Word: alf
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...most, Buchanan is not a charismatic figure. (I grew up less than 10 blocks from his mansion in Lancaster, Penn., and I have only gone inside once--and that was to receive money.) But Alf loves him, and this is one relationship he'll remain faithful...
...Alf does learn something from Brent Meuller--that history, because it is a false construct, does not have to be true necessarily. Mulling over documents and picking apart the details of long ago events are fruitless. Historical inquiry will never yield a "correct" version of what happened--because there is no correct version of what happened. It can all be deconstructed down to nothing...
...with this intellectual "freedom," Alf takes his liberty in spinning James Buchanan's story with Updike's fictional sense of character, scene, detail and above all, sexual frustration. Historical fiction is all the rage these days--from Umberto Eco to Susan Sontag and now to Updike. The "facts" may not be true, but maybe it's more interesting that way. There isn't much of a market for books on Buchanan--even in his home town--but Updike's book will deservedly land on best seller lists...
Buchanan may seem like an odd choice for this work, but he actually meshes well with the feeling Updike wants to evoke about the Ford years. In describing this era, Alf is more concerned with himself than the world around him. Ford wasn't a monster and he wasn't a hero; he provokes no more interest in himself than that he stewarded the country during Alf's life. The same with Buchanan. He might have had a more profound effect on the country's history than Ford, but he didn't provoke much interest in himself--the bulk...
...country was sedate under Ford. People had sex, not as an expression of freedom, but just because it was there. The most striking thing about these encounters, Alf notes is not their promiscuity. That was the '60s. The Ford era was about one-night stands. And no one was concerned about swapping bodily fluids--a recurring obsession in a book written in an AIDS-conscious time...