Allen Drury

Allen Drury
Ronald Reaganvisits with Drury in 1981
Born	(1918-09-02)September 2, 1918 Houston, Texas,U.S.
Died	September 2, 1998(1998-09-02)(aged 80) San Francisco,California,U.S.
Education	Stanford University(BA)
Occupation(s)	Journalist, novelist
Years active	1943–1998
Employers	Tulare Bee Bakersfield Californian Pathfinder Magazine Washington Evening Star The New York Times
Known for	Pulitzer Prize for Fictionand 20 novels

Allen Stuart Drury(September 2, 1918 – September 2, 1998) was an Americannovelist.During World War II, he was a reporter in the Senate, closely observing PresidentsFranklin D. RooseveltandHarry S. Truman,among others. He would convert these experiences into his first novelAdvise and Consent,for which he won thePulitzer Prize for Fictionin 1960. Long afterwards, it was still being praised as ‘the definitive Washington tale’. His diaries from this period were published asA Senate Journal 1943–45.

Early life and ancestry

Drury was born on September 2, 1918, inHouston,Texas,to Alden Monteith Drury (1895–1975), a citrus industry manager, real estate broker, and insurance agent, and Flora Allen (1894–1973), a legislative representative for the California Parent-Teacher Association.The family moved to Whittier, California, where Alden and Flora had a daughter, Anne Elizabeth (1924–1998). Drury was a direct descendant of Hugh Drury (1616–1689)and Lydia Rice (1627–1675), daughter ofEdmund Rice(1594–1663), all of whom were early immigrants toMassachusetts Bay Colony.

Allen Stuart Drury grew up inPorterville, California,and earned hisB.A.atStanford University,where he joinedAlpha Kappa Lambda,in 1939. He told Writer's Yearbook that he was "associate editor, wrote a column, and editorials."His last series of novels, written shortly before he died, were inspired by his experiences at Stanford. After graduating from Stanford, Drury went to work for theTulare Beein Porterville in 1940, where he won theSigma Delta Chi Awardfor editorial writing from theSociety of Professional Journalists.He then moved to Bakersfield and wrote for theBakersfield Californian,where he "handled what they called county news."Drury enlisted in the U.S. Army on July 25, 1942, inLos Angelesand trained as an infantry soldier, but was discharged "because of an old back injury."

A Senate Journal

A Senate Journal(1963)

In 1943, Drury moved to Washington. "I went East and wound up in Washington, which fascinated me, and I thought I would get a job for about a year for experience before coming back to the coast. I came back twenty years later, finally."

From 1943 to 1945, Drury worked as theUnited States Senatecorrespondent forUnited Presswhich, as he wrote, gave him the opportunity "to be of some slight assistance in making my fellow countrymen better acquainted with their Congress and particularly their Senate." He worked as a reporter, but also kept a journal in which he recorded the events ofCongressas well as his impressions and views of individual senators and the Senate itself. Drury's journal followed the career ofHarry S. Trumanfrom junior senator toPresident of the United States,and also covered "PresidentFranklin D. Rooseveltand his contentious relations with the Senate. "The journal was published in 1963 asA Senate Journal 1943–45after Drury had experienced great success with his 1959 novelAdvise and Consent.

After leaving United Press, he free-lanced for a year, writing a column for local papers in the West. "This venture lasted about a year and did not succeed, as it does not for many people."He then moved toPathfinder Magazine,a general news magazine. From there, he moved to theWashington Evening Star,where he gained a reputation for the quality of his writing. Various pieces from this period were collected in a volume entitledThree Kids in a Cart.

Advise and Consentand later works

In 1954,James Reston,the Washington bureau chief ofThe New York Times,hired Drury. Russell Baker, hired at about the same time, recalled the circumstances in a remembrance published after Drury's death:

He had a reputation as an elegant writer when he came to the paper. Scotty Reston was then trying to persuadeThe Timesto write plain English, and it was assumed that Allen was brought in to promote this campaign... He tried. The results depressed him. In those days plain English was under suspicion atThe Times.Many stories read as if written by a Henry James imitator with a bad hangover. Incomprehensible English was accepted as evidence of the honest, if inarticulate, reporter; plain English bothered people.

In his spare time, Drury wrote the novel which would become 1959'sAdvise and Consent.Drury later wrote a memorandum for his archives at theHoover Institutionin which he gives a full account of how the book came to be written and published.Baker was one of the first people to read the manuscript and describes his initial reluctance and then reaction:

What lies I would be compelled to tell poor Allen... The box weighed slightly less than a ton. The manuscript inside was typed not very well on long, legal-size paper. I took it home, ate, fixed a drink, sat down and with a heavy heart reached into the box for a fistful of manuscript. Good Lord! You couldn't put the thing down! I read half the book that night and finished it next day. My wife finished close behind, and the sight of her suppressing a tear at one point confirmed my hunch.

The novel uses several incidents from Drury's fifteen years in Washington as pegs for the story, about a controversial nominee for Secretary of State. Addressing the suggestion that the book was aroman à clef,Drury wrote a very sharply worded preface which was only published in the new edition:

You will have to take the writer's word for it, because it is true. There are people and events in this book as in any that areakinto people and events in reality, but theyare notthe people and events of reality. Such resemblances as they do bear are transmuted through the observations and perceptions and understandings of the author into something far beyond and basically far different from the originals in the cases where originals can be argued to exist.

The novel spent 102 weeks onThe New York TimesBest Seller list.It won thePulitzer Prize for Fictionin 1960. It was adapted into a well-received Broadway play byLoring Mandel,who is known for a highly successful career writing for television. Otto Preminger directed an acclaimed1962 filmstarringHenry Fonda.In 2009,Scott SimonofNPRwrote inThe Wall Street Journal,"Fifty years after its publication and astounding success... Allen Drury's novel remains the definitive Washington tale."When it was republished,ABC NewsWhite Housecorrespondent Jonathan Karl wrote forThe Wall Street Journalthat it offers "a compelling portrait of American social and political history and even today is well worth reading."

With the success ofAdvise and Consent,Drury leftThe New York Times.He became a political correspondent forReader's Digest,but wrote very little for it. From then on, his only major publications were his books. He followedAdvise and Consentwith several sequels.A Shade of Difference(1962) is set a year afterAdvise and Consent,and uses the United Nations as a backdrop for portraying racial tensions in the American South and in Africa. Drury then turned his attention to the next presidential election after those events withCapable of Honor(1966) andPreserve and Protect(1968).Preserve and Protecthad a cliffhanger ending—an assassination in which the victim is not identified. He then wrote two alternative finales based on two different outcomes of the assassination:Come Nineveh, Come Tyre(1973) andThe Promise of Joy(1975).The last two books are set in the middle of a full international crisis.

In 1971, Drury publishedThe Throne of Saturn,a political/science fictionnovel about the first attempt at sending a crewed mission toMarsin competition with a similarSovieteffort.With thehistorical novelA God Against the Gods(1976) and its sequelReturn to Thebes,Drury explored the reign and fall ofPharaohAkhenatenofancient Egypt.The novels are based on extensive reading about theAmarna Periodand, in the introduction toA God Against the Gods,he thanks at length the greatest Egyptologist of the time,Cyril Aldred,for his guidance on research. He disagreed with Aldred's view that Akhenaten's religious innovations were accepted by the supplanted religious authorities. Drury wrote, "I am afraid my own view, conditioned by some years as a political correspondent, is much more cynical concerning the lengths to which human beings, of whatever era, will go in order to get, and keep, power."

After the Egypt novels, Drury returned to Washington in a succession of novels that were only tenuously related.Anna Hastings(1977) is more a novel about journalism than politics.He returned to the Senate in 1979 withMark Coffin, U.S.S.,which was followed by the two-partThe Hill of Summer(1981) andThe Roads of Earth(1984), though the four books are not a series. Drury also wrote stand-alone novels,Decision(1983) aboutthe Supreme Court,andPentagon(1986) andA Thing of State(1995) about the State Department. His career ended with the trilogy of books following the lives of fictional members of his Stanford graduating class:Toward What Bright Glory?(1994),Into What Far Harbor?(1997), andPublic Men(1998). John J. Miller wrote that readers are "able to mark through Washington's major institutions with Drury and his novels... Television producers who want to develop a show to compete withNetflix'sHouse of Cardswould do well to look to Drury. "

Advise and Consentwasout of printfor almost 15 years and it ranked #27 on the 2013BookFinderlist of the Top 100 Most Searched for Out of Print Books beforeWordFire Pressreissued it inpaperbackande-bookformat in February 2014.The WordFire edition includes never-before-published essays about the book written by Drury himself, new appendices, and remembrances by Drury's heirs and literary executors Kenneth and Kevin Killiany. WordFire also releasedAdvise and Consent'sfive sequels, and other novels.WordFire is projected to ultimately bring out about 20 of Drury's novels.

Personal life and death

Drury, whose "passions were reading and travel…was an intensely private man, who never married, and lived quietly."In one of theWhite House audiotapes,Richard Nixonin conversation withH.R. HaldemanandJohn Ehrlichmanstated, "Allen Drury is a homosexual."

Drury lived inTiburon, California,from 1964 until his death. He completed his 20th novel,Public Men,just two weeks before his death. He died ofcardiac arreston September 2, 1998, his 80th birthday, atSt. Mary's Medical CenterinSan Francisco,California.

Awards and honors

• 1960 - Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
• 1967 - Golden Plate Award of theAmerican Academy of Achievement

Bibliography

Novels

Advise and Consentseries

• Advise and Consent(1959)
• A Shade of Difference(1962)
• Capable of Honor(1966)
• Preserve and Protect(1968)
• Come Nineveh, Come Tyre(1973)
• The Promise of Joy(1975)

Romance

• That Summer(1963)

Space program

• The Throne of Saturn(1971)

Ancient Egypt

• A God Against the Gods(1976)
• Return to Thebes(1977)

Other political novels

• Anna Hastings(1977)
• Mark Coffin, U.S.S.(1979)
• The Hill of Summer(1981)
• Decision(1983)
• The Roads of Earth(1984)
• Pentagon(1986)
• A Thing of State(1995)

Universityseries

• Toward What Bright Glory?(1990)
• Into What Far Harbor?(1993)
• Public Men(1998)

Short stories

• "Something"(The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,October 1960)

Non-fiction

• A Senate Journal(1963)
• Three Kids in a Cart(1965)
• A Very Strange Society(1967)
• Courage and Hesitation(1972)
• Egypt: The Eternal Smile(1980)

External links

• The Allen Drury papersat theHoover Institution Archives.
• Ringle, Ken (September 4, 1998)."Allen Drury, Father Of the D.C. Drama".The Washington Post.RetrievedFebruary 13,2013.
• Kaplan, Roger (October–November 1999)."Allen Drury and the Washington Novel (Obituary)".Policy Review.Archived fromthe originalon September 25, 2006.RetrievedJanuary 21,2015.
• Brennan, Elizabeth A.; Clarage, Elizabeth C., eds. (December 17, 1998).Who's Who of Pulitzer Prize Winners.Greenwood Press.pp. 229–230.ISBN1-573-56111-8.
• "Drury, Allen (1918 September 2 - 1998 September 2): Biographical History".Online Archive of California.Archived fromthe originalon January 21, 2015.RetrievedJanuary 20,2015.
• Tomlinson, Kenneth Y. (September 21, 1998)."Allen Drury, 1918-1998: RememberingAdvise and Consent".The Weekly Standard.RetrievedJanuary 30,2015.
• List of Allen Drury works - FantasticFiction.co.uk
• "Three Kids in a Cartby Allen Drury ".Kirkus Reviews.RetrievedJanuary 30,2015.