In 1997, former foreign correspondent-turned-novelist Ward Just released a rather insightful Washington DC based-novel known as Echo House, which portrayed the rise and fall of the Behl family – a clan of would-be power brokers who considered government service to be their birthright and ladder to social success.
Much of the novel is devoted to eight decades worth of American politics in the 20th century, with three generations of the Behl family questing after their El-Dorado with the tools available to them – insinuation, discreet whispers, and connections.
However, what becomes apparent from the reader’s viewpoint is how inconsequential the self-absorbed clan and their political social set are at the end of the day. Whereas the Behl’s seem to firmly believe that the course of history has been set by those who “knew when to whisper the right word – or threat – into the right ear,” others point out in the novel that Government may be merely the “opiate of the patrician masses.”
And that the only true lasting things are in fact Washington DC itself, representing the continuous game, and the Behl’s mansion – the aforementioned Echo House.
This blog is named in honor of the novel, and takes its inspiration from the impression of that towering old stone mansion overlooking Rock Creek Park, bearing silent witness to the intrigues, schemes, and controversies in an ever changing capitol city.
In the echo chamber of our modern society that is amplified by the ubiquity of social media, a hundred thousand debates occur within the blink of an eye. Within the span of a single season an issue or affair can become popular, than controversial, than reviled, and than completely disappear altogether from the public’s mind……even if the issue continues to exert influence on our lives.
My Echo House is a place to stop, sit, and think – in order to examine the vagaries of life and ponder what the long term consequences of shifts in technology, politics, and culture can bring about.
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Echo House 