Ana Marie Cox: Dog Days

New York Sun, January 6, 2006

If you need any confirmation that the glum little town that passes for this nation's capital is hopelessly obsessed with itself, take a look at "Dog Days" (Riverhead Books, 288 pages, $23.95), the Washington frolic and first novel by Ana Marie Cox, the below-the-Beltway blogger better known as Wonkette.

To get the most out of this book, you need to know beforehand what Ms. Cox has been up to on her blog. Sleazy, sarcastic, funny, and salacious ("Politics for People With Dirty Minds"), Wonkette first began lurking around computer terminals back in January 2004, a remote era lost in blogging antiquity when Assad's goons were still hanging out in Lebanon, Jennifer was still hanging with Brad, and John Kerry had not yet been hung out to dry. Following hot, and not a little sweaty, in the wake of Gizmodo (gadgets), Gawker (gossip), and Fleshbot (porn),Wonkette became the latest in a stable of blogs set up by British entrepreneur Nick Denton, its shtick an oddball mess of politics, D.C. rumor, sex, and satire. Throw in the excitement of an election season, along with Ms. Cox's striking good looks, and it's no surprise Wonkette soon shone as a blogosphere star.

The site reached some kind of peak, or nadir (take your pick) in mid-2004 with the saga of naughty Jessica Cutler. She was the senatorial staffer who chronicled her exhausting, grubby - but sometimes financially rewarding - romantic adventures on a Web site,Washingtonienne.com. Wonkette catnip! Ms. Cutler lost her job, but won notoriety, a book contract, and a Playboy spread, and, as she did so, Wonkette reported the disgraceful details to an overexcited world. It was a perfect, if slutty, symbiosis: Wonkette helped make Ms. Cutler a celebrity, and Ms. Cutler attracted readers to Wonkette.

Since then, despite continued critical acclaim (winner of a 2005 "Bloggie" as "best political weblog!"), Wonkette has jumped the snark: Washingtonienne was a one-off, there's a while to go until the presidential election, and, worst of all, the anarchic spirit that characterizes Ms. Cox's blog at its best has all too often been drowned in dully predictable Democratic spin. Unfortunately, the same weakness sometimes surfaces in "Dog Days," a generally very funny book, where the feeblest jokes - more Carter, alas, than Carville - are those aimed at making fools of the Republicans, something the GOP is quite capable of doing for itself.

If nods to contemporary liberal orthodoxy are one problem with "Dog Days," a related flaw is the way in which Ms. Cox takes pains to observe other pieties of our prim and proper era. Given Wonkette's wicked reputation, "Dog Days" is a strangely moralistic tale that concludes (spoiler ahead, but the book's plot, loosely inspired by that loose Washingtonienne, really doesn't matter that much) with Melanie, its once-promising heroine, appearing to abandon adulterous sex and binge drinking in favor of a wholesome return to the Heartland.

As if that's not bleak enough, anyone so obsessive (yes, yes, I was) as to read this book's "acknowledgments" section will be shocked to stumble across the eat-your-greens, Jim Lehrer moment when its supposedly hard-boiled author takes the time to thank political campaign types "for working so hard for so little when so much was at stake. Campaigns can be foolish; what you're fighting for isn't. "Oh, please. Cynics, however, will note that, in exchange for a deal reportedly "in the mid-six figures," Ms. Cox will soon be quitting Wonkette to write what sounds like an eat-your-greens, Jim Lehrer book about the next generation of political activists. Maybe she just needs to ensure that some of them will actually be prepared to speak to her.

But if you're after filth unsoiled by repentance (and who isn't?), a better option is the bracing, brazen smut of Jessica Cutler's (fictionalized) account of her rise to infamy. With its hints of "Fanny Hill," "Heathers," and, so, so distantly, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "The Washingtonienne" is a shamefully compelling read, its seamy attraction best understood, perhaps, as the literary equivalent of a lap-dance.

For all its crumpled sheets and dodgy assignations, "Dog Days" is something very different, even if we forget its sporadic descents into liberal jabber and Puritan guilt. At times it's as much a work of anthropology as of fiction. Ms. Cox cleverly, and entertainingly, dissects the workings of some of the capital's competing power brokers, hustlers, losers, and drones. And if the detail can occasionally be too much (believe me, it can), it will doubtless delight all those on the Potomac who like nothing better than reading about themselves. Adding to their insider fun, the book is peopled by more lightly disguised D.C. personalities than an Abramoff indictment, but, even if the rest of us won't catch all the references, there's plenty here to enjoy.

As for the story's flow, it is what it is: pleasantly readable, frequently implausible, and enough to lure the reader on to the next page. More important, despite managing to confine her own role (as the "blogger girl") in her own book to a modest minimum, an unusual achievement in any volume coming out of Washington, Ms. Cox also pulls off the trick, rare in a comic work of this nature, of bringing a number of her principal players to life. Melanie, an aide to a stiff, awkward presidential candidate with a suspicious resemblance to John Kerry ("He looks human!" someone had exclaimed. Kind of a low bar, Melanie had thought ... "), and her co-conspirator, Julie, a political consultant of some kind, are believable both as individuals and representatives of a type. Meanwhile, the wanton waitress who poses as the skanky, scandalous blogger "Capitolette" is enough of a character to be performed by Marilyn Monroe at her best, or Jessica Simpson at her worst.

But the greatest pleasures of "Dog Days" are the laugh-out-loud insults, terrific jokes, splendid one-liners, brutal asides, and unkind descriptions that reveal the telegram talents of a blogger in top form. Sure, it's an uneven read, but who could fail to be charmed by the cheerful tastelessness of a novel that describes the mating rituals in a city where "standards of attractiveness ... tracked to availability and not physical beauty" as being "like the Special Olympics of sex ... everyone's a winner!"

Jessica Cutler, that's who. On her (new) Web site, she has written that she did not "love" the book "as much as I thought I would."

Oh well.