Word: buchananism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...their three children for an affair with Genevieve Mueller ("the Perfect Wife"), the spouse of a younger colleague of his at Wayward Junior College, an all-women institution in southern New Hampshire; and 2) his attempts amid this turmoil to complete his "historical/ psychological, lyrical/elegiacal" biography of James Buchanan, the 15th President...
...Buchanan, the pallid predecessor of Abraham Lincoln -- and the subject of Updike's novel-length play Buchanan Dying (1974)? "I love him," Clayton tells Genevieve. "He was scared of the world, Buchanan. He thought it was out to get him, and it was. He was right. He tried to keep peace." Clayton senses an affinity with the indecisive Buchanan because he too is trying to negotiate, without much success, between warring factions within himself: his passion for Genevieve and his guilt toward his discarded children. "I was a fervent supporter of marriage," he notes, "just not of my marriage...
...meaning? Just that John Updike is able to fit James Buchanan, Gerald Ford, literary theory and the grand continuum of history into the sexual appetite...
...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...
Dealing with "blahness" and "meaninglessness" may not inspire some readers. The Buchanan passages do get weighty towards the end, especially when the narrative switches from rich texture to the beat of a bad text-book...