7-30-07, 11:14 am

Fellow Travelers, a Novel. By Thomas Mallon. New York, Pantheon Books, 2007.

As suggested by its title, Thomas Mallon's most recent political novel, Fellow Travelers, is a story about the McCarthy-era and the assault on political dissent that dominated it. But it is also about the intersection of right-wing witch hunts to expose and punish Communists and the right's obsession with sexuality and the search for gay and lesbian 'infiltrators' at the same time, also known as the 'lavender scare.'

The novel provocatively uses real historical figures such as paranoid anti-Communists such as Joseph McCarthy, Roy Cohn, David Schine, and numerous others along with fabricated characters to dramatize conflicts of forbidden desire, political machinations, patriotic loyalty, and global struggles between capitalism and communism. Mallon's great success is that he manages this hefty scenario with skill, producing a riveting tale of love, passion, and betrayal.

Rising State Department star, Hawkins Fuller, is handsome and confident. All the ladies love him. But he doesn't return the favor. He has a secret, which could cost him everything in Washington's paranoid world in 1953: he's gay. According to the government's internal security types not only are gay people morally deficient and a threat to our 'way of life,' but those in government positions pose a national security because if their secret is found out they could be blackmailed for classified material.

In this world, the solution is not to alter federal regulations, national laws and society's customs and habits to include and normalize gay and lesbian people, but to perpetuate homophobia by hunting them down and forcing them out of government service.

But Fuller fears little. A conservative white, upper crust Protestant, he is about as normal as it gets, other than his one small secret. Used to the privileges of his social position, he almost enjoys thumbing his nose at the system, fearing little retribution. Who'd think he of all people would be a 'cookie pusher.'

Into Fuller's world walks Tim Laughlin, a young Irish Catholic Senate legislative assistant, wracked by guilt about his desires. Fuller, ever on the prowl, picks up Tim and a passionate relationship follows. In fact, Tim refers to Fuller as 'Hawk' throughout. Constantly fearful of exposure, Tim also struggles to handle his feelings for the more experienced Fuller who dominates the relationship. Ironically, Tim is a staunch conservative who happens to agree with the social and religious proscriptions on homosexuality.

Intersecting this private world is the public story of the McCarthyist search to uncover Communists. Because Fuller is a State Department bureaucrat, he is less inclined to voicing partisan political positions. Tim, on the other hand, is a rabid anti-Communist and a supporter of McCarthy. Some in his family, though proud of Tim's fancy government job, are slightly disappointed that he doesn't work for McCarthy. Tim hates communists and believes they should be hunted down and punished. While he never comes to this same conclusion about gay people, his own self-loathing leads to life compacted by guilt, fear, and repressed ego subsumed under the dominate personalities around him.

Mallon uses the rumors that persisted about the McCarthy's bisexuality and his drunkenness as well as Roy Cohn's own sexual orientation to link the 'red scare' with the 'lavender scare.' But it isn't Mallon's intention to simply label McCarthy as a 'pervert' in order to undermine the credibility of his actions.

Mallon's great feat in this novel is not in portraying a single political viewpoint, but to expose and provoke thought on a host of social contradictions. While the US claimed to promote democracy against brutal and violent foreign regimes, it deployed fear and hysteria and punishment here to target its internal critics and marginalized populations. (Mallon even hints at international US exploits and racial oppression domestically though those issues comprise very little of the story.) At the same time, promoters of freedom helped to demonize a section of the population based on sexual orientation.

Cohn and McCarthy were among this growd. Roy Cohn would ultimately be diagnosed with AIDS in 1984 after a public life during which he attacked both communists and gays. Cohn, along with McCarthy, spearheaded a sort of movement of closeted hard right public figures who would denounce homosexuality and push antigay laws and beliefs while at the same time hiding their own gay or bisexual orientations. In the novel, it is the threat of publicizing evidence of McCarthy's sexual overtures to a teenage boy that ultimately bring him down.

On the whole, the book is engrossing but complex. It helps to be a fan of the intricacies of politics and somewhat knowledgeable about US history to keep pace with Mallon's tale. Some passages seem contrived in order to push the plot along, but such instances are few and far between.

In addition to Mallon's excellent writing and to the thought-provoking themes, one gets satisfaction knowing that a book like this will get under the skin of contemporary supporters of McCarthy like Ann Coulter. Anything that gets her into a tizzy is worth reading twice.

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