The Man In The Moon

In 1985, after being wooed by a combination of Nancy Reagan and Cabernet leftover from the Nixon administration, Edmund Morris agreed to become Ronald Reagan's authorized biographer. What Morris found, or, rather, didn't find, left him in such a state of despair that he went underground for years--quitting drink, staying home weekends and leaving his talents as a virtuoso pianist untapped. Morris spent his time reading the president's private diaries, watching old films and tracking down everyone from Reagan's high school flames to Colin Powell, only to discover that the President had a total lack of interest in other people which left him devoid of any type of detailed inner life. Ronald Reagan, it seems, might as well have been the man in the moon.

So what's an authorized biographer to do? Morris revisited Reagan's old haunts, and while at Eureka College, in Eureka, Ill., he stepped on an acorn and realized that he wanted to write about Reagan's whole life with the same closeness he could legitimately bring only to the three years he shadowed him in the White House. And so Morris constructed a story that lies on the shoulders of a semi-fictional narrator, a modified version of himself. The bulk of the criticism of Morris' book, which has been as fast as it has been furious, rests with the creation of this narrator. Certainly unorthodox, this new technique has raised serious questions about both literary and historical integrity. But what must be recognized is that in providing Reagan with an audience, however fictional it may be, Morris is playing to an intrinsic part of Reagan's character, the performer.

This departure from the usual techniques of biography is hardly the last, as one discovers throughout the book. Morris revives an old Victorian form with a dialogue chapter, frequently lapses into screenplay scripts, letters, diary entries, speeches, interviews, scrapbook pages and author's notes. This varied format lends a vibrant immediacy to Reagan's life, one which would be hard to recreate within the confines of traditional biography. Morris, who thinks in terms of music, has infused the text with references to music--from "The Old Rugged Cross," Reagan's favorite hymn, to Liszt's Faust Symphony. And, as a testament to Morris' intellectual horsepower--and showmanship--it is interesting to note that he modeled an entire chapter on Webern's Piano Variations. When three notes were played with the right hand, Morris wrote three paragraphs about Reagan. When the next three notes were played by the left hand, he wrote three paragraphs about the narrator.

Webern's Piano Variations are mirror variations: Everything reflects. So too, Morris suggests, does everything in Reagan's life. His famous words, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!" are foreshadowed in his college days, when Reagan plays a part in Edna St. Vincent Millay's Aria da Capo and speaks the lines, "This wall is actually a wall, a thing / Come up between us, shutting me away." One of the most jarring moments of Reagan's otherwise happy childhood is when he comes home one night to find his father passed out, drunk, on the snow of their front yard, his arms spread out as if he were crucified. At the end of the book, Morris charts Reagan's trip to Bergen-Belsen, and the photographs of the white corpses shown upon a black background in cruciform position that he saw at the entrance to the field.

But perhaps Morris' most compelling device is the comparison he draws between celestial stars and Reagan. He describes how in cosmology, as in psychology, the freak convergence of forces creates a centralized whirl. Momentum enters a field of expansion--nuclear particles seek release, and a man longs to embrace something larger than himself. Morris' keenest insights into Reagan come in such poetic metaphors, and as such, the book has disappointed and awed different audiences. Those looking for a hard-core political history of the Reagan years would be advised to look elsewhere, as Morris' aim has always, and without pretense, been to discover the character of Ronald Reagan. In this aspect, Morris presents a textured, nuanced portrait of the former president that is fair, honest and accurate. Or, as his son Ronnie has said, as accurate a portrait as you can make of this very strange man. But Morris succeeds not only in coming to grips with the ambiguities of Reagan, but in conveying a subtle understanding that every particle of Reagan, no matter how distant, confused or seemingly simplistic, had a purpose.

As we approach the end of the century, however, we see Dutch's star fading into a galaxy of obscurity. Dutch has become, in effect, Reagan's memory.