An Assassin's Diary

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An Assassin's Diary (ISBN 0-06-120470-6) is the title of a book released in 1973 which was based on part of the diary of Arthur Bremer, the would-be assassin of Alabama Governor George Wallace. Bremer shot Wallace at a shopping mall in Laurel, Maryland, while Wallace was making his third campaign for President on May 15, 1972.

In the book, Bremer states that he was not particularly opposed to Wallace's political agenda, which many had branded as white supremacist, but that his primary motive was to become famous, and that he had also stalked President Richard M. Nixon.

In Gore Vidal's essay entitled "The Art and Arts of E. Howard Hunt," Vidal assesses Bremer's writing style and notes the apparent contradiction between Bremer's lucid prose and his characterization as a person with a mediocre intellect. Vidal's essay juxtaposes the arrival of CIA agent and hardboiled novelist E. Howard Hunt at Bremer's apartment within hours of Wallace's assassination to the "avant-garde" prose later found in Bremer's diary. Vidal's loose hypothesis is that Bremer's writing was too good for a janitor with an average I.Q., but not beyond the skill of a writer such as Hunt. Vidal concludes that Bremer's diary had many uncharacteristic signs of professional writing, such as heavy use of irony.

Paul Schrader was partly inspired by Bremer's diary when he wrote the screenplay for the 1976 film Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese. Peter Gabriel's 1980 song "Family Snapshot," from Peter Gabriel (III) was inspired by An Assassin's Diary.

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