Word: em
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...EM: Maureen Dowd and George Will have both published attacks on the book. There's a rule of life: Never, never never do anything original or inventive in front of people with red hair and thin lips. They always react violently...
...EM: No, in fact I'd already written half of another Theodore Roosevelt volume, which I've put aside. That book eliminates the narrative voice, the editorial voice, to an almost total extent. I wanted to see if I could write a biography of a President who lived between 1901 and 1909 in which there was absolutely no intrusion of the present. The reader gets the feeling from the first page to the last that they're back in the first decade of the century. So it couldn't be more different than the approach I took writing about Ronald...
...EM: My 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...
...EM: I 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...
...EM: Oh no, not at all. I knew the method was going to be very controversial, I knew that from the start, and I greatly enjoy the controversy. I think the art of biography does need shaking...