Melville House Books

Kinky Friedman, the some-time country singer (“Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed”) and some-time mystery writer (Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned), announced last week that he will run for governor of Texas as an independent against George Bush‘s Republican successor in the spot, Rick Perry. As Mark Lawson notes in a Guardian story, “Friedman is the latest representative of an American trend”—non-politicians running for office—that has featured, over the years, many writers . . . although those writers showed a marked “inability to translate literary celebrity into electability.” Among them have been Upton Sinclair (who ran for governor of California twice); Norman Mailer (who ran for mayor of New York); and Gore Vidal (who failed in a bid to become a senator). Observes Lawson, “Britain has so far proved largely resistant to celebrity politics.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.