Memories of the Ford Administration

Rating:
Summary: Personal and Public History
Review: "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.

Rating:
Summary: Mixed feelings.
Review: I have read at least twenty of his novels, and seemingly hundreds of his short stories. 'Ford' is, I believe, his best, his best-represented, and yes, his most pessimistic novel to date (I haven't read the latest 'Bech' book yet). It is this book that accounts Updike's personal hatred for humanity, and will possibly leave the reader shopping for a handgun with a removeable mouthpiece. I regret that such fine writing from such a wordster's hand could be so sad, but alas, this is far from a perfect world.

Rating:
Summary: Giving up on Updike
Review: Interesting for a person to think of their life's events organized around Presidential Administrations, but that what a historian would do, isn't it? While a book only for the patient reader, Updike is once again brilliantly original and captivating in his language throughout a long thesis split between the mediocre accomplishments of President James Buchanan and similar accomplishments of a 1970's man trying, during a professorial career, to finish a biography about the subject. The narrative is specifically centered around specific years told in "Retrospect" in which he was separated from his wife, enjoying many sexual escapades appropriately, in this promiscuous era. The most potent theme is the idea of history as being often what is remembered or preserved by chance, and often not what actually occurred, absolute truth being the greatest unknown. The flipside to this is that the sense of flimsy narration delivers a plot that doesn't ever arrive at any major event for the fictional protagonist( Buchanan does,of course, has the Civil War looming near), which might annoy some readers. The "writer-as-reflected-in-his-writing" theme is also present, though our protagonist's prose is unmistakably Updike-this is not John Irving in that regard. However, neither of the novel's themes are hammered into the reader except these honest accounts and transcriptions, and it feels completely real, if not particularly profound. Bonus points for being a fun history lesson.

Rating:
Summary: The greatest descriptions of male-female sex ever written
Review: John Updike is a great writer - so I have no idea why he wrote this confusing, disjointed, rambling book. I did not enjoy it, and normally would not have finished a book I was getting so little pleasure from, but I believed to the bitter end that Mr. Updike would somehow reward my efforts. Unfortunately, this was just a bad book

Rating:
Summary: Do we have a meaning?
Review: Professor Alf Clayton looks back on the days of the Ford administration and weaves into those reminiscences his research on President James Buchanan.

After an uncertain start, principally because I thought that Updike's style was over-elaborate and the sex scenes overdone, I found this a very entertaining novel - Updike seemed to control himself as the novel progressed, and it became more enjoyable for that.

This is a book that works on many levels - it's about historic change, on a national and personal scale (if you like macro- and micro-history). Clayton recalls the Ford administration not only because it coincided with a crisis in his married life, but also due to the fact that, with hindsight, it could be seen as the end of an era for the USA (the crises of the late 1970s were yet to come, as were the end of the days of irresponsible sexual liberation with the arrival of AIDS). The Buchanan administration concluded of course with the Civil War: indeed, both Ford and Buchanan could be seen as "forgotten" Presidents due to the events that followed, and therefore erased, the collective memory of their Presidencies.

Updike also contrasts the sexual mores of the nineteenth and late twentieth centuries. To some extent it's a contrast of extremes - Buchanan's love life is stymied by the highly restrictive and repressive norms of the time, whereas the mid-1970s is the hedonistic swan song of the liberation begun in the 1960s. Yet the irony of it is that neither time results in human fulfilment - neither produced happiness. In all, Clayton despairs at finding a meaning both to his and Buchanan's lives - and by his reflection upon both American and personal history questions whether "meaning" exists as a tenable concept at any level.

In all, good thought-provoking stuff. A star lost for the rocky start, but I thought Updike redeemed himself later, and the writing on Buchanan's life is every bit as assured as, say, Gore Vidal's historical novels.

Rating:
Summary: Buchanan and U
Review: 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 chidren watch the inaugural ceremonies of Jimmy Carter. Amusingly there is a bibliography on Buchanan works.

Rating:
Summary: Genius on Display
Review: This book features Updike's astonishing talent with the felicitous phrase and the perfect observation. Here is one of hundreds from this beautifully written book: 'The coming day was yet only an unhealthy blush low in the eastward sky, a crack of sallow light beneath a great dome of darkness to which stars still clung, like specks of frozen dew, though the moon had fled.'

But oddly, this genius seems to work against Updike in 'Memories.' This is because his immense talent allows him to jump from what he can render as high point to high point in the lives of Alf Clayton and John Buchanan, the protagonists of this novel's two interlocked story lines. Here, a comparison might be an acting class, where actors do only the most dramatic scenes from great plays.

Somehow, Updike's brilliance in 'Memories' has this same effect on me. In retrospect, this novel is a succession of perfect aesthetic moments. But the personalities of Alf and Buchanan? Certainly, poor Alf is caught in an unhappy marriage. Meanwhile, Buchanan is a temporizer who ultimately fails to master chaos. But the book feels to me like highlights, not the full game, like snapshots instead of tapes.

Of course, I'm not complaining. Updike tells us in his title that these are memories. And, I know these characters, two muddled men, will stay with me.

In my opinion, a facet of Updike's genius is on full display here. It remains one exemplar for judging fiction, for all time.