The Ax as agitprop

I avoid the political here, but sometimes the political is thrust upon me.

As a purveyor of Westlake-related news, I had planned to link to Charles Taylor’s article on The Ax (from The Nation) without comment, in a link roundup. But as the piece seems to be garnering some attention, I felt like simply linking it was the easy way out.

Donald E. Westlake understood how the radical right takeover of America that began with Reagan (and may have ended last November) meant the destruction of the security most Americans expected would see them to the end of their lives.

Taken as a standalone, The Ax can quite easily be read as a leftist screed. But in the context of Westlake’s life and works, that doesn’t make any sense.

All indications are that Donald Westlake was a pretty centrist guy, politically. If he was left of center, it was likely Bill Clinton left of center, not Che Guevara left of center. Some of the folks who drop by this site knew and had discussions with Mr. Westlake, so perhaps they can correct me, but the idea that “Donald E. Westlake understood how the radical right takeover of America that began with Reagan (and may have ended last November) meant the destruction of the security most Americans expected would see them to the end of their lives,” strikes me as absurd.

I’m at risk of projecting as badly as Charles Taylor, and I don’t want to do that. But I seriously doubt that Westlake considered Reagan or either of our President Bushes to be “radically right” forces of utter destruction. I can garner some evidence for my position–while I am aware that Westlake soured on Bush II, he wrote a somewhat positive piece on him for the Weekly Standard in 2002, five years after The Ax was published in the fifth year of the Clinton administration. Does this read like the work of someone who believes that his country is in the throes of a radical right takeover?

There is some irony in my argument. While getting my BA in English, and thereafter, I frequently argued in favor of removing any particular work by a writer from the context of that writer’s life. I endured far too many academic interpreters hypothesizing about and cherry-picking elements of a writer’s life in order to force the writer and his works to fit into a box that was, quite coincidentally I’m sure, entirely in sympathy with the interpreter’s worldview. But the ground rules were established by Mr. Thomas when he broadened the universe of The Ax far beyond the confines of the novel itself, claiming that Westlake saw some sort of “radical right” takeover of America, so I guess I’m not cheating when I play by those rules.

Fiction writers take situations and push them to extremes. Crime fiction writers in particular specialize in pushing nasty situations to extremes, which is why the best of the genre is so compelling, and Donald Westlake was extraordinarily good at putting his characters in situations where everything goes to hell. But writing a great story does not necessarily mean that the author subscribes to a certain philosophy, even if that story happens to dovetail with that philosophy. Mr. Thomas’ leftist interpretation of The Ax is legitimate. Pushing it much beyond that is not.