5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Personal and Public History, March 29, 2003
"Memories of the Ford Administration" (1992) is the fifteenth novel of John Updike, a prolific American writer. It is the third of Updike's novels I have read, spaced widely over the years, with the other two being "Roger's Version", which predated this book, and "In the Beauty of the Lillies", which followed it. I had similar reactions to all three books. Updike deals with important and large themes, such as the possiblity and nature of a belief in God in a skeptical age, the character and promise of American life and history, and, of course, the nature of human sexuality.
There are interesting things in the books by Updike that I have read. But they are all highly uneven with long, dull and wordy sections. Worse,the books have each seemed to me glib in a way that detracts from the importance of their themes. They are more in the nature of literary performances than thoughtful explorations of their subject matters. I have thought about the three Updike books I have read, and was engaged while I was reading them. But I still came away dissatisfied.
"Memories of the Ford Administration" begins when, in 1992, a historical organization called the Northern New England Association of American Historians asks Professor Alfred Clayton (named after Alf Landon, the 1936 Republican Presidential candidate) to provide "requested memories and impressions of he presidential Administration of Gerald R. Ford (1974-1977)." Clayton is a professor at a small women's 2-year college in New Hampshire during the Ford years. By 1992, the college is a four-year institution and has gone co-ed.
In response to the request Clayton produces instead a long, rambling, draft-like monologue which is the text of this novel. It consists, in roughly alternating sections, of a discussion of Clayton's personal life during the Ford years, and of a long unfinished manuscript of Clayton's involving the life and administration of President James Buchanan. Buchanan was the fifteenth President, just before Lincoln, and the only bachelor President.
One can understand the befuddlement and the irritation with which the Northern New England Association of American Historians would have greeted Clayton's response. The trouble is, as far as the novel is concerned, that their response is justified and that the reader of the novel is entitled to the same response and more. There are interesting things in Clayton's ruminations on his life and good discussions in the manuscript on Buchanan. There is little on President Ford's administration and, from a novelistic standpoint, far too little in tying the Ford administration together in some insightful way with Clayton's life or with the Buchanan administration. Updike tries to do this I think, but in an overly clever manner. That is why the book is more a "performance" than it should be and ultimately doesn't succeed.
Clayton remembers the Ford years as a time of widespread sexual openness and promiscuity. The novel focuses on his sexual liasions and primarily on his lengthy audulterous affair with a woman named Genevieve, the wife of a colleague at the University, whom he fantasizes to be the "ideal wife." Genevieve and Clayton abandon their families, including young children, to pursue their affair, with deleterious and unhappy consequences. Neither has the will to get a divorce and to marry the other.
Twentieth century writers of every variety show great interest in sex and in the human libido. I think it is a product of the englightment, with the attendant skepticism toward revealed religion, that took place centuries ago, not, of course, in the Ford Administration. Even writers and individuals who have remained committed to organized religion have tended, for the most part, to accept at least some of this product of enlightenment thought. I found it useful to remember this in considering the book's treatment of sexuality.
The Buchanan portion of the book focuses on Buchanan's romance with a young woman during his early career as a lawyer, the termination of the romance due to what appears to be a misunderstanding, and the subsequent early death of Buchanan's beloved. There are good scenes in the book describing Buchanan's subsequent relationships with President Andrew Jackson and the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne. The final days of Buchanan's administration, the prologue to our Civil War, are described in a revealing, if slapdash, way.
There is a focus on the elusive character of historical understanding -- which is good and well-taken. The book seems to suggest the impossiblilty of achieving anything even approximating historical truth which seems to me tendentious and unsupported.
One theme that comes through, I think, is the value of restraint of our tendencies to be overly-critical of our national leaders, of American culture, and of ourselves. This is easier to do when events are separated from us by historical time, as is the case with President Buchanan, than is the case with our contemporaries, such as President Ford. There is also the broad theme of forgiveness running through the book. I found President Ford's pardon of former President Nixon hovering in the backround of this novel, even though it is little discussed. Thus, to the extent the book deals with the Ford Administration at all, what it has to say is thoughtful and humane. President Ford is praised for doing his best, for keeping the Nation's interests at heart, and for acting in a responsible manner. (see, e.g. p.354, p.366) Professor Clayton learns, I think, in the course of his ruminations, to work towards a sense of forgiveness and understanding of his own life, including its disappointments and failings. I think this too is a message of the book, but I find it obscured by a good deal of false bravado, obscurity, and unnecessarily showy writing.
There is good material in this book and it stimulates reflection. Thus I think the book will reward reading in spite of the reservations about its specific tone, style, and substance that I have expressed.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good News-Not Really About The Ford Administration At All!, March 18, 2006
The brilliant John Updike delivers yet again. Deceptively packaged as a sort of historical evaluation of the Presidency of Gerald Ford, this book's protagonist actually tricks us all by giving Ford virtually no ink and ultimately encapsulates his feelings for the man by calling him little more than "the perfect President." You see, though he has been assigned the task of authoring a scholarly paper on Ford, the main character here, a writer and educator from New England, combines an autobiographical tale about his own life during the hectic, sex-filled mid-1970's, with his obsessive mission to make public his views on and expertise of the Presidency of James Buchanan. The writer becomes obsessed in an almost Hitchcockian fashion with Ann, the doomed fiancée of the lawyerly young Buchanan, a woman who meets a tragic death that sends the future fifteenth President of the United States into lifelong bachelorhood and---it is speculated-either undispelled virginity, or just possibly a homosexual relationship in the White House with an Alabama Senator. The Buchanan material, while most interesting of all in its early stages, quickly takes second billing to the tale of the writer's personal life during the 1970's, as he separates from his spouse, falls in lust with a local woman he terms "The Perfect Wife" and skirt-chases after the available females on his college campus and in his neighborhood and social circle. Updike does get surprisingly graphic, even erotic, in his descriptions of sex here, and in a few cases he shifts gears masterfully, making the same scene a thing of both Eros and physical comedy. Memories Of The Ford Administration is a dyed-in-the-wool masterpiece that surely gets its time periods, the first half of the nineteenth-century and the 1970's, down pat. It's a joy to read, a book that makes a reader think, and a tale to settle back and take delight in as it unfolds without effort. Without question a five-star book!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Buchanan and U, January 24, 2005
The Updike persona is Alfred Clayton, a New Englander, schooled at Middlebury and Dartmouth. He is an historian. As the book opens he and his children are watching Nixon's resignation speech, marking the beginning of the Ford administration. He is babysitting for the children while his wife goes out with another man since the couple is separated.
Alf refers to his wife Norma as the Queen of Disorder. He calls his mistress Genevieve the Perfect Wife. She is married to an English professor, a deconstructionist. The college is named hilariously by Updike Wayward College.
When Alf left his family he took away his little library on James Buchanan, the subject of a book he had been trying to write for a decade. Buchanan's upbringing began in a log cabin in the middle of Pennsylvania. Buchanan's life and administration form a complement to the Ford administration. They are a sort of filigree.
Buchanan and his fiancee separated over a misunderstanding. Shortly afterwards the young woman, Ann Coleman, died. As a distraction from his grief, Buchanan ran for public office.
Genevieve told Alf that he had been lower than the cats in the household hierarchy. Alf describes himself as doing postgraduate work in adultery and child neglect. When Alf spends the night in his old house because his mother is visiting, he nearly has an asthma attack.
The president of Wayward has a high tech west coast style of governance. She decorates herself like a year around Christmas tree with bangles and hoops.
In the run-up to the Civil War Buchanan insisted upon the defense of federal forts. Genevieve's husband is offered a position at Yale and she is inclined to accompany him there. Alf returns to his family as the Ford administration ends and he and his children watch the inaugural ceremonies of Jimmy Carter. Amusingly there is a bibliography on Buchanan works.
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