The Solomon Scandals A Washington newspaper novel by David Rothman

Why I feel like Billy Pilgrim: ‘The Solomon Scandals’ as a time-warpy book

Was it Jerry Ford or Jimmy Carter who sat in the Oval Office when I fin­ished the orig­i­nal draft of The Solomon Scan­dals, my Wash­ing­ton news­pa­per novel?

I do remem­ber what I was writ­ing on—an old elec­tric type­writer: first a ver­i­ta­ble antique from the early 60s, then a some­what newer model with a metal golf ball: a red Selec­tric that I later gave away to the clean­ing lady.

After NPR ran a seg­ment the other day about age, time and the brain, I inevitably won­dered, “What does this mean for nov­el­ists?” I was in my late 20s or early 30s back when I was see­ing, hear­ing, touch­ing, smelling, tast­ing and oth­er­wise under­go­ing the expe­ri­ences that I fic­tion­al­ized for Scan­dals. The world was fresher to me and my generation—D.C. scan­dals included, even with Water­gate hav­ing already happened.

In that sense Scan­dals is a 30ish writer’s novel, and maybe this gets me off the hook when NPR tells how the young remem­ber in more detail. At the same time, per­haps Scan­dals also reflects what I learned in the three decades that sped by. Talk about Billy Pil­grim–style time warps. You might say I didn’t just write my his­tor­i­cal fiction—I lived it.

• Closing of the Rocky Mountain Daily News
• Like the old whalers
• July 21 global chatcast—with free ‘Scandals’ MP3s for the blind and other print-challenged people
• Budd Schulberg, ‘What Makes Sammy Run?’ and ‘The Solomon Scandals’
• A guide to the Solomon Scandals site