An Austin marriage

Over at Kill Fee, Liz Brown has written a intriguing and sinister reverie inspired by the moment in 1973 when the 22-year-old Karl Rove was given the keys to the Bush family car and asked to pick George W. up at the train station. "He was wearing jeans, and a bomber jacket, and he had an aura of confidence and charisma," Rove has recalled. Brown weaves the cinematic resonances of the episode into an essay that compares the energies between the two men to Tom Ripley's stalking of Dickie Greenleaf in Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, and to Olive Chancellor's wish to devote herself to Verena Tarrant in Henry James's The Bostonians ("I should like to be able to say that you are my form---my envelope").