Word: books
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...that's what it's like reading Morris' new biography, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (Random House; 874 pages; $35). There is fact and there is fiction, and they are jumbled together. The facts are meticulously footnoted in an epic 115-page section at the end of the book. But so is the fiction. Morris has created detailed and utterly false notes to buttress the fanciful parts of his book, which feature a fictional character, also named Edmund Morris, who is a contemporary of Dutch Reagan's. That he called the book a "memoir" and not a biography...
This dramatic departure from standard biographical orthodoxy has already, even before the book goes on sale this week, set off alarms, with traditionalists condemning Morris and Morris himself scheduling a blitz of appearances on the TV yack shows to explain and defend his heterodoxy. The Old Guard from the Reagan White House, who had arranged Morris' appointment as official chronicler, are all holding their breath, concerned only that their beloved President be lovingly portrayed, by whatever device. Said Ken Duberstein, Reagan's last White House chief of staff: "I'm not looking forward to it, and I don't know...
What set Morris off on his risky, semi-fictional path? The author was seriously late in delivering his book and anguished about writer's block and his inability to get to the core of Reagan. Perhaps it was the arrogance of the intellectual who cannot make himself believe that a person with an ordinary mind can be a powerful leader. Perhaps it was the need do something different with Reagan's life, to justify the big advance and the long delay in producing the book...
...historical sleight of hand has one virtue, aside from creating commercially valuable buzz. Trying to thread one's way through what is made up and what is real in this book is not unlike being around the actual Reagan, who invented statistics, replayed movie plots as if they were history and answered questions with such bewildering non sequiturs that interrogators were stunned into silence. This biography could have been called Zelig Meets Chauncey Gardner...
...however, the fact/fiction bipolarity erodes some of the book's brilliance. The reader begins to doubt Morris even when he describes events without resorting to dramatic trickery. His account of Reagan's summit meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in Iceland is so vivid as to make it seem Morris sat with the two leaders. In fact, Morris admits he was not there; he went to Iceland later and, relying on interviews, "enjoyed the scribe's traditional advantage of being able to recollect emotions in tranquility." Morris' brilliant portrait of Teddy Roosevelt's rise to the presidency was of course built from...