By popular demand, here’s the video my younger son and I put together to ballyhoo my new novel, The Insurrectionist.
The topic? A reporter pursuing a Jan. 6-related story ends up entangling two families—including his own—in an FBI investigation. The Insurrectionist, a darkly satirical novel, lampoons the news media and woke America.
Check out the novel here.
Filed under Books, Elephants, Fiction, novel, Russell Working, The Insurrectionist
In May 2023, Nonna and I jetted to Hong Kong as guests of a storied auction house founded in 1796. Phillips had invited us for an event we never imagined participating in: the auction of a priceless watch that had belonged to Aisin-Gioro Puyi, the last emperor of China.
We had spent nearly a year working on contract for Phillips, helping verify the watch and writing a catalogue the size of a coffee table book. And suddenly we found ourselves schmoozing with the kind of people who could casually spend a fortune on a watch. The timepiece eventually sold for $6.2 million.
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Writers, was the script for the attempted assassination of former President Trump too outlandish to believe? Is it just too implausible that the storied Secret Service, protector of presidents, didn’t think to cover that slightly sloped rooftop?
Joseph Mallozzi—a showrunner, writer, and executive producer for “Dark Matter” and “Stargate”—offers a wry commentary in the style of an executive’s critique of a movie script. He scorches the Secret Service’s ridiculous excuses for why a gunman got within a hair’s breadth of shooting Trump through the head.
Mallozzi writes:
Thanks for the script. Overall, the plotting feels contrived and, at times, defies logic, so we’re going to require a fairly extensive rewrite for the second draft.
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In my new novel, The Insurrectionist, Chicago Bullet reporter Ian Landquart learns that he is no longer heading to the Paris bureau, as planned. He must make way for a more diverse correspondent. Instead, he is assigned to one of the paper’s suburban satellite offices.
When he balks, the editor says, “Take it or leave it, Ian. If you don’t want it, I got a stack of résumés that high from reporters who’d give their left arm to write for the Chicago Bullet.”
A harmless metaphor? No way. Ian—who lost a leg several years ago in a hiking accident—resolves to turn tables on the newspaper, using his disability as a pretext to file a civil rights complaint against the paper. The following scene is from his first day at his new work station.
The DuPage bureau, where Ian showed up on Monday, was located in Oak Brook, a suburb full of office parks with grassy berms and ponds with spritzing fountains where Canada geese paddled about, too lazy to migrate further north for the summer. Bureau chief Krystal Brufke, she/her, was a pudgy White woman with frizzy gray hair, dressed in a mauve suit, flowered blouse, and mom sneakers. Her rainbow-colored mask asserted, undeniably, LOVE IS LOVE.
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My wife and I were cruising along Highway 34 in Illinois’ DeKalb County recently when a flurry of red, white, and blue signage caught our eye.
Fronting the road in Somonauk (2021 population: 1,776) is an array of Donald Trump flags and banners. There’s a life-sized cutout of the former president, a facsimile of the Second Amendment upon which the great man’s face is superimposed, and a sign that urges THANK YOU TRUMP, SAVE AMERICA AGAIN.
The shelves of the Trump Store—also known as The Patriot Store on 34—are overflowing with paraphernalia. Looking for Trump mugshot signs (OUTLAW PRESIDENT), fake Trump $20 bills to distribute to your nieces and nephews, or a JESUS IS MY SAVIOR TRUMP IS MY PRESIDENT garden flag to add an appropriate note of piety to your summer barbecues? Patriot, you’ve come to the right place.
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Or, why I support Israel and the Jewish people
The other day my Twitter friend @OliaonX expressed her gratitude for gentiles who support Israel and the Jewish people. She wrote:
In spite of all the brainwashing and propaganda being pushed by MSM and UN, in spite of all the anti-Israel protests all over the world, in spite of many country’s governments declaring their support for “Palestine”, and in spite of supporting Israel being unpopular, you all chose to stand on the right side of history – the side of light – I’m so grateful!!!
She asked for comments on why we are doing this. My reply has grown too long for X, so I am posting it here.
Dear Olia:
I have been thinking about this subject since you posed a similar question on X several months ago.
Luckily, brainwashing doesn’t work for those understand the Jewish people’s 4,000 year history in the land “between the river and the sea.” Only the ignorant regard Jews as interlopers. It is instructive to watch social media videos in which those pro-Hamas Ivy League geniuses can’t even identify which river and sea they are talking about, let along grasp the slogan’s genocidal meaning.
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The dark-haired man—still youthful and trim at 37—lay in a coffin in a Pennsylvania funeral home’s viewing room, the texture of his face, in its mortuary makeup, oddly plastic.
It was early March 2022, and Matthew Perna, a protester who had participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill chaos, had hanged himself in his garage five days earlier.
I had never met Matthew, but I was writing a novel about a family destroyed when a vindictive reporter pursues them because of their participation in J6. My wife Nonna and I wanted to pay our respects to Matthew. We drove seven hours from Illinois to join the viewing line, offer condolences to his distraught family, and attend the funeral.
Matthew’s death came to mind Friday as the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, in Fischer v. United States, voted 6-3 to void a lower court’s decision allowing a charge of obstructing an official proceeding against defendant Joseph Fischer, a former police officer. The court held that the charge only applied where the defendant destroy records, documents or other relevant items.
The charge had been used to convict 350 J6 protesters, the Washington Post reports. Matthew was among them, according to his aunt, Geri Perna.
Encouragingly, liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined conservatives Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Chief Justice John Roberts in the decision.
Sadly, it was more than two years too late for Matthew. “It’s a pity he couldn’t have held out to see this day,” Nonna told me when the news broke.
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Fiction! Disinformation! Run and hide, while there’s still time!
They told my agent my new novel could not be published. Too dangerous! You’re not allowed to question the Jan. 6 narrative, they said. It was the worst crisis since the Civil War, since the Visigoths sacked Rome. Delete your account.
He tried valiantly, but there were no takers, and we parted ways amicably. So I am publishing The Insurrectionist myself. And today the novel launches, in both paperback and ebook formats.
What’s it about?
Denied a promised posting in Paris, Ian Landquart, a reporter with the storied Chicago Bullet newspaper, is shunted off to a suburban bureau and assigned to redact racist language from the historical archives.
To salvage his career, he investigates an elephant-owning farmer who protested nonviolently on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. But as Ian gins up an FBI probe, he learns that his progressive teenage daughter is dating the farmer’s conservative, gun-owning son—ensnaring the teens in the case.
Continue readingFiled under Books, Fiction, Free speech, Media, novel, Russell Working
The Ringling brothers started out performing stunts in their backyard in Baraboo, Wisconsin, the late 19th century. Al Ringling learned to balance a plow on his chin, put together a trained dog act, and persuaded his brother John to perform as a musical clown.
In time the family show grew into the world’s greatest entertainment juggernaut. By the Roaring Twenties, John alone was one of the richest men in America, worth an estimated $200 million, or $3.1 billion in today’s dollars.
Circus World, Ringling Bros.’ former winter headquarters in Baraboo, Wisconsin, not only preserves the old bandwagons and animal barns, but hosts a live circus every summer. Here’s a glimpse of the show my family and I found when we visited recently. (I shall publish a couple more videos in the future.)
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By Russell Working
Who are the most famous showmen of all times? The Ringling brothers and P.T. Barnum certainly remain legends long after their deaths.
But there’s another figure that you may well know, but don’t know that you know. A household name in the nineteenth century, Pablo Fanque was an acrobat, tightrope walker, equestrian and circus owner. He rose to fame and entrepreneurial success as a black man in Victorian England.
Fanque was memorialized in the Beatles song “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite.”
For the benefit of Mr. Kite
There will be a show tonight on trampoline.
The Hendersons will all be there
Late of Pablo Fanque’s Fair—what a scene.
Over men and horses, hoops and garters
Lastly through a hogshead of real fire!
In this way Mr. K. will challenge the world!
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The Elephant Box 