{"id":13730,"date":"2017-11-22T09:15:48","date_gmt":"2017-11-22T14:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/?p=13730"},"modified":"2017-11-22T09:21:48","modified_gmt":"2017-11-22T14:21:48","slug":"why-didnt-they-say-something","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/archives\/13730","title":{"rendered":"Why Didn’t They Say Something?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been going back through Robert B. Parker<\/a>‘s Spenser series, and as much as I keep coming across things that are utterly ridiculous (he likes to describe outfits in detail. Oi.) I keep coming across bits that relate to current events disconcertingly well.<\/p>\n

The last book I finished was Paper Doll<\/em>, that was published in 1993.<\/p>\n

I found the theme of the book and many passages disconcertingly timely.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy are you interested in Stratton?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people working for him tried to chase me off the Olivia Nelson case.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably fucking her, and afraid it\u2019ll get out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDoesn\u2019t sound like the Olivia Nelson I\u2019ve been sold, but say it was, and he was,\u201d I said. \u201cIs it that big a secret?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s probably going to be in the presidential primaries,\u201d Cosgrove said. \u201cRemember Gary Hart?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cOkay,\u201d he said. \u201cHere\u2019s the deal. I was, ah . . .\u201d He looked back at his knuckles. \u201cI was . . .\u201d He grinned at me, still sincere, but now a little roguish too. \u201cI was fucking Olivia Nelson.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow nice for her,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is off the record, of course,\u201d Stratton said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got to know her at a few fund-raisers. Her husband\u2019s one of those Beacon Hill old money liberals, and one thing led to another, and we were in the sack.\u201d Stratton winked at me. \u201cYou know how those things go,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d I said. \u201cHow?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Men never laughed quite that way about anything but women in a sexual context. And it was sycophantic laughter, tinged with gratitude that a man of the Senator\u2019s prominence had shared with them not only a salacious remark but a salacious view of life.<\/p>\n

\u201cOld enough to bleed,\u201d the Senator said, \u201cold enough to butcher.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I really wish I knew how those passages were taken at the time. (I didn’t find the series until later, and breezed through the earlier books.) <\/p>\n

I do know, however, that those passages did not surprise me. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been going back through Robert B. Parker‘s Spenser series, and as much as I keep coming across things that are utterly ridiculous (he likes to describe outfits in detail. Oi.) I keep coming across bits that relate to current events disconcertingly well. The last book I finished was Paper Doll, that was published in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-reading","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pefxA-3zs","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}