Pulp Gingrich Speaker Of The House Should Stick To Politics And Leave The Art Of The Novel To Those Who Have Hint Of Writing Talent

“1945” By Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen (Baen Books, 382 pages, $24)

All you writer wannabes out there should dust off those manuscripts that you’ve had packed away since college. There may be a market for them, especially if they’re science fiction and/or action-adventure.

Just pack them up and send them to the Washington office of Newt Gingrich, the esteemed speaker of the House himself. If Newt decides to plaster his name above the title, you’ll likely have a best-seller.

This much is certain: Nothing that you come up with could be any worse than “1945,” the book that Gingrich co-authored with William R. Forstchen.

It’s not even that “1945” is all that bad. The cardboard characterizations, puerile dialogue and mangled syntax are no worse than you tend to find in any paperback thriller.

The average paperback thriller, though, doesn’t get anywhere near the publicity of “1945.” And that publicity is all due to Newt.

The book’s plot is intriguing, if not particularly original. World War II is over, but the alternate reality that Gingrigh-Forstchen have dreamed up has Germany victorious in Europe and the United States victorious in the Pacific.

The two remaining superpowers somehow have avoided declaring war on each other, leaving Germany free to roll over France, etc., in the west before heading east to pound Russia into submission. The United States, meanwhile, free to fight only the one-front war against Japan, has won handily.

Now the two dominant nations are engaged in a staring match, with both knowing that a showdown is imminent. The question is when - and where.

The answer to that has to do with the code word “Manhattan,” the town of Oak Ridge, Tenn., and a Nazi plan to simultaneously invade England and pull off a surprise attack on the U.S. The only thing standing in the way of an American defeat, besides a few real-life heroes like Wild Bill Donovan and Alvin York, is a Navy-ace-turned-intelligence agent still carrying the onus of having been charged with treason.

Besides its fantastic plot, the book has its very simplicity going for it. There’s not much room for the philosophizing that is at the heart of Gingrich’s best-selling “To Renew America,” his take on neo-republican politics. Instead, you have the good guys, the bad guys, a tight time frame and the world in the balance.

Unfortunately, you also have such lines as this to gag on:

“The Nazis may be crazy, but they sure can throw a parade.”

“‘But darling, Germany and the United States are not at war. What harm is there if we share the occasional bit of… gossip. Surely you don’t think that I, a loyal Swede…’ The question trailed off in a lethal pout as his beautiful and so very exotic mistress stretched languidly, mock-innocent appeal in her eyes.”

“As he stared into the fireplace’s contained conflagration he unconsciously attempted to impose some sense of order on the flickering shadows capering before him…”

And such un-readable sentences as this:

“When he hardly smiled in return, nor reminded her that though they might have an understanding they were not lovers, and by the way why not? she too turned serious.”

Whatever their level of education - Gingrich has taught on the university level, and Forstchen, who teaches history at a college in North Carolina, holds a doctorate from Purdue - the authors write like over-hormoned adolescents.

There is some value in that, of course, when that’s the very market you’re pointing for. But even 14-year-olds may ultimately get tired of all the shootings and grenadings and knifings and bombings and castrations and incinerations and radiation poisonings and eyeballs being plucked out and… well, you get the idea.

But, of course, the authors save the very worst for last. It’s only then that we see the future horrors all wrapped up in three little words …

“To be continued.”

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