The Last Magazine: A Novel by Michael Hastings

single paragraph:
    An author of three books, two nonfiction, one fiction.
    1989:
A Peaceful Village
—an account of a Peace Corps building effort in Uganda. (Out of print.)
    1996:
The Typewriter Artist
—a novel. The main character is a writer who lives in New York. He is a mild depressive and everyone ignores his work. (Out of print.)
    1999:
Awash in Red
—a personal journey of self-discovery, as the author struggles with whether or not to remain a socialist.
    I find out that Brennan Toddly, according to his bio, spent two years at
The Magazine
in the mid-nineties, has been the recipient of a number of government grants, and seems to have landed at his new magazine just this year. An impact hire, to be sure.
    I power-read the story. It is impressively full of nuance. A representative paragraph:
    After the panel discussion, I made my way backstage, where I encountered Kanan Makiya. I introduced myself to Makiya. He invited me to his home for tea. We walked across the campus yard, where a new class of coeds had just arrived, playing Frisbee and hacky sack. Easy, carefree thoughts. The opposite of what Makiya was thinking. “This is what Iraq was like when I was a child, before I had to leave,” he told me. “You Americans are finally paying attention. You must finally take action.” Three hours later, I had left his office, a bladder full of sweet chai, convinced. But the arguments with myself would continue.
    I call the university where Makiya is living out his exile and request an interview for a Nishant Patel column.
    For Kenneth Pollack, I call his publisher and ask for a copy of his book
The Threatening Storm
to be sent over. It is getting so much attention, thanks to the Brennan Toddly story, that the publisher tells me they are doing a rush second printing of it. But he says they’ll messenger me a copy and get Pollack to phone me later this afternoon.
    Now I wait.
    A blur of a human being passes by my cubicle, high-pitched voice trailing.
    “Sanders, Sanders, Sanders.”
    I jump up in my seat to see the human comet. I recognize the man calling Sanders. It is Matt Healy, Chief Investigative Correspondent, based in DC.
    Healy broke
The Magazine
’s (and the country’s) biggest story in the nineties, the Pentagon Paper of Blow Jobs, that whole businesswith President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Without Healy, the nation might never have known the details of things like cigar vaginal penetration. Then where would we be? Well, the Internet would have solved that problem within a few years anyway.
    Yes, there is no doubt in the mind of anyone at the magazine that Healy is the closest thing the magazine has to its own Woodward and Bernstein, rolled into one. A regular Neil Sheehan—revealing the past decade’s version of Watergate, but easier for most to imagine, as it just involved a slightly chubby chick, infidelity, and a hard-on. The evolution of American journalism: three decades coming full circle, a source with the name Deep Throat leaking information about the chief executive’s illegal behavior to investigating the actual mechanics of deep-throating a chief executive. There’s no need to even point out that Healy himself isn’t exactly a model citizen of marital behavior—the “ass gape cocksucker” email about Milius, for instance, a couple of divorces, smoking crack, rumored affairs, the whole deal—but of course, Healy never had the chance to lie about it under oath, in a grand jury, so ethically speaking, the magazine is in the clear from charges of hypocrisy.
    Healy is pigeonholing Sanders Berman, right outside the men’s room. A real bulldog type. Three spiral notebooks on his person. Two flopping out of his back pockets, one in his hand.
    “We should make it a cover, a cover,” he yells. “Three sources—CIA, DOD, the VP’s shop—are all saying and confirming it. They are saying the links are there, they are saying there are links. Al Qaeda in Baghdad!”
    Healy rushes off down the