Blue State Blues: How a Cranky Conservative Launched a Campaign and Found Himself the Liberal Candidate (and Still Lost)

By David R. Slavitt

In this witty and sharply observant memoir, David R. Slavitt recounts his day-to-day life on the campaign trail, describing the often surreal experience of being a pro-choice, pro-gay-marriage GOP... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0819568066
• ISBN13: 9780819568069
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Length: 358 Pages
• Weight: 1.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

That happiness the blues can bring

I can't remember the last time I had this much fun reading a memoir. David Slavitt, poet, runs for state representative in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a Republican, knowing full well he can't win. What he can do is pull back the curtain of small-time electoral politics, a seemingly petty enterprise with big consequences in the daily lives of Americans. He succeeds at this, in prose that is cranky on its surface, but with something celebratory underneath. You get the sense that Slavitt is having a great time performing the miserable, mundane tasks required of those who run for small-time office, and, a few pages in, the reader is having a great time, too. Slavitt is an old school libertarian Republican, which meant his policy positions put him at odds with the Democrats and with many in his own party. As his narrative moves forward, the reader watches him slowly be seduced by the possibility of winning, which means Slavitt must deal with the small daily compromises required of those politicians who want to win. These exigencies are absurd, and Slavitt knows they are absurd, and calls them absurd, and yet he wants to run as though he might win, so he throws himself headlong into the absurdity. In the end, it's the reader who wins. There's plenty of enlightenment to be found here, sure, regarding the rickety process of political power by which American public policy is shaped. But the real pleasure here is living for awhile in Slavitt's head, and seeing for awhile the way he sees. Blue State Blues is a must-read.