Memories of the Ford Administration - Hardcover

Updike, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241133866 ISBN 13: 9780241133866

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, 1992

Synopsis

Alfred Clayton, a college instructor, is at work on two books at the same time. One is his memoir of life during the administration of Gerald Ford. The other is his great, unfinished magnum opus, a biography of President James Buchanan.

Clayton's chaotic family situation (he's abandoned his wife and three children for the other woman) illustrates his confusion. It fits nicely with Buchanan's own doomed passion for the great love of his life, as does Clayton's era with Buchanan's when the country tore itself apart just before the Civil War.

"Whimsical, lyrical, and filled with portraits of American politics and domestic life in two centuries. Vintage Updike." (B-O-M-C News)

About this title

From the Publisher:

10 1.5-hour cassettes

From the Inside Flap:

When junior college professor Alfred Clayton is asked to record his impressions of the Ford Administration, he recalls a turbulent piece of personal history as well. In a decade of sexual liberation, Clayton was facing a doomed marriage and the passionate beginnings of a futile affair with an unattainable Perfect Wife. But one memory begets another: Clayton's unfinished book on James Buchanan. In John Updike's fifteenth novel, he masterfully alternates between two men, two lives, two American centuries -- one Victorian, the other modern -- shining an irreverent, witty, and sometimes caustic light on the contrasting views of social fictions and sexual politics.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0241133866
• ISBN 13: 9780241133866
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384