Authors: Molly Ivins

Who Let the Dogs In? (60 page)

BOOK: Who Let the Dogs In?

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FAULK HAS
recently recovered from cancer. Although he admits that having cancer nearly scared him to death, he also loves being the center of attention and reveled in all the concern. Doctors in Houston managed to rid him of a lemon-size tumor in the middle of his head solely by using radiation. His salivary glands were damaged in the process, and that makes his stage work more difficult, but he appears to have regained most of his energy. Right now he’s working on a one-man show he already tried successfully in Houston last year. The play, called
Deep in the Heart,
involves a collection of Faulk’s characters all placed loosely in some mythical Texas town, and will be in New York this fall under the direction of Albert Marre, who did
Man of La Mancha,
among other productions. It will be the first time Faulk has performed in New York since he was blacklisted. He is so excited he practically dances when he talks about it: He has the capacity for delight of an eight-year-old at Christmas.

No tragedy here, no life destroyed by McCarthyism. He has a close family—three sisters and a brother—and Faulk family gatherings tend to look like county conventions. He had messed up two marriages before he met Elizabeth Peake, a British nurse, in 1964, and struck it lucky. They have one son, Yohann, who is nineteen. Faulk claims he is “the only kid ever born on Medicare.” Among Liz Faulk’s outstanding qualities is her immense common sense, a commodity for which her husband is not noted—imagine Maggie Thatcher with a heart. She keeps track of his schedule, his money, and his health, while he wanders around blithely being funny about politics and serious about the Constitution. What fun, what joy, thinks he, and wades once more into the battle. It infuriates him to see this country betray its best, basic principles, and he sometimes concludes that most of his fellow citizens are nincompoops. But Faulk is always confident that the genius of the Founders will triumph in the end. He speaks of them with a reverence, love, and depth of knowledge all the flag-waving patriots down to the VFW Hall recognize and respect.

Summer 1998

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

M
OLLY
I
VINS
began her career in journalism as the complaint department of the
Houston Chronicle.
In 1970, she became co-editor of
The Texas Observer,
which afforded her frequent fits of hysterical laughter while covering the Texas Legislature.

In 1976, Ivins joined
The New York Times
as a political reporter. The next year she was named Rocky Mountain bureau chief, chiefly because there was no one else in the bureau. In 1982, she returned once more to Texas, which may indicate a masochistic streak, and has had plenty to write about ever since. Her column is syndicated in more than three hundred newspapers, and her freelance work has appeared in
Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Harper’s,
and other publications. Her first book,
Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?,
spent more than a year on the
New York Times
bestseller list. Her books with Lou Dubose on George W. Bush,
Shrub
and
Bushwhacked,
were national bestsellers.

A three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, she counts as her two greatest honors that the Minneapolis police force named its mascot pig after her and that she was once banned from the campus of Texas A&M.

Also
by Molly Ivins

Bushwhacked: Life in
George W. Bush’s America
(with Lou Dubose)

Shrub: The Short but Happy
Political Life of George W. Bush
(with Lou Dubose)

You Got to Dance with
Them What Brung You:
Politics in the Clinton Years

Nothin’ but Good Times Ahead

Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

The essays in this work have appeared in Molly Ivins’ syndicated column as well as
The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Playboy, The Progressive,
and
Wigwag.
In addition, some of the essays appeared in the following collections of Molly Ivins’ works, all published by Random House, Inc.:
Molly Ivins Can’t Say That Can She?
(1991),
Nothin’ but Good Times Ahead
(1993), and
You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You
(1998).