15/04/2019 Writer as Character in Reagan Biography - The New York Times

ARCHIVES | 1999

Writer as Character in Reagan Biography

By DOREEN CARVAJAL SEPT. 18, 1999

Fourteen years have passed since the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edmund
Morris gingerly assumed what he calls the ''dread title of authorized biographer''
for Ronald Reagan, who with his savvy political advisers anointed him the
President's bard.
The often delayed book -- ''Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan'' -- is days
away from publication on Sept. 30. But in the meantime its publisher, Random
House, is guarding copies zealously, partly for fear of a controversy about Mr.
Morris's writing style, which employs an unconventional technique that disturbs
historians and former Reagan officials who have heard about it.
Simply put, Mr. Morris has invented a character: himself. For literary
purposes, the author, 59, has essentially transformed his own life, according to a
copy of the book viewed by The New York Times on the condition that direct
quotations not be used. Mr. Morris has revised his age, birthplace, identity and
resume to become a Zeligesque narrator who is a Reagan contemporary,
glimpsing the future President on a Dixon High School football field; bumping
into him beneath the elms of his Illinois alma mater, Eureka College; reporting
for duty to Lieutenant Reagan at the Army Air Force's first motion picture unit.
Long before the real Edmund Morris was born, for example, the fictional Mr.
Morris describes that memorable moment when Mr. Reagan's sleeve first
brushed against his as the young right guard strolled past him during halftime at
a 1926 football game. They exchanged glances while the fictional Mr. Morris
listened to a factory siren wail and experienced a strange sensation of blindness.
Another boy leaned over and whispered the name of the square-cut athlete:
Dutch Reagan.
The appearance of this fictional narrator in a long-awaited biography has
startled traditional historians like Alan Brinkley, professor of history at Columbia

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University, who has not seen the book but who said that the device struck him as
''bizarre.'' Some academics, though, are willing to give Mr. Morris credit for
boldly breaking the conventions of nonfiction with with what they describe as
post-modernist techniques.
Mr. Morris's unorthodox approach baffles some former officials of the Reagan
Administration, who had carefully courted Mr. Morris and insured that he had
unparalleled access to the President dating back to 1985.
''I was expecting the definitive book on Ronald Reagan,'' said Lyn Nofziger, a
former Reagan aide. ''But how am I going to get the definitive book if there's a
fictional character in it? Maybe if I read the whole book I would be pleasantly
surprised. But just the idea of mixing fact and fiction is something that's
disturbing me. You can't mix fact and fiction and call it fact.''
Random House -- which has patiently waited for the book after contracting
to pay Mr. Morris a $3 million advance -- would not say anything publicly
because it has granted Newsweek exclusive rights to an excerpt that will appear in
its Sept. 27 issue. Mr. Morris also declined to comment.
But the publisher is expecting that the $35, 864-page book will sell in best-
seller numbers, with a planned first printing of 300,000 copies, said a person in
publishing circles with knowledge of Random House's plans. Random House is
billing the book as the only biography ever authorized by a sitting President: a
pilgrimage through Mr. Reagan's life from his birth in 1911 through the 1990's,
when Mr. Morris escorts the aged and failing President back up the stairs of his
birthplace in rural Illinois.
Despite the publisher's reluctance to comment about the biography, Random
House's own Web site (www.randomhouse.com) concedes that the biography is
unconventional, noting that the ''almost Boswellian closeness'' between
biographer and President led to a unique literary method in which Mr. ''Morris's
biographical mind becomes in effect another character in the narrative.''
After queries were made about that description, Random House removed it
from the Web site.
In separate material circulated along with confidential copies of the book, the
publisher alerts readers to the fact that ''the narrator of the earlier parts of 'Dutch'
is not quite Edmund Morris.'' ''He is in effect a literary projection of the author
back through time,'' it adds.
As a result, the not-quite-Edmund Morris is able to roam at will through the
early chapters of the former President's life. At Mr. Reagan's alma mater, Eureka

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College, the two toil in the late 1920's on The Eureka Pegasus, the school's weekly
newspaper, with Mr. Reagan covering football and Mr. Morris copy-editing his
prose. Several times, Mr. Morris recounts, the two are introduced to each other,
but it always has the feel of a first time. At one point a friend asks the young Mr.
Reagan if he remembered him from the Lowell Park football field. Mr. Reagan
smiles, tapping his glasses and shaking his head.
Early copies of the Reagan biography that are circulating privately do not
include any explanation in the text about the fictional device that Mr. Morris used
to create his character. The source notes at the back of the biography actually
include references to the early diaries of the invented Edmund Morris character.
In reality, Mr. Morris was born in Nairobi, Kenya, on May 27, 1940, to
middle-class parents, Eric Edmund Morris, a pilot for East African Airways, and
May Morris. But through the benefit of ''literary projection,'' Mr. Morris ages 28
years, changes his birthplace to Illinois and restyles his parents into Bess Morris,
a former Chicago opera singer, and Arthur Morris, a wealthy Roosevelt
Republican who campaigned successfully to become mayor of Aurora, Ill., by
handing out dark, scentless roses.
When the publication of the biography was delayed another year last fall, Mr.
Morris was coy about whether he appeared as a fictional character in the book,
insisting that he emerged in the evolving manuscript as a ''biographer who had
unique access to the subject.''
But in more forthcoming comments on the Random House Web site, he
stated: ''I quite understand that readers will have to adjust, at first, to what
amounts to a new biographical style. But the revelations of this style, which
derive directly from Ronald Reagan's own way of looking at his life, are I think
rewarding enough to convince them that one of the most interesting characters in
recent American history looms here like a colossus.''
Thus far, Mr. Reagan and his wife, Nancy, have not read the book because
they have not received copies, said Joanne Drake, the former President's chief of
staff at his office in Century City, Calif. ''We're looking forward to reading it,'' she
added, declining to comment on the appearance of a fictional Mr. Morris in the
biography.
The Reagans have been waiting a long time for that opportunity, since the
early history of the book project dates back to an intimate Georgetown dinner in
the 1980's when Mr. Reagan and his wife met with several Presidential historians
who informally discussed the difficulties of documenting a Presidency.

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Mr. Morris -- who was one of the guests -- had impressed Reagan advisers
like Michael K. Deaver, who admired the author's work on his biography ''The
Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.'' That book, the first volume in a study of Roosevelt's
life, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1980 as well as a National Book Award and most
recently was named by the Modern Library as one of the top 100 nonfiction books
written in this century.
Mr. Deaver did not return telephone calls regarding the publication of the
Reagan biography, but other former Reagan officials said he played a critical role
in supporting the choice of Mr. Morris as an authorized biographer, which meant
that Mr. Morris had generous access, meeting with Mr. Reagan every month and
attending some top Government meetings.
Fred Ryan, a former assistant to Mr. Reagan who sat in on all of Mr. Morris's
interviews with the President, said that Mr. Morris never gave any impression
what form his biography would take.
''It was kind of a unique thing to do,'' Mr. Ryan said. ''There was no pre-
existing relationship. There was no philosophical or political test. There was no
commitment on his part on what type of book it would be. The expectation was
that we would get a fair and thorough book. That's an assumption and I think it's
a reasonable and fair assumption.''
Mr. Ryan said that Mr. Morris's fictional character sounded ''unique,'' but he
was still looking forward to reading the book because he enjoyed the author's
other work.
Anthony R. Dolan, the chief speechwriter in the Reagan Administration, who
is working on his own memoir of Mr. Reagan, said he was sympathetic to Mr.
Morris because of the difficulties of sketching a true portrait of a President.
But the appearance of a fictional Edmund Morris ''has got to be one of the
more remarkable developments because people expected a conventional
Theodore Roosevelt-style biography,'' Mr. Dolan said.
''Edmund has either engaged in an act of genius or a most remarkable leap
off the precipice,'' he added.
Mr. Morris, who started his career as an advertising copywriter in London in
the 1960's, is not an academic historian. Generally, historians who come from
academia follow an unwritten code that interpretations are based on some form
of evidence or established facts. Many authors write novels based on historical
research, but those titles are labeled fiction while Mr. Morris's book is being
published as nonfiction.

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''There is a tacit agreement between the academic historian and the reader.
It's not spelled out and it's not written down anywhere, but it's well understood: I
didn't invent anything here,'' said Peter Novick, a history professor at the
University of Chicago and author of ''That Noble Dream: The Objectivity Question
and the American Historical Profession.''
Hayden White, a professor of comparative literature at Stanford University,
defended Mr. Morris's approach. He said he expected that Mr. Morris would be
criticized by traditionalists for ''the temerity of putting himself inside the
biography of Reagan, for this seems arrogant and self-serving.'' But, he added, ''In
reality, it is no different from the practice of those biographers who purport to see
the world from the perspective of their subjects: from inside the mind, spirit or
body of the historical personages whose 'lives' they purport to understand better
than those personages themselves.''
Some historians said they considered it a problem if the final version of the
book did not explain Mr. Morris's fictional techniques. ''I understand that a lot of
what historians do incorporates techniques that fiction writers do,'' said Mark T.
Gilderhus, author of ''History and Historians,'' a textbook for college students.
''But there still is a difference and that is that historians should be constrained by
the evidence.''
Professor Brinkley said he had never heard of the use of such a fictional
device in a biography.
''This is a very particular genre, biography, and it has a long tradition and a
very narrow and restricted set of conventions,'' he said. ''And Morris was the
anointed biographer of a very important President and had the cooperation of an
enormous number of people who expected it to be more conventional. I think it
will create more surprise and some chagrin.''
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A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 1999, on Page A00001 of the National
edition with the headline: Writer as Character in Reagan Biography.

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