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Posted November 1, 2002
Writing a book is one thing. Getting people to read it quite another.
Gabe Hudson knows this. Maybe that accounts for titling his collection of short stories with the humdrum Dear Mr. President.
This title is almost designed not to entice me away from my reading of Anthony Trollope, F. Marion Crawford, and Iris Murdoch. But then, people like me were not Mr. Hudson's intended audience. There is at least one person who wouldn't agree with me that the title lacks interest, and who that person is counts for far more than who you are or who I am. Yes, Mr. Hudson may have hoped for precisely what happened: his book caught the eye of the president of the United States.
The rest is history. Or, shall we say, news: According to the story, President Bush not only opened the covers, at the very least he skimmed the contents. And he didn't like what he read.
So he wrote a letter.
And then, perhaps when the President's political advisor was squittering away his three-martini lunch in the privacy of a White House latrine, the president mailed that letter to the author of the offending book.
The content of that letter, we are told, has not been made public . . . yet. Its recipient not unwisely decided to cash in on his good fortune. He announced the letter, and then entertained bids for it. No, he didn't put it up for auction on eBay; he's not so foolish as to sell the letter per se, but merely the right to reproduce it in a journal.
Yes, Mr. Hudson is milking the letter for all the publicity he can. And so Dear Mr. President may actually get more readers than your average short-story collection.
Better yet, his website — though certainly not high on content — rewards the curious with the most satisfying pop-up page currently on the Web. I encourage you to visit the site, unless you are prone to paranoia. Then you might just want to forget you ever read about this, and pretend that the whole story is nothing other than a massive hoax to get visitors to read the book.
And, for all I know, the whole story may indeed be a publicity stunt. I haven't seen the letter, and until this story broke, I'd never heard of the guy. He's said to be a comic writer, and those with a taste for comedy often cherish the elaborate jape.
Besides, would the President of the United States be so foolish as to write such a letter?
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