A final book?

I doubt if I'll do this but I might snoop around to see how feasible it is. I have no more novels or plays to write but I might have a nonfiction book left in me, a look at McKinley's dream from a couple of perspectives, such as Henry Cabot Lodge's formal isolationism and Mark Twain's bitter satire against McKinley. More and more, I think this moment in 1898 is the quintessential American moment, a Christian vision to save and civilize heathens (i.e. Filipinos) from themselves. It's not much of a stretch from this to trying to set up democratic governments in the Middle East. The Save the World syndrome, and not seeing it as arrogant and racist but as Christian good works.

McKinley started it, with his visitation from Christ, and no one lambasted the moment better than Twain. This is a story too little known. My model would be GENESIS ANGELS, that kind of short poetic treatment of a moment in history. I'd have three major players, McK, Twain, Lodge. It could be done in under 200 pages, and I know the history well enough to direct my research efficiently.

I'll snoop around and see how hard this would be. I don't want a long time-consuming project that I might not live to finish. I want to see light at the end of the tunnel on day two ha ha.

But I definitely have been interested in McKinley's dream for decades, since it played a minor part in my co-authored history play A BROWN MAN'S BURDEN (written with historian Mark Falcoff). It's the very birth of American do-gooder imperialism.