Tonight at Elliot Bay Books, Gary Cole will be reading from his new book Artless: The Odyssey of a Republican Cultural Creative.

I first met Gary Cole—who, it should be said, is not the Gary Cole from Office Space—in Portland in 2001, when his company Stage Direct produced a film of my play Straight. At the time, I knew Gary as a lawyer and theater-lover, and had no idea of his years spent working for the CIA, or the time and energy he spent supporting presidential bids by Bushtards 1 (in 1992) and 2 (in 2000). Turns out Gary is that rare Republican who can spend one month working to get some GOP goofball elected, and the next carrying out his dream of bringing fringe theater to the masses.

The collision of Gary’s lifelong passion for Republican politics and lifelong love of (and frequent participation in) non-mainstream theater is at the center of Artless, which was largely inspired by a job Cole was offered in 2003, to serve on the National Endowment for the Arts. Thrilled by the prospect of bringing the two parts of his life together though an arts-related job in a Republican administration, Cole accepted the offer and got started moving his family from Portland to D.C.

Suddenly, the NEA job offer was retracted. “I got a call from the NEA, withdrawing the offer without any explanation,” Cole told Stranger Theater Editor Brendan Kiley in 2004. “It’s a White House political decision in Karl Rove’s office—they have to sign off on all political appointments.” From insiders, Cole was told his role in producing such works as Poona the Fuckdog and, yes, Straight played a major role in the retraction. (Straight deals critically with conversion therapy for homosexuals, Poona includes the word “fuck” in the title, and apparently neither work is something an NEA official should have anything to with.)

The NEA job switcheroo is one of many interesting stories in Artless: The Odyssey of a Republican Cultural Creative, which tracks Cole’s twin obsessions from their inceptions, and from which Cole will be reading tonight at 7:30, at Elliott Bay Book Co (101 S Main St, Seattle WA, 98104).