<p class="quote"> "The best novel about American politics in our time." <p class="source"> —Willie Morris <p class="quote"> "There are two classic American political novels. One is <cite>All the King's Men. . . . the other is <cite>The Gay Place, a stunning , original, intensely human novel inspired by Lyndon Johnson. . . . It will be read a hundred years from now." <p class="source"> —David Halberstam, <cite>New York Times Book Review <p class="quote"> "An American classic in which a Johnsonian figure named Arthur 'Goddam' Fenstemaker strides through the pages, large, earthy, intelligent, threatening, working it seemed more often on the side of the angels than against them." <p class="source"> —Gore Vidal Set in Texas, <cite>The Gay Place consists of three interlocking novels, each with a different protagonist—a member of the state legislature, the state's junior senator, and the governor's press secretary. The governor himself, Arthur Fenstemaker, a master politician, infinitely canny and seductive, remains the dominant figure throughout.
Billy Lee Brammer—who served on Lyndon Johnson's staff—gives us here "the excitement of a political carnival: the sideshows, the freaks, and the ghoulish comedy atmosphere" <cite>(Saturday Review).
Originally published in 1961, <cite>The Gay Place is at once a cult classic and a major American novel.
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