About the Author
Harvey Simon is a freelance writer
living in Washington, DC. His articles have appeared in The Los Angeles
Times, The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, the History News Network and elsewhere.
Before moving to Washington, he was a
national security analyst at Harvard University, where he also wrote about
other public policy issues.
The Madman Theory (Sept. 18, 2012, Rosemoor Press) is Simon’s
debut novel. Its release coincides with the 50th anniversary of the
most dangerous event in U.S. history – the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Simon received his undergraduate
degree from Cornell University and has an M.A. in philosophy from the University
of Massachusetts at Amherst.
About the Book
THE
MADMAN THEORY is an alternate history novel about the Cuban Missile Crisis. On
September 17, Rosemoor Press will publish this fresh take on the crisis by
Harvey Simon to coincide with the 50th anniversary the following
month of the most dangerous week the world has ever known.
In this retelling, Sen. John F. Kennedy loses the 1960 presidential
election to his young opponent, Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Two
years later the Soviets are caught building a secret nuclear missile base in Cuba
and President Nixon faces the same decision Kennedy confronted – whether to
bomb the launching sites and invade the island.
As the confrontation between the US and its nuclear foe spirals out
of control, Pat Nixon struggles to reconcile her strong sense of a wife’s
proper role with her marriage to a man who abuses her and has thrust her into a
public life she despises and the two confront their longstanding
grievances.
Q & A w/Harvey
What
exactly is the madman theory that gives the book its title, and what inspired
you to make it into a full-length novel?
I
wrote The Madman Theory because I was
interested in exploring what would have happened during the Cuban Missile
Crisis, had Kennedy lost the ’60 election.
Richard Nixon would have been president and would have had the chance to
employ his actual philosophy about foreign policy, which he really did call his
madman theory. He believed that if he
could convince Soviet leaders he was a madman – that he was unstable enough to
unleash nuclear war–that there’d be no war.
The other side would be so traumatized they’d back down from any
aggressive action that could threaten the U.S.
I wrote the novel to explore how that might have played out.
How
much of your book is based on fact?
The Madman Theory
is based in fact, as much as any novel can be.
Everything in the novel after the 1960 election is, of course, straight
out of my imagination. But in imagining
what would have happened had Kennedy been defeated, I relied completely on the
historical record. I tried to imagine
this period as it really would have been, had Nixon been elected. The details are accurate right down to the
look of Air Force One – a plain silver fuselage–and the color of the
presidential limousine–black, not Kennedy’s dark blue.
What
about the characters? Are they real or imagined?
I
did not invent any major characters for The
Madman Theory. The people around
Nixon could very plausibly have made up a 1960 Nixon administration.
Is
there really a place like Mount Weather?
Mount
Weather is quite real. It is believed to
be the “secure, undisclosed location” Vice President Dick Cheney was taken to
after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It was
built during the Eisenhower administration as an alternative White House in
case of nuclear war. The Madman Theory's descriptions of the
shelter rely on the limited reporting done about the facility and a visit to
the underground alternative Congress, built about the same time under a resort
in West Virginia. But there is much that
is still unknown about Mount Weather and I had to extrapolate from what I knew
to describe some of the shelter’s further recesses.
Does
your novel have any relevance to the presidential election?
One
inherent message in The Madman Theory
is that presidential elections have huge consequences for our lives in ways we
can’t fully imagine. With the November elections approaching, the book
underscores the importance of everyone’s vote and the critical need to
carefully evaluate each candidate’s views on foreign policy.
Are
you suggesting who people should vote for this year through the book?
The
1960 presidential contest was between a candidate with no foreign policy
experience–Sen. Kennedy–and Vice President Nixon, who had met more foreign
leaders and had traveled the world more than any other vice president. Yet Kennedy saw us safely through the Cuban
Missile Crisis. Does that mean you
should vote for the least experienced candidate? Of course not. So The
Madman Theory won’t help you decide how to vote in November. But it will impress upon you the importance
of your choice.
Do
you see any parallels between the Cuban Missile Crisis and current events? What
about Iran?
The
decision about whether the U.S. or Israel should bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities
has parallels in the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is at the heart of The Madman Theory. We are all trying to imagine the possible
consequences of a strike against Iran, just as President Nixon, in my novel,
tries to think through the ramifications of possibly destroying Soviet missiles
in Cuba.
Is
it really plausible to base your novel on Kennedy losing the 1960 election?
The
1960 presidential election was the closest in American history, up to that
point. A number of states tipped to
Kennedy by razor-thin margins. It
wouldn’t have taken much at all to tip that balance the other way. In The
Madman Theory the balance shifts when President Eisenhower disregards Vice
President Nixon’s seemingly inexplicable recommendation that the president
refrain from campaigning vigorously on his behalf.
If
Nixon had been elected instead of Kennedy, isn't it possible the Cuban Missile
Crisis might never have happened?
This
is a real thicket. In reality, Kennedy
botched the Bay of Pigs invasion, a 1961 attempt to overthrow Castro. If Nixon had been elected, instead of
Kennedy, maybe the invasion would have succeeded. Then the Cuban Missile Crisis would not have
happened. But in The Madman Theory, the ’61 invasion is not the disaster it was for
Kennedy, but doesn’t succeed in overthrowing Castro either. To add another wrinkle, some argue the
Missile Crisis came about because the Soviet Union perceived Kennedy as
weak. With Nixon in the Oval Office,
things would have been different, they claim.
But I believe this argument ignores Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s
primary motivations for building a secret nuclear missile base in Cuba.
We
never hear about the Bay of Pigs in your novel. But you refer to something
similar at a place called Trinidad. What's that all about?
President
Kennedy changed the landing site that the CIA proposed for the 1961 Cuba
invasion from Trinidad to the Bay of Pigs.
This was one of many changes he approved to make it less likely the
invasion by CIA-trained Cuban exiles would be traced back to the U.S. In The
Madman Theory, President Nixon approves the original Trinidad landing
site. So instead of the Bay of Pigs
invasion, the novel refers to the Trinidad invasion.
Do
you plan to write more books? If so, can we get a sneak peek into your next
novel?
I
have a few ideas for another alternate history novel, which I’m not yet ready
to disclose. I’m also toying with the
idea of writing short stories based on current events. But that’s all I can say for now.
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