Stephen Ambrose’s three-volume Nixon is admirably thorough in all the ways that makes that sound like faint praise, and so many of the other writers to take Nixon on, like Rick Perlstein, whose Nixonland appeared in 2008, are so busy blaming Nixon for every bad thing that ever happened since he entered politics that the man himself gets lost. It is an odd fact that Nixon, surely one of the most Shakespearian figures to hold the office occupied by that long rogue’s gallery of Iagos, Hamlets, and Lears, has yet to inspire a truly great biography. This is unfortunate because Richard Nixon is in desperate need of better biographers, nonfictional and otherwise. But the book itself remains, for all its shining prose and historical insight, more of a literary achievement than an illuminating read.
Mallon writes like a dream, and his mastery of the complex historical record and the equally byzantine folkways of Washington’s establishment class are staggering. Told from the point of view of numerous players in the Watergate saga, from the president on down to minor walk-ons like Mississippi-bred campaign operative Fred LaRue, Mallon’s novel is a dizzying high-wire act mixing fictional explanations of famous historical mysteries (how did Nixon’s secretary Rose Mary Woods create that 18-minute gap?) with outright fictions (Plastic Pat Nixon, the president’s cipher of a wife, has a secret lover!). Mallon, author of eight novels, mostly on historical themes, has spun a fictional insider’s tale of the famed Nixon scandal that, for a hopeless junkie like me, held out the promise of a book-length methadone cure for my presidential biography jones. I can read fictional presidential biographies.
So when I heard about Thomas Mallon’s new novel, Watergate, I thought: Aha! Here’s a way to stay out of rehab and still kick the habit. In some contexts this might sound like boasting, but at the meetings of ARPBA (Addicted Readers of Presidential Biographies Anonymous), it would be recognized for what it is: a cry for help. I myself am nowhere near so ambitious or organized, but at last count I’ve read biographies of 11 of the 44, a fair number of them in multi-volume sets. presidents in chronological order for her Presidential Biography Project, has reached Ulysses S. My Millions colleague, Janet Potter, who is reading biographies of the 44 U.S. Somebody needs to start a 12-step program for compulsive readers of presidential biographies.
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