Word: writtens
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...know the story. It is written: Jesus whines his gentle jussive, dancing down the stage, to kiss the air by Judas' cheek, to limply shake Maria's hand. Unoffending, uninjured, undemanding, the actors lift him by hiccups into heaven on the cross. Jesus, son of God, gladly gives his life to purge us of our sins. We can all sing to this tune. We can all be uplifted. We can all expect the resurrection to take place before a short reception in the lobby. Christ the man killed, we celebrate Christ the lamb, nipping at his heels, holding...
...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...
...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 I'd have written it much more quickly...
...that's what I meant by [the above answer]. I think biography should take advantage of all these new communicative techniques we've got these days. The technique of the screenplay, sound effects, and computer techniques. Several chapters in Reagan's life were so cinematic that I've actually written them cinematically. Why not? It's the truthful way and the appropriate way to describe that they were episodes almost cinematic in themselves. He remembers them as cinema, so I write them as cinema...
...form if experimentation doesn't continue. Some of the devices I've used are actually not new but they had been forgotten. For example, the technique of dialogue, of a dialogue chapter, is a Victorian form where two erudite men, say, would have a long conversation that would be written out in chapter form. There's a dialogue that Oscar Wilde wrote, for example, which discusses socialism. But the discussion is conveniently couched as two very articulate men talking. And it's a fascinating form which has fallen into disuse, and I've revived it. I have a whole chapter...