Let It Go (If You Can)

I’m a fan of the serenity prayer; in order to keep moving forward in this life, you have to learn to let things go. Which makes it that much more embarrassing when, for whatever reason, I can’t.

A related piece of advice that authors often hear is: don’t read your reviews. While I can appreciate the psychological wisdom of that recommendation, I’m too curious not to peek.

For the most part, the reader reviews of Believe in Me (my 2011 debut novel) on Amazon are hearteningly positive. Still, there’s one whose critique has stuck around, needling me, for more than a decade. You’d think by now I would’ve been able to let it go… but apparently not.

One anonymous reader—who seems to have enjoyed the book overall, despite being annoyed by one particular element—wrote:

“…then we are offered the character [the GOP’s Darcy Kendrick] against whom the despicable candidate [Democrat Frank Cassini] is running. This character, representing That Other Political Party, is not subtle, is not nuanced, and is not realistic. She is a cardboard cut-out and a paper tiger, held up solely to be the greater of two evils.”

First of all, thank you, Dear Reader, for (a) taking the time to read the book, and (b) caring enough about what you read to post a comment. It is sincerely appreciated.

As for the comment itself, my initial reaction was a scrunched eyebrow. Anonymous Reader is correct that Darcy Kendrick is an underdeveloped character crafted specifically to serve the story’s plot; on that charge, I can only plead guilty to prioritizing the momentum of the narrative over fleshing out a minor figure in the story.

The claim that Kendrick is not realistic, though, just doesn’t hold up. The absence of subtlety and nuance is in fact one of the defining traits of a trend in political rhetoric—especially on the right—that has been present in America ever since Newt Gingrich ran for Speaker of the House in 1994. (Anonymous Reader may also be unaware of some of the more colorful GOP characters who ran for statewide office in California during the same period: Bruce Herschensohn and Tom McClintock, to name two.)

Fourteen years later it feels like, if anything, I underestimated the downhill velocity of political rhetoric in this country. Schoolyard taunts like Kendrick’s “nanny-state job-killers” and “godless America-haters” feel almost quaint in a 2020s media-sphere populated by fire-breathers like Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter. Not to mention the modern GOP personality most likely to dismiss Darcy Kendrick as a weak-kneed RINO: U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.

I wish I could agree with Anonymous Reader that this element of Believe in Me is more outrageous than reality, I really do—but it just isn’t so. For all her flamboyance and vitriol, Darcy Kendrick never accused a political opponent of controlling the weather.