Greenfield for President by Arthur D. Robbins: Background Information

After 16 years in a debilitating marriage, I was left with the challenge of reconstituting myself. The first thought that came to mind was, "Why not write a novel?" Greenfield for President is the result.

I had been dabbling in fiction over the years ever since Stuyvesant High School where I had to write a short story a week for English class. I turned to poetry in college and then started writing narrative again once I left graduate school.

Greenfield for President is a satire of political process and social attitudes. It is not a satire of particular people. However, the careful reader might note a resemblance between the incumbent in this novel and a president who used a speak in clipped phrases with a jagged use of his right hand for emphasis. He presided over the first invasion of Iraq.

I was deeply saddened by this act of war and could not find a way of relieving the burden. I live not far from a Friends Meeting House on Stuyvesant Square. There, I thought, I will go. These are a peaceful people who will echo my dismay. So I went to a meeting. These non-ceremonial events have a very simple format. Anyone in attendance simply says what he or she has on his or her mind that day. I was just assuming that everyone shared my concern and that not being a regular member of this group I would wait for someone to express my thoughts for me. At these meetings there is total silence until someone present is moved to speak. The minutes passed and no one spoke. The minutes turned to parts of an hour. Eventually an entire hour was consumed in silence. Not one person spoke a single word, myself included. Was everyone thinking what I was thinking? Was anyone thinking what I was thinking? I will never know. But that silence rings loud in my memory. It is perhaps a memorial to senseless death. It provided the emotional foundation for the writing of this book.

I have always been a political person, though not in the activist sense of the word. I am interested in political ideas and the nature of political change. While I was at Columbia getting a doctorate in French and Romance Philology I specialized in 18th century political thought. From Voltaire - the author of Candide - I learned that politics and humor can be brought together in a work of fiction. On my book shelf is a copy of the The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine. In Common Sense, Paine wrote, " The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind." I believe that sentence is as true today as it was when it was first written in 1776.

I am leery of political labels - liberal, radical, conservative, Republican, Democrat . Mostly they are used in a pejorative way to lambast ones opponents. I have a rubric that I would gladly subscribe to, that of "democrat," with a small "d." I am a strong believer in democracy and am concerned about the state of democracy in America today.

Presidential politics as presently practiced are the antithesis of true democracy. Candidates are bought and sold. Performances are staged and, one day every four years, we cast a vote, a process which for most has become meaningless, justifiably so, I believe. This is not true democracy. By exposing presidential politics for the hoax they are, by jarring the reader into a state of awareness, I am hoping that Greenfield for President will help Americans rediscover their political identity and once again become vital political beings.

There was a time when people discussed the issues of the day. They argued in bars and over the dinner table about war and peace, political and economic ideas. Twenty years ago this hall came to a halt. There is a generation of Americans who don't know the true meaning of political dialogue. Yet, political dialogue is what defines us as human beings. We should not think that we have fulfilled our political destinies by listening to a couple of staged debates or reading a few headlines at election time in an atmosphere reminiscent of super bowl Sunday.

Although the writing of Greenfield for President was motivated by an act of war, the sadness and anger were transcended. The book is filled with humor and satire. I laugh every time I read it. Everyone seems to enjoy it, regardless of political persuasion. Greenfield for President is riotous and freeing. In writing it, I discovered a side of me that I didn't know was there: the comedian. In fact, the book had to be drastically toned down. I was completely out of control, perhaps for the first time in my adult life, and loving it. The giddy kid in me wouldn't keep quiet.

I do believe we reveal ourselves in a novel whether we mean to or not. In fact, I can see Greenfield for President as an integration of three facets in my personality: the stand-up comedian; the innocent dreamer, Jeremiah Greenfield, who believes he can fashion reality to suit his wishes; the hard-nosed cynic, Jeremiah's friend, Nick Belladonna, who has seen reality in all of its meanness and has forgotten how to laugh.

In the first version of Greenfield for President there was no Nick Belladonna. He emerged as I got stronger and tougher. In fact, for a moment he took over completely and had to be put back in his box. There was a first-person version of the novel in which he dominated.

Although the core of the book, satirizing presidential politics, scene for scene, was there from the beginning, it didn't fully become the focus until many revisions later. At the time I wrote Greenfield for President close to fifteen years ago, it never occurred to me that this would be an excellent book to see in print at election time. Gradually, it became clearer that indeed Greenfield for President is a political book, as much as it is a piece of fiction.

I am hoping that others will follow in my footsteps and that there will be more satirical writing. I think we take our political leaders too seriously. At a meeting of the House of Parliament, members boo the Prime Minister. This I believe would be a welcome reprieve from the ritualistic applause which greets the President of the United States, at repeated intervals, during a tedious and trivial speech, before the House of Congress.