Editing Advise and Consent (section)

==Reception==
''[[Saturday Review (US magazine)|Saturday Review]]'' said of ''Advise and Consent'' in August 1959 that "It may be a long time before a better one comes along."<ref name="PR 1999">{{cite web |first=Roger |last=Kaplan |work=[[Policy Review]] |publisher=[[Hoover Institution]] at [[Stanford University]] |title=Allen Drury and the Washington Novel |url=http://www.hoover.org/research/allen-drury-and-washington-novel |date=October–November 1999}}</ref> Roger Kaplan of ''[[Policy Review]]'' wrote in 1999 that the novel "in many ways invented a genre in fiction…. The use of a racy intrigue, if possible involving both sex and foreign policy, is what characterizes the contemporary form. Forty years on, ''Advise and Consent'' is the only book of this genre that a literary-minded person really ought to read."<ref name="PR 1999"/> [[United States Senate|U.S. Senator]] [[Richard L. Neuberger]] of [[Oregon]] reviewed the novel for ''[[The New York Times]]'' in 1959, writing that "rarely has a political tale been told with such vivid realism" and calling the book "one of the finest and most gripping political novels of our era." Conversely, [[Pamela Hansford Johnson]] of the ''[[New Statesman]]'' called ''Advise and Consent'' "politically repellent and artistically null with a steady hysterical undertone."<ref name="NYT Obit"/>

The novel spent 102 weeks on [[The New York Times Best Seller list|''The New York Times'' Best Seller list]].<ref name="WSJ 2009"/><ref name="Kemme 242"/><ref name="HP Classic"/> In 1960, the [[Pulitzer Prize]] committee recommended that the award for fiction be given to [[Saul Bellow]]'s ''[[Henderson the Rain King]]'', but the board overrode that recommendation and awarded it to ''Advise and Consent''.<ref name="WSJ 2009"/><ref name="HP Classic"/><ref>{{cite book |first1=Heinz Dietrich |last1=Fischer |first2=Erika J. |last2=Fischer |title=Chronicle of the Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction |location=Munich |publisher=K.G. Saur |year=2007 |page=21}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/11/books/publishing-pulitzer-controversies.html |first=Edwin |last=McDowell |title=Publishing: Pulitzer Controversies |date=May 11, 1984 |access-date=August 20, 2011}}</ref>

In 2009, [[Scott Simon]] wrote in ''[[The Wall Street Journal]]'', "Fifty years after its publication and astounding success ... Allen Drury's novel remains the definitive Washington tale."<ref name="WSJ 2009"/> He wrote of Drury that "the conservative Washington novelist was more progressive than Hollywood liberals," noting that the character of Brigham Anderson, the young senator hiding a secret wartime homosexual tryst, is "candid and unapologetic" about his affair, and even calling him "Drury's most appealing character".<ref name="WSJ 2009"/> Assessing Drury's body of work in 1999, Erik Tarloff suggested in ''The New York Times'' that "homosexuality does appear to be the only minority status to which Drury seems inclined to accord much sympathy."<ref name="NYT Public Men">{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/99/02/21/reviews/990221.21tarl.html |title=Before Monica: Allen Drury's last novel revisits some old political battlefields and ends a trilogy |first=Erik |last=Tarloff |work=The New York Times |date=February 21, 1999 |access-date=January 23, 2015}}</ref> [[Frank Rich]] wrote in ''The New York Times'' in 2005:
{{Blockquote|For a public official to be identified as gay in the Washington of the 50s and 60s meant not only career suicide but also potentially actual suicide. Yet Drury, a staunchly anti-Communist conservative of his time, regarded the character as sympathetic, not a villain. The senator's gay affair, he wrote, was "purely personal and harmed no one else."<ref name="NYT Rich"/>}}

Writing for ''The Wall Street Journal'' in 2014, [[Jonathan Karl]] called ''Advise and Consent'' "the last great novel set in Washington". He called the characters "complicated and multi-dimensional, with principled convictions and plausible personal weaknesses."<ref name="WSJ A+C">{{cite web |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304677904579533703686397052 |title=Book Review: Allen Drury |work=The Wall Street Journal |first=Jonathan |last=Karl |author-link=Jonathan Karl |date=May 23, 2014 |access-date=January 21, 2015}}</ref>

''Advise and Consent'' had been [[out-of-print book|out of print]] for almost 15 years and ranked #27 on the 2013 [[BookFinder.com]] list of the Top 100 Most Searched for Out of Print Books before [[WordFire Press]] reissued it in paperback and [[e-book]] format in February 2014.<ref name="HP Classic"/><ref name="WSJ A+C"/><ref name="Bookbinder 100 2013">{{cite web |url=http://www.bookfinder.com/books/bookfinder_report/BookFinder_Report_2013.mhtml |title=11th Annual BookFinder.com Report: Out-of-print and in demand |publisher=[[BookFinder.com]] |date=2013 |access-date=January 14, 2015}}</ref><ref name="HP Zombie">{{cite web |url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/phil-simon/zombie-detectives-and-the_b_3607008.html |title=Zombie Detectives and the Changing Face of Publishing |first=Phil |last=Simon |work=The Huffington Post |date=July 16, 2013 |access-date=January 14, 2015}}</ref> The WordFire edition includes never-before-published essays about the book written by Drury himself, new appendices, and remembrances by Drury's heirs and literary executors Kenneth and Kevin Killiany. WordFire also released ''Advise and Consent''{{'s}} five sequels.<ref name="HP Classic"/><ref name="WSJ A+C"/>