Narrative drive is one thing, satisfying biographical and historical solidity is another. Suspense accumulates on a half dozen fronts straight through to the final page.Īnd so, too, at length, do misgivings. There’s an American cowboy-saint (Governor Coke Stevenson, from whom Johnson stole a crucial election), and a touching January-May love story (Stevenson and his wholly charming second wife). There’s a whodunit, untangled at the end by the intrepid detective-biographer, who produces, in the bargain, a scoop on just how that election was stolen. There’s a High Noon-style face-off between a noble Texas Ranger and the forces of darkness (the Ranger very nearly intimidates the bad guys - Johnson’s hired ballot-box stuffers - by the purity of his cool). There’s a hurtling horse race of an election. It’s that the book is a compendium of all the modes of narrative that still possess the capacity to rivet. But the true secret of Means of Ascent as an entrancing read hasn’t finally to do with big bucks and high places. The book is jammed with gritty details about wheeling and dealing at the FCC for lucrative broadcasting licenses, and with facts about who carried which cash-packed suitcases where when votes were needed.
Part of the reason, of course, is the fascination of money and power.
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