Countywide : Newsman Achieves His ‘Desire’

His PBS colleagues describe Robert MacNeil as a typical, polite and unassuming Canadian, the kind of guy who says “thank you” when he withdraws money from the automated teller. But a distinctly different side of the veteran journalist turns up in his first novel, “Burden of Desire.”

Indeed, when steamy passages from his tale of Canadians during the final years of World War I were read during his introduction at a book and author luncheon Thursday in Irvine, even the co-anchor of “The MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour” couldn’t help blushing.

Passages such as: “‘Don’t stop.’ She kissed him, whispering, ‘Don’t stop.”’

“I don’t really know anything about sex,” a grinning MacNeil joked after taking the lectern, “but as a journalist I’m a trained observer.”

MacNeil was one of three authors on the bill at The Times Orange County Edition’s fifth annual Book and Author Luncheon at the Hyatt Regency Irvine.

Speaking before a nearly sold-out crowd of 700, MacNeil was joined by Los Angeles Times reporter David Savage, author of “Turning Right: The Making of the Rehnquist Supreme Court,” and Frank Miller, author of “Casablanca: As Times Goes By.”

MacNeil, whose novel was called “a powerful piece of work” by the Washington Post, said he wanted to write plays and novels even before he became a journalist in the 1950s.

“I became a journalist because I had to earn a living,” he said, adding that over the years he wrote six or seven novels that “were either stillborn or miscarried or aborted, and this is the first one I have, so to speak, been able to bring to term.”

Although “Burden of Desire,” which deals with such serious themes as shell shock, has made best-seller lists in his native Canada and in a handful of American cities, MacNeil nevertheless told his audience that it is “very hard” for him to keep up with partner Jim Lehrer.

“Lehrer had the ultimate journalist’s fantasy,” said MacNeil. “He was the city editor of the Times-Herald in Dallas and his first novel was bought by Columbia Pictures, a novel called ‘Viva Max.’ He was able to walk into his boss and say, ‘My novel’s been sold to the movies and I quit!’ Which was a fantasy I’ve had for 30 years. It’s never happened.”