Word: roosevelt
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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 Reagan...
...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...
...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...
...book because it's directly related to how I became Reagan's biographer, and when I do talk about myself it is for structural reasons. And you are absolutely right about Reagan representing all aspects of America. Indeed, what draws me to people like him and Theodore Roosevelt, as an immigrant, is that in studying men like that it's an education for me [about] the actual folk character of my adopted country. The midwest, which seems so banal and blah to most native Americans, to me as an immigrant is very exotic and strange...
...What's next? Are you going to finish Theodore Roosevelt...