Anyone have any info on this "Kill the President" novel?

[BeachBuckeye]

Limbaugh was talking about it today. I'd like to address it on the show if only I can find some information about it.

[BeachBuckeye]

1. kick/nt

[seemslikeadream]

2. I do

going to look for it

[seemslikeadream]

3. 'Checkpoint' targets the president

Is this the one you're thinking of?

By Linton Weeks

WASHINGTON POST


In Nicholson Baker's new novella, "Checkpoint," a man sits in a Washington hotel room with a friend and talks about assassinating President Bush.

It's a work of the imagination and no attempts on the president's life are made, but the novel is likely to be incendiary, as with Michael Moore's documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11."

Flush with the headline-generating success of "My Life," by Bill Clinton, Alfred A. Knopf is planning to publish Baker's work Aug. 24, on the eve of the Republican National Convention. "Checkpoint" is 115 pages long and will sell for $18.

In the book, two men -- Ben and Jay -- meet at the fictional Adele Hotel and Suites in Washington. It is midday. They eat a bag of bagel chips and order lunch from room service. They talk into a tape recorder.

more
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/9045752.htm...

different link

Checkpoint, though, is clearly something else. According to the Post's account, its two protagonists, Ben and Jay, talk down and dirty about the Bush administration into a tape recorder during an in-room lunch at a Washington hotel. Jay announces he's going to assassinate the President, and the men proceed to talk about both why and how he might do such a thing.

By the sounds of it, the novel is hardly The Anarchist's Cookbook - the fanciful methods the two men consider to take out the most powerful politician on the planet include using radio-controlled flying saws. Another tactic they discuss is a remote-controlled boulder made of depleted uranium. Ben asks Jay: "You're going to squash the President?" Jay also has a gun and some bullets, but the book appears to cover its tracks somewhat by having Ben express extreme misgivings about using them. "If the FBI and the Secret Service ... come after me because I've been hanging out with you in a hotel room before you make some crazy attempt on the life of the President," Ben says, "I'm totally cooked."

More incendiary than Jay's assassination fantasies, in the end, may be the deep expressions of anger against the administration the book dwells on. In that respect it is not unlike Joseph Heller's 1979 novel Good as Gold, which included an extended rant against Henry Kissinger. The difference, though, is that Kissinger had been out of power for two years when Heller's book was published; Mr Bush is in the middle of a bruising re-election battle.

Jay says he hasn't felt so much hostility against any other president - not Nixon, not Reagan. Jay says of Mr Bush: "He is beyond the beyond. What he's done with this war. The murder of the innocent. And now the prisons. It's too much. It makes me so angry. And it's a new kind of anger, too." At one point, he calls Mr Bush an "unelected drunken OILMAN" who is "squatting" in the White House and "muttering over his prayer book every morning." At another point, he calls Mr Bush "one dead armadillo".
more
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?...


"rusted hulks"

Jay says he hasn't felt so much hostility against any other president - not Nixon, not Reagan. Jay says of Mr Bush: "He is beyond the beyond. What he's done with this war. The murder of the innocent. And now the prisons. It's too much. It makes me so angry. And it's a new kind of anger, too." At one point, he calls Mr Bush an "unelected drunken OILMAN" who is "squatting" in the White House and "muttering over his prayer book every morning." At another point, he calls Mr Bush "one dead armadillo".

Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are described as "rusted hulks" and "zombies" who have "fought their way back up out of the peat bogs where they've been lying, and they're stumbling around with grubs scurrying in and out of their noses and they're going, 'We - are - your - advisors.'"

Jay expresses outrage at the munitions the United States armed forces have used in Iraq, including an updated version of napalm. Jay says of the Iraq bomb material: "It's improved fire jelly - it's even harder to put out than the stuff they used in Vietnam. And Korea. And Germany. And Japan. It just has another official name. Now it's called Mark 77. I mean, have we learnt nothing? Mark 77! I'm going to kill that bastard."

The title of the book is taken from an incident at a checkpoint south of Karbala last year, in which US forces opened fire on a Shia family of 17 travelling to southern Iraq to seek a safe haven. Several family members died, including two young girls decapitated by the gunfire.

another link
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?...




Check out who the author is


will be published in August


Nicholson Baker's "Checkpoint," in which assassination is discussed but never acted upon, will be published in August
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13374-20...




Understanding
Nicholson Baker
Arthur Saltzman

Investigates the complex and controversial reputation of the writer lauded by Vanity Fair as "the best writer of our generation"


Understanding Contemporary American Literature, Matthew J. Bruccoli, series editor

In addition to being celebrated as a prose miniaturist for such works as The Mezzanine and Room Temperature, Baker is widely viewed as a best-selling highbrow eroticist for Vox and The Fermata. In Understanding Nicholson Baker, Arthur Saltzman engages these provocative fictions as well as Baker's renowned nonfiction to show how his seemingly disparate works derive from and demonstrate an unremitting zeal for explicit detail, along with descriptive obsessiveness and linguistic virtuosity.

Through close readings of Baker's work—including his 1998 novel, The Everlasting Story of Nory—Saltzman provides not only an introduction to a sublimely spirited writer but also a systematic appreciation of the rewards of his writing. Taking issue with reviewers who have labeled Baker a minimalist, Saltzman argues that the novelist's work has none of the poverty or predictability that the term suggests. He also defends Baker against charges of chauvinism and vulgarity for Vox and The Fermata, maintaining that the intricately detailed passions of these erotic novels are in accord with the intricate detail in The Mezzanine and Room Temperature. Saltzman contends that voyeurism is a natural extension of Baker's other obsessive attentions.

Saltzman describes Baker's nonfiction as a similarly inventive, unpredictable, and minutiae-oriented body of work. He offers analyses of U and I: A True Story, a quirky homage to John Updike, and of The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber, in which Baker visits his witty erudition on subjects ranging from the history of punctuation to the treasures of library card catalogs. Saltzman concludes that Baker is consumed with fundamentals—from arriving at a drugstore, to getting a baby to sleep, to rooting out the history of a plastic bottle or a bit of slang—and that Baker's aim is to revise the very nature of literary adventure.
more
http://www.sc.edu/uscpress/Sp99/3303.html


Nicholoson Baker's Checkpoint
A New Kind of Anger About Bush
By KURT NIMMO

I can hear it now. Nicholson Baker wants to kill the president. He's a threat to national security. He should be locked up. Maybe share a rubber-room with John Hinckley. If Bill O'Reilly thinks Amiri Baraka is a "pinhead" for writing a poem about 9/11, what does he think of Baker for writing prose about the assassination of Bush?

Barker's short novel is entitled Checkpoint. It's basically a conversation between two characters who discuss assassinating George Bush with "radio-controlled flying saws" and a "remote-controlled boulder made of depleted uranium." It's an absurd novel, according to Andrew Gumbel of the Independent, hardly anything to be worried about.

But then Richard Humphreys of Portland, Oregon, made an absurd and no less surrealistic comment about a "burning Bush" during Dubya's March 2001 trip to Sioux Falls. He was sentenced to 37 months in prison for making the comment in a bar. "I said God might speak to the world through a burning Bush," Humphreys testified during his trial. "I had said that before and I thought it was funny."

Baker's novel may be absurd, even comical -- especially the dadaistic flying saws -- but his anger is not. " is beyond the beyond. What he's done with this war. The murder of the innocent. And now the prisons. It's too much. It makes me so angry. And it's a new kind of anger, too." Bush is an "unelected drunken OILMAN" who is "squatting" in the White House and "muttering over his prayer book every morning." Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are "rusted hulks" and "zombies" who have &q

http://www.counterpunch.org/nimmo06302004.html


World Magazine Blog

June 29, 2004
You've seen the movie, now read the book
Hatred of the president by the cultural elite is coming out next in a novel by a critically-acclaimed author that consists largely of fantasies about how to assassinate George W. Bush. The novel, Checkpoint, by Nicholson Baker, has been scheduled purposefully by its mainstream, establishment publisher, Alfred Knopf, to come out the day before the Republican convention

Posted by Veith at June 29, 2004 05:40 PM

Comments
This used to be a federal offense, and could land you in jail. Can you imagine the outrage of the liberal left if we proposed the assassination of J Kerry, or any other democrat, simply because we disagreed with them?

Posted by: MH at June 29, 2004 05:49 PM
It's not a federal offense to write a novel advocating anything, and it never has been. A novel is a work of fiction.

That said, Nicholson Baker's phone-sex novel was one of Lewinsky's gifts to President Clinton. Enough said.

Posted by: gregg at June 29, 2004 06:09 PM
There have been a series of coincindences since 1840 of presidents who were elected in years ending in "0" dying in office. Reagan barely missed being another in the line of coincidences. Bush, as we all know, was elected in 2000.

Again, these are coincindences only. I'm not advocating some "curse" or "conspiracy." Just interesting that this book fantasizes about adding Bush to the list of coincidences.

Posted by: DeanM at June 29, 2004 06:33 PM
More and more of this will happen as November approaches. For some reason, the leftists and Democrat party in this nation think that the American people respond well to slavering radicalism and extremist positions.

Posted by: Christopher Taylor at June 29, 2004 06:47 PM
This is truly evil. Novel or not, it should still be against the law. The man is president! You know I realized that the left hated Bush but, Really!

Posted by: Jim U at June 29, 2004 06:53 PM
"Novel or not, it should still be against the law."

No, that's why we have the Bill of Rights, actually, so you don't jail people who write things you don't like.

If only the Right had some recourse...oh yeah, they publish partisan books too. Personally I think George Orwell's dark right-wing satires are much more interesting than anything by Nicholson Baker, but then again I read books instead of trying to ban them.

Posted by: david at June 29, 2004 06:58 PM
This is an indication of the "wild-eyed" people that are on board with the left and their candidate. We know them by their fruits.

Posted by: Phil at June 29, 2004 07:39 PM
The novel might have been against the law if it had contained serious plans for assassination. But reportedly the author, Nicholson Baker, makes the characters fantasize about fanciful, impractical killing methods such as "radio-controlled flying saws." Of course, if President Bush gets assassinated by radio-controlled flying saws, Baker may get a call from the Secret Service.

Apparently Baker is angry at Bush. I suppose if you start with the assumption that U.S. actions in Iraq are totally unjustified, then every civilian death we cause might seem an unforgivable atrocity. Based on the referenced article, I'd say that opinions like that are pacing from room to room in Baker's mind.

I found a picture of Nicholson Baker at http://www.powells.com/authors/baker.html.

Posted by: Ed Jordan at June 29, 2004 07:43 PM
Like Moore's movie, I'll ignore it.

Posted by: Jack at June 29, 2004 08:14 PM
The sad thing about people like Michael Moore and Nicholson Baker is that there are Americans who actually believe the stuff that Moore and Baker produce. I suppose the best response to this fact is to acknowledge that in some circles, the inmates are running the asylum. The same thing applies to other anti-Bush miscreants like Paul Krugman and Al Gore. They are obviously in need of medical attention, but they will never admit that fact.

If those of us who are generally sane can agree to disagree agreeably, then the Republic will probably survive. We have had to deal with political crazies before; we'll just have to help these folks get the medical treatment they need and get them into a quiet little place in the country. That way, they will no longer pose a danger to the Republic.

Posted by: David McGuire at June 29, 2004 10:05 PM
If thousands of Americans are irrational enough to buy this book, then I bet dozens are irrational enough to try to kill the President, meaning a couple might be cooky enough to try to do it with flying saws, and perhaps one radio controlled.

This book simply must be bait by the US Secret Service to get all the psycholiberals in prison where they belong.

Posted by: its jake at June 30, 2004 04:56 AM
The extremists fringe groups on the Left salivate at such a thought. The Secret Service is investigating. Should any leftest fanatics act out such fantasies, I am sure the 1st Lady will see to it that such vitriolic tripe such as this publication comes out in court. Those extremists who wish to force or coerce their agenda on those of us in the conservative camp will find themselves facing a formidable foe.

Posted by: Joe B. at June 30, 2004 06:50 AM
If this is the "opinion"/"expression" being made by the Culturally Elite I would love to have someone define Culturally Elite, PLEASE, ANYONE A serious matter indeed, but enough is enough!

GOD IS GOOD...

Posted by: Desmond at June 30, 2004 08:04 AM
Each day that goes by drawing closer to an election that deep down the left knows that President Bush will win, the more extreme and crazy they act. I sometimes get an image of Scanners when I consider Brokaw and Jennings' reaction when the election results come out.

Posted by: Christopher Taylor at June 30, 2004 11:16 AM
Scanners, wow, thanks for the flashback!

Moore and Baker are doing two completely different things. Moore is manipulating facts until they fit an agenda. Baker has written a novel about fantasies of killing Bush. "People believing Baker" doesn't really make sense to me.

Posted by: bruce at June 30, 2004 12:21 PM
Isn't incitement to murder a crime? Isn't sedition, that is undermining the government, which assassination surely does?

It is very evil to wish murder on a man no matter how coyly it's disguised as only kidding..

Posted by: Margaret at June 30, 2004 09:59 PM
I hadn't thought of a portrayal of murder being an advocacy of same. Does the Bible advocate murder? The Iliad advocate war? I think what you really mean, Margaret, is that you don't want to read about it. Me neither. So let's not read the book, OK? And let's not have the author arrested.

Posted by: david at July 1, 2004 10:44 AM
Talking about killing the President is not legally protected in quite the same way as talking about killing other people is. You can actually be arrested for talking about killing a sitting President, but it's not likely if you do it in some clearly fictional way.

Posted by: Dave Munger at July 1, 2004 02:36 PM
david mcguire - about half the country thinks it's the right-wing conservative republican's who are the inmates running the asylum you speak of. we consider ourselves the sane ones and the right-wing conservatives to be the truely dangerous/crazy people.

we think conservatives are in need of some serious phychiatric help. if only we could get the right-wing conservatives locked up where they could get some real help. then maybe the rest of us who are sane can go back to agreeing to disagree agreeably - got it? go take your meds!

Posted by: jons at July 1, 2004 07:20 PM
jons...
Dude... You need to step back a moment and think about the content of this thread. I don't think it is the conservatives who are dreaming up ways to assassinate the president here...

Every time I think Rush Limbaugh is making a stretch the libs prove him right.

Just look at the kooks that represent mainstream democrats!

Michael Moore (eye roll here) See other threads for comments on him...

Al Franken and the penniless coalition (just joking, just jokin... seriously kidding.. I mean SERIOUSLY)

Al 'hairday' Sharpton

The Rhev..Ruhnd Jahhk..Suhhnn and the Monochrome coalition...

Now this nutcase Baker...

And you guys think WE need meds..

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=6776
Mark Goldblatt

Posted by: Jim U at July 1, 2004 11:00 PM
Oh did I mention the hate filled 'moveon.org'?

Or how about the aforementioned.... Sadaam 'Bush is the criminal' Hussein? You guys spend so much time defending him he might as well be Kerrys running mate..

Howard 'Eeaarrgghhh' Dean -Favorite New Testament book is Job huh?

Clarke

Don't even start with 'Gimme all your money' Clinton. It's hard to pick which one I'm talking about.

Posted by: Jim U at July 2, 2004 07:16 AM
http://www.nypost.com/gossip/17696.htm

Here's another idiot!

Posted by: Jim U at July 2, 2004 01:46 PM
None of the people you mention, Jim U, represent "mainstream democrats." In fact it's clear you have no idea what mainstream democratic ideology is, if comparisons to Saddam Hussein and jokes about Al Sharpton's (!) hair is your idea of analysis.

I'm all for the occasional gratuituous joke, but it's very telling to me that when the Left complains about the Right, they tend to mention people who speak for the current administration, like Donald Rumsfeld (along with, yes, blowhards like Rush Limbaugh.) When the Right complains about the Left they tend to mention...entertainers and fringe candidates.

Posted by: david at July 2, 2004 03:40 PM

http://www.worldmagblog.com/archives/006050.html

[eleny]

4. Could this be the one?

http://www.londoncircle.com/killtheprez.html

[Susang]

5. Its a novella

And its written by a very talented literary figure named Nicholson Baker. His work is character driven and often deals with unusual and controversial subjects then skims around the circumference of them.

He's only written one novel that could be called a bestseller, Vox, and that was based on a phone sex call. He wrote another novella, The Mezzanine, that took place entirely on an escalator ride. I find him brilliant and have read everything he's written. I'm sure the characters' discussion is a literary device that Baker is using. This hysteria, on both sides, is unwarranted.