Fiction, Facts, and Truth: The Personal Lives of Political Figures

Abstract

In the wealth of research on politics and politicians over the past fifty or so years, little attention has been accorded the relationships between the personal and the public sides of politicians' lives. Given the difficulties of collecting data, this absence is unsurprising. But that does not mean the personal-political linkage is unimportant, and one way to address this subject may be to draw upon political fiction, both to gain insights and to suggest avenues of inquiry. And within political fiction, the best source, at least for American politics, likely includes the works of veteran novelist Ward Just.