The Gay Place: Being Three Related Novels

"The best novel about American politics in our time."

—Willie Morris

"There are two classic American political novels. One is All the King's Men. . . . the other is The Gay Place, a stunning , original, intensely human novel inspired by Lyndon Johnson. . . . It will be read a hundred years from now."

—David Halberstam, New York Times Book Review

"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."

—Gore Vidal

Set in Texas, 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" (Saturday Review).

Originally published in 1961, The Gay Place is at once a cult classic and a major American novel.