Governor Stark’s handshake in All the King’s Men:
He transferred his old gray hat to his left hand and took the two steps necessary to bring him to the table, and gravely extended his hand to me … I must have looked at his outstretched hand enquiringly and then given him a blank look, and he just showed me his dead pan … and kept on holding his hand out … It was a pretty good-sized hand. When you first took it you figured it was on the soft side, and the palm a little too moist—which is something, however, you don’t hold against a man in certain latitudes—then you discovered it had a solid substructure. It was like the hand of a farm boy who has not too recently given up the plow for a job at the crossroads store. Willie’s hand gave mine three decorous pump-handle motions, and he said, “Glad to meetcha, Mr. Burden,” like something he had memorized, and then, I could have sworn, he gave me a wink. Then, looking into that dead pan, I wasn’t sure.
Governor Stanton’s handshake in Primary Colors:
The handshake is the threshold act, the beginning of politics. I’ve seen him do it two million times now, but I couldn’t tell you how he does it, the right-handed part of it—the strength, quality, duration of it, the rudiments of pressing the flesh. I can, however, tell you a whole lot about what he does with his other hand. He is a genius with it. He might put it on your elbow, or up to your biceps: these are basic, reflexive moves. He is interested in you. He is honored to meet you. If he gets any higher up your shoulder—if he, say, drapes his left arm over your back, it is somehow less intimate, more casual. He’ll share a laugh, or a secret, then—a light secret, not a real one—flattering you with the illusion of conspiracy. If he doesn’t know you all that well and you’ve just told him something “important,” something earnest or emotional, he will lock in and honor you with a two-hander, his left hand overwhelming your wrist and forearm. He’ll flash that famous misty look of his. And he will mean it.