The author of “The Identicals” says that for a literary dinner party, she would invite J.D. Salinger, John Cheever and Flannery O’Connor: “I’m serving very cold Veuve Clicquot and a bowl of mixed nuts.”
“Al Franken, Giant of the Senate” is the story of how Franken pretended to be a serious person in public even as his inner comic monologue never stopped running.
Apparently they never met. But the common cause of George Orwell and Winston Churchill resonates powerfully today, Thomas Ricks writes in this dual biography.