By DAVID D. KILPATRICK

WASHINGTON

FOR 25 YEARS after his release from a North Vietnamese prison, Senator John Mc- Cain tried to build a reputation as more than a famous former captive. He refused to let his campaigns use pictures from his incarceration, and he never mentioned his torture.
“When somebody introduces me like, ‘Here is our great war hero,’ I don’t like it,” Mr. McCain complained in a 1998 interview with Esquire magazine.
Mr. McCain’s impatience with his war story soon changed, however, when he became not only its protagonist but also its author. His 1999 memoir, “Faith of My Fathers,” for the first time put his prison camp ordeal at the center of his public persona. In its pages, he recalled the experience as much more than a trial: a turning point from glory-seeking pilot to responsible patriot, the final resolution of a rebellion against his father’s expectations, and the origin of a drive “to serve a cause” larger than himself.
A descendant of Navy admirals who wrote unpublished novels and quoted Victorian poetry, Mr. Mc- Cain, the Republican presidential nominee, often surprises aides and friends with his literary musings and book-loving appetite. He cites characters from fiction and film as role models.
As he recounted his history to his speechwriter and coauthor, Mark Salter, Mr. McCain echoed their stories; his memoir incorporated some of the defiance of Marlon Brando’s outlaws, the self-discovery of W. Somerset Maugham’s “Of Human Bondage” and the stoicism of Ernest Hemingway’s dying hero in “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” (“You know he is a fictional character-” Mr. Salter said he once asked Mr. McCain, who replied, “I know, but he was influential!”)
Mr. Salter, taking a little literary license, assembled from Mr. McCain’s recollections a neat narrative that he had never before articulated. It became a best seller, a television movie and the first of five successful McCain-Salter volumes.
And on the eve of Mr. McCain’s 2000 Republican presidential primary run, its story line reshaped his political identity. Until then, he had always campaigned as an uncomplicated go-getter, full of energy and ideas. A former Navy liaison to the Senate, he presented himself as a well-connected insider with “experience in Washington,” in the words of a 1982 campaign commercial, who could get things done for Arizona.
In interviews and speeches since his memoir was published, he has increasingly described his life in the book’s language and themes, and never more so than during his current campaign, which has turned back to the story of “Faith of My Fathers” for everything from its first television commercial to his speech at the Republican convention.
Some friends say it is only natural that Mr. McCain would sound like his autobiography. “If I have some thoughts in my mind and I take the time to write them down,” said Orson Swindle, a close friend from prison camp, “I find that I will be inclined to say them exactly that way over and over, too.”
Still, other friends say they marvel at how heavily the McCain campaign relies on the chastened-hero image created by “Faith of My Fathers,” for example, citing his prison experience to deflect questions on array of unwelcome questions about his campaign tactics, his personal wealth and his health insurance, among other matters.
Robert Timberg, a marine wounded in Vietnam who became Mr. McCain’s biographer and admired his memoir, said the John McCain he knew 15 years ago would never have suggested that he was more patriotic than a rival the way the senator has in attacking his Democratic opponent, Senator Barack Obama.
“Political campaigns have a way of distorting reality and turning political candidates into caricatures of themselves,” Mr. Timberg said, adding, “In some ways that has happened to him, and in some ways he may have contributed to that.”
Mr. Salter called that assertion “deeply offensive.”
“People who say that kind of thing - I know a lot of reporters who have said it - don’t have the faintest concept or grasp of what motivates John McCain and his personal conception of honor,” Mr.
Salter said. “He earned the right to tell that story.”
Critics praised the book as a much more gripping tale than the usual Washington fare. Some who knew the senator and Mr. Salter, though, rolled their eyes at the heavy emotion and tidy moral.
“I thought, ‘Oh guys, come on!’ ” recalled Victoria Clarke, Mr. Mc- Cain’s friend and former press secretary. “In his early years, he tried so hard to make sure people didn’t see him as a P.O.W.”
But when 1,200 people crammed into a church near Kansas City, Missouri, for a book signing on a September night in 1999, Mr. McCain’s campaign managers realized they had found a potent new tool. They quickly expanded a two-week book tour into a major part of Mr. McCain’s 2000 Republican primary campaign. “Faith of My Fathers” sold more than 500,000 copies, easily exceeding the $500,000 advance. (Mr. McCain gave half the proceeds from his books to Mr. Salter, with the other half going to charity.)
When it came time to write Mr. McCain’s speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination this summer, Mr. Salter said, it was only natural to return to “Faith of My Fathers.” “To remind people who he is,” Mr. Salter said. “ ‘Here is who I am, here is why you can believe me.’”
Mr. McCain owes much to the book, said John Weaver, a friend and former adviser to the senator who guided his 2000 campaign. “It made his persona much grander, much more cause-oriented,” Mr. Weaver recalled. “The book played a major role in creating the brand that has served McCain so well.”