Browser.final 10/6/04 9:28 AM Page 19 THE BROWSER Alone with His Idols Shadowy emanations of the Nixon presidency by john rockwell ark feeney’s Nixon at the Movies: A Book about Belief is so American Scholar and in a lectureship in B well-intentioned, so weirdly ingenious, so full of lively American studies at Brandeis University. O He brings to this book an evident exper- and perceptive tidbits that it’s a pity to proclaim it a tise in the minutiae of Nixon biography, a O failure. Rather like its subject, one might venture. cineaste’s love for and deep understanding of film, and, of course, a working knowl- K The ingenious conceit is this: While other presidents edge of journalism, which lends special S might seem more obviously cinematic (either movie-star expertise to his comments on Watergate and the film version of All the President’s Men. Mhandsome, like John F. Kennedy, or an ac- in a requisite willingness to believe—can His book is laid out as a kind of biogra- tual movie star, like Ronald Reagan, and be regarded as something far more sub- phy manqué. The reader is presumed (too perhaps continuing, a few pesky constitu- stantial: an index of our hopes and fears presumed, in my case) to know the ins tional details aside, with Arnold Schwarz- and national character rendered through and outs of Nixon’s career—his way- enegger), it turns out that Richard Nixon the collision of the glamorous fiction of more-than-six crises. Feeney entitles was an avid, not to say almost desperate, Hollywood and the glum, grinding fact of most of his chapters with the names of cinephile. During his presidency, at his Richard Nixon.” films, and then uses those movies as various residences, he screened 530 films. Feeney has been a reporter, editor, and metaphors to discuss various aspects of They both reflected his idols (George Pat- reviewer at the Boston Globe since 1979, but the president’s career and personality. ton, John Ford, John Wayne) and ambi- has a more academic side, too, as reflected Thus “Dark Victory” is about Nixon’s tions and provided escape from the often in his writings for the New Republic and the formative years in Yorba Linda and Whit- PHOTOMONTAGE BY STUART BRADFORD, NIXON PHOTOGRAPHY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS self-imposed pressures of his job. Nixon was, ac- cording to Feeney, “the classic watcher, never so happy as when aloof, apart, secluded.” The author summa- rizes his intentions in a single long sentence buried in the middle of a middle chapter. “Like the movies, this book predicates itself on shadowy emanations,” he writes, “emanations that—after the darkened hours sitting before a lit screen, hours grounded Mark Feeney ’79, Nixon at the Movies (University of Chicago Press, $27.50). Browser.final ads free 10/8/04 5:26 PM Page 21 tier, so near yet so far from Hollywood. CHAPTER & VERSE “Double Indemnity” discusses Nixon A correspondence corner for not-so-famous lost words (“Well, I’m not a crook”) and criminality. “Patton/Mr. Roberts” is about Nixon, Christopher Monson seeks the author loses her on the Ferris wheel; the second Eisenhower, and the military, “Advise and of the truism, “The rectangle is the be- is a sort of science-fiction story involving Consent” about the Congress and the ginning of aesthetics.” an unhappy person who through lack of Senate, “Sweet Smell of Success” about faith misses a trip to a better world.” the press and New York City, “Two Rode Dale Fink would welcome a verifiable Together” about Henry Kissinger, “Ameri- source for words attributed to James “a battered old book, bound in red can Madness” about Nixon’s Capra-esque Joyce at the time he became blind: “I buckram” (September-October). Roger self-image, “All the President’s Men” can see a thousand worlds. I have lost Mills and Mark Stoeckle were the first about Watergate, and “The Conversation” but one of them.” to identify “Midnight Express,” a short about Hollywood’s Silver Age in the late story by English poet and author Alfred 1960s and early ’70s and Nixon as inadver- Je≠rey Williams hopes someone can Noyes. First published in 1935 in This tent inspiration for some of its best films. identify the titles and authors of two Week, the text appears in various an- This organizational model stumbles to- stories used in an anthology that he re- thologies, including August Derleth’s ward the end. There’s a chapter called calls being distributed in the late 1970s 1944 collection Sleep No More. “‘Suspicious Minds,’” which uses an Elvis by U.S. embassies as teaching material Presley single as a springboard to mus- for English teachers abroad. “The first Send inquiries and answers to “Chapter ings about Nixon and youth culture. The involves a father taking his daughter to and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware penultimate chapter, “Nixon at the an outing at an amusement park who Street, Cambridge 02138. Movies,” jettisons the linkage with one or two titles to contemplate what one might have thought, given its title, was the gist This scheme is doubly odd. Feeney —is worth a book of nearly 400 pages, of the entire book. An epilogue, “Nixon in never convinces us that what still seems a with small type and narrow margins. And the Movies,” anticlimactically tabulates rather marginal aperçu—that Nixon liked he never convinces us that his chapter the various films with Nixon or Nixonian movies and that aspects of his life can be structure makes sense. characters. reflected in them or projected onto them What we get instead is a long string of “T����������������� Princeton ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ University Bendheim Center for Finance ��� ����� Master in Finance ����� �� ���� ���� ��������� This degree, designed to be completed ������������������������������������������������������������������ in a minimum of two semesters, prepares ������� ������ ���������������������� ���� ���� for a wide range of careers in the ����������������������������� financial industry, including financial ������������������������������ engineering, risk management and ���������� ��������������������������� quantitative trading, quantitative asset ��������������� management and financial forecasting. ��� ��� ��� ���� ��� ��� ���� ��� ���������������������������� PRINCETON’S MASTER ���� ���� ���� ������ ������������������������������������ IN FINANCE PROVIDES: ���� ���� ���� ������ ������������������������������ A rigorous core curriculum, ������� ������� � ���� � ���������� � ���������� ���� a wide range of elective courses ����������������������������������� and extensive career assistance ������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������� ����������������������������� Applications for enrollment in September 2005 are due by January 2, 2005 (December 2, 2004 ����� �������� � ����� �������� for candidates residing outside of North America). ����������������������� For detailed information see: ������ ��������� �������� � �������� �� ��������������������������� ����� ����� ��� ��� �� ��������� �� ���� ����������� �� ����� ��� ������ http://www.princeton.edu/~bcf ������� �� ���� ������ ����� ����� ��������� ������� ��������� ���������� ��������������� Harvard Magazine 21 p21.indd 1 10/13/04 12:16:24 PM Browser.final ads free 10/8/04 2:00 PM Page 22 often clever footnotes to a missing bio- That’s why the Watergate chapter is the magpie miscellany” of the movies Nixon graphical narrative. Yes, Nixon was a best in the book: not only can the author saw. But it is telling in its psychological complex man, and yes, there was a series comment knowingly on journalism, but portrayal of a president seeking escape of “new Nixons.” But that doesn’t mean Watergate had a story arc that almost not just in the happy-ending films he that the reader should be forced to recall everyone remembers. preferred, but in the very act of solitary details or even crucial moments in the “Nixon at the Movies”—the chapter, contemplation—contemplation of al- Nixon career to make sense of the com- not the book—sometimes too closely re- most anything. Nixon as the painful mentary Feeney makes about them. sembles what Feeney calls the “happily loser, the outsider always looking in to OPEN BOOK A Bouquet for Nature-Lovers The Rarest of the Rare: Stories behind the Treasures at the Harvard Museum of Natural History (HarperResource, $22.95) is a delightful armchair tour through the packed museum with an agreeable guide, sta≠ writer Nancy Pick, who points out scores of interesting specimens and tells how they came to be under Harvard’s roof. See George Washington’s pheasants, a mastodon skeleton associated with the notorious Webster-Parkman murder case, a painting that catches Audubon in a lie, a sand dollar scooped up by Darwin when he was voyaging on the Beagle, newly discovered fishes, a plant that might fight AIDS, and, of course, a glass flower (a glass diseased apple, to be precise). Mark Sloan contributes 95 color photographs. Pellegrino University Professor emeritus E.O. Wilson, Ph.D. ’55, Jf ’56, S.D. ’04, provides an introduction. The frog and the gold “horn,” shown here with captions only, have longer tales to tell in the book. Pick’s account of a pet parakeet appears in its entirety as an exemplar. lexander wilson may lack the in 1794 to the United States. He settled in trator. He traveled thousands of miles, name recognition of John James Philadelphia, and there he wrote his often on foot, collecting specimens and Audubon, but bird experts every- monumental nine-volume American Or- observing birds in the