SOURCE: Mallon, Thomas, and Bill Kauffman. “Moonstruck: A Chat with Novelist Thomas Mallon.” American Enterprise 11, no. 4 (June 2000): 41-3.

In the following interview, Mallon discusses politics, why he writes historical fiction, and why he focuses on bystanders to historical events.

Fresh from The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne composed a campaign hagiography for presidential candidate Franklin Pierce, his old Bowdoin classmate. So it ought not startle us that Thomas Mallon—who has emerged in the last decade as one of the finer American novelists—earlier “assisted” Dan Quayle in the writing of his mortal memoir Standing Firm.

Mallon published his first novel, Arts and Sciences, in 1988, but he has really hit his stride with three consecutive historical novels: Henry and Clara, Dewey Defeats Truman, and the just-published Two Moons. His new novel combines Mallon's signature thematic concerns—political history, astronomy, and the mysteries of sublunary romance. Set in the Washington...