averted if "...we didn't use all that gas on school busing..." Ivins' quote engendered substantial controversy, with calls and letters pouring into her newspaper, The Dallas Times Herald. The newspaper turned the controversy into a publicity campaign, with billboards all over the city asking, "Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?"—which she later employed as the title for her first book.

On George W. Bush, she likened him to a post turtle.

"Of Bush's credentials as an economic conservative, there is no question at all—he owes his political life to big corporate money; he's a CEO's wet dream. He carries their water, he's stumpbroke—however you put it, George W. Bush is a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America. ... We can find no evidence that it has ever occurred to him to question whether it is wise to do what big business wants.

"As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can't drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against 'em anyway, you don't belong in office."

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