Word: books
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...What was your purpose writing this book...
...purpose in writing the book? Well, just simply to tell a story -- which is all I've ever wanted to do in my life, is just to tell a story. What drew me to Theodore Roosevelt, and what drew me to Reagan is the fact that both had extraordinarily interesting life stories. And were both extraordinarily interesting characters. I did not want to write about Reagan for any political reasons, his politics bore me. I did want to make money, so that was certainly a consideration. But on the other hand, if I'd only been after money...
...remember saying to him once in a moment of frustration, "Mr. President, I just have great difficulty understanding some of the things you think and some of the things you do." He said, "But why? I'm an open book." "Yes," I said, "but your pages are all blank." He looked at me with his head on one side, generally puzzled that I found him puzzling...
...that kind of closeness. The device of an omnipresent spectator of whom Reagan is unaware, but who is very much aware of Ronald Reagan. Somebody called Stanley Fish, who's a professor at Duke University and often writes on scholarly subjects, wrote a piece in the New York Times Book Review 6 weeks ago, just before my book came out, saying that all biography is actually autobiography, in the sense that it always reflects the prejudices and sentimentalities of the biographer...I must say I think [Dutch] is more honest; the narrator actually comes out front...
...spoke about biography being autobiographical. There's a lot in the biography that has a lot to do with you--references to Clare Booth Luce, to Teddy Roosevelt, and the musicality of the text. How much is this also a book of you, and how much is it a book of the United States during this century...