Jason Heller has been a living voice in Denver’s journalism and music communities for many years, editing the Onion’s AV Club for that city while playing in bands like Crestfallen and 25 Rifles on the way to infiltration of the international spec-fic scene, publishing pieces in the classic Weird Tales whence sprang such giants as Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. In Heller’s latest novel, Taft 2012, available online and at your favorite local bookstores, long gone P.O.T.U.S. Howard Taft comes to in modern times, on the hundred year anniversary of the last day of his presidential reign. Taft bungles through modern technology “this internet of Susan’s” his fingers like sausages, all the while retaining dedication to old fashioned manners and ideals. Predictably, it isn’t long before he accrues his own "Tea Party" style followers who consider his regressionist idealism just what this struggling country lacks and deserves. “Think about it,” reasoned Heller at his recent Tattered Cover book release party, “A lot of voters today, Democrat or Republican, would probably welcome a candidate like Taft. Even though he was a Republican, a lot of today’s Democratic candidates are more conservative by comparison.” Or words to that effect. Which led to a couple more questions about political tendencies before Heller was able to redirect the trend. Everybody has such burning minds about that stuff. “You seem to have written this book on the advice of your publisher,” queried a young man next. I hadn’t known anything like that was afoot myself. “I’m just wondering, do you ever write anything of your own?” This seemed to me a very impudent kind of question, but Heller fielded it graciously, expressing that he had a couple such projects in process at present but his own ideas so far seemed to fall short of the publisher’s criteria for acceptance. Or something like that. To be fair, Heller’s signing was very well attended and I had arrived late, necessitating my retention of an uncomfortable standing position for about fifteen or twenty minutes as the Q &A squeaked along, so I can’t remember all the words. After a few more impertinent questions, all handled deftly and graciously by this young author in a Nirvana shirt, black with yellow letters (is that what it was?), the event came to a close, I bought a copy of Taft 2012 and split without standing in line for Heller’s autograph. (Sorry, buddy. It’s a great book, I just had to take off.)
In today’s world of reliably unrelenting partisan opposition, vicious political infighting and all the rest, Heller’s take on the American electoral mind is refreshing and inspiring. Among other appealing features, rather than taking the by now arguably tedious form of a linear narrative, Taft 2012 is interspersed with (fictional) commentary from disparate sources (interviews with relatives, campaign advertisements and the like), giving it a sense of vital immediacy.
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