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Wednesday
The latest novel in my Kate Atkinson binge is Transcription, which is about a British operation during World War II designed to track German sympathizers. It seems eerily relevant given the rise of rightwing militias and the influence of Vladimir Putin over segments of the GOP. In fact, the in-depth ProPublica account of a man who infiltrated AP3 (American Patriots Three Percent) and the Utah Oath Keepers reads a lot like an Atkinson novel, with the added benefit that it’s true.
An extended side note on my Atkinson enthusiasm: How could I not fall in love with an author who has her characters routinely cite literature? My favorite is Reggie, who appears as a genius-level orphan in When Will There Be Good News? and as a cop in Big Sky and who at one point applies a Doctor Faustus line to a sunset: “See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament.” She turns to Christopher Marlowe’s play again when she finds herself in an explosive situation involving two rescued trafficking victims, their two traffickers, and an unhinged man with a gun seeking revenge. “Why this is hell, nor am I out of it,” she says to herself.
Meanwhile Atkinson’s recurring hard-boiled private eye, Jackson Brodie, goes on an Emily Dickinson kick in Started Early, Took My Dog. (The title itself is taken from a Dickinson poem.) One of his life’s motivators is the murder of his teenage sister when he was a child, which leads to such lines as, “His sister couldn’t stop for death, so he had, very kindly, stopped for her.” We learn that Brodie, having barely survived a train accident (Reggie, still a child at the time, saves his life), feels compelled to catch up “with some of the things he had missed out on in his impoverished education. Like culture, for example.”
Although novels don’t do much for him, poetry does:
Fiction had never been Jackson’s thing. Facts seemed challenging enough without making stuff up. What he discovered was that the great novels of the world were about three things—death, money and sex. Occasionally a whale. But poetry had wormed its way in, uninvited. A Toad, can die of Light! Crazy. So that here he was, thinking of his long-dead, long-lost sister, bolstered by a woman who felt a funeral in her brain.
But back to our current problem with rightwing militias and those higher-ups besotted with foreign autocrats. In Transcription, mole Juliet finds herself hobnobbing at ritzy parties with ladies in pearls who enthuse about Hitler, talk of international Jewish conspiracies, and load her with anti-Semitic tracts. Here’s a sampling:
It was a Saturday afternoon and here they were, Juliet thought, Englishwomen doing what English women did best wherever they were in the world—taking tea and having cozy chats, albeit the topic of conversation on this occasion was treason, not to mention the destruction of civilization and the British way of life, although no doubt Mrs. Scaife would have claimed to be a vigorous defender of both.
And:
“It’s all part and parcel of one and the same plan,” Mrs. Scaife explained assiduously to Juliet. “The plan is secretly operated and controlled by world Jewry, exactly on the lines laid down by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Do you have a copy, dear?”
“I don’t” Juliet said, although she did. Perry had lent her his own copy so that she could “get the measure of what these people believe.”
“Let me find you one,” Mrs. Scaife said, ringing a little bell on the tea tray.”
And one more passage:
“I wish to save Britain,” Mrs. Scaife declared, adopting a rather heroic pose over the teacups.
“Like Boadicea,” Mrs. Ambrose suggested.
“But not from the Romans,” Mrs. Scaife said. “From the Jews and the communists and the Masons. The scum of the earth,” she added pleasantly….Mrs. Ambrose had begun to nod off, and if she wasn’t careful, Juliet thought, she would too. Mrs. Scaife droned on, her proselytism soporific. Jews here, Jews there, Jews everywhere. It sounded quite absurd in its wrongheadedness, like a mad nursery rhyme.
There were no English maids or clinking teacups in the AR3 meeting that Williams secretly recorded, but there were American equivalents:
Over six hours, the men set goals and delegated responsibilities with surprisingly little worry about the federal crackdown on militias. They discussed the scourges they were there to combat (stolen elections, drag shows, President Joe Biden) only in asides. Instead, they focused on “marketing” — “So what buzzwords can we insert in our mission statement?” one asked — and on resources that’d help local chapters rapidly expand. “I’d like to see this organization be like the McDonald’s of patriot organizations,” another added. To Williams, it felt more like a Verizon sales meeting than an insurrectionist cell.
And:
“We’re making progress locally on the law enforcement,” Coates added. He said that at least three of them can get “the sheriff” on the phone any time of day. Like the last time, Coates didn’t give a name, but he said something even more intriguing: “The sheriff is my tie-in to the state attorney general because he’s friends.” Williams told me he fought the urge to lob a question….
Closing out the day, Kinch summarized their plan moving forward: Keep a low profile. Focus on the unglamorous work. Rebuild their national footprint. And patiently prepare for 2024. “We still got what, two more years, till another quote unquote election?” He thanked Williams for coming and asked if they could start planning training exercises.
Atkinson provides the charged context in which the British collaborators operate:
Denmark had just surrendered and the Germans had taken Oslo and set up a government under Quisling. Poland, Norway, Denmark—Hitler was collecting countries like stamps. How long before he had the full set?
And then, in a passage that applies to the man we just re-elected and to his billionaire sidekick:
The future was coming nearer, one relentless goose step after the next. Juliet could still remember when Hitler had seemed like a harmless clown. No one was amused now. (“The clowns are the dangerous ones,” Perry said.)
Will we be hearing goose steps from people like this? We’ll know soon enough if Trump pardons the leaders of January 6 and if a Kash Patel-led FBI gives the green light to paramilitary groups, providing Trump with his own Brown Shirts or SS troops.
Then again, our own rightwing yahoos may prove to be as inept as the Nazi sympathizers in Atkinson’s book. At the end of Transcription, some in the administration are wondering whether too much attention was paid to these people, most of whom were arrested. That’s certainly what I hope.
But I’m not complacent on the matter. After all, in Atkinson’s novel Winston Churchill is heading the country, not a Putin-directed Donald Trump. In our case, the enemy has penetrated higher levels than Atkinson’s Hitler fans could ever dream.
