Memories of the Ford Administration (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: John Updike
- First Published: 1992
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1791-1868 and 1974-1977
- Setting: New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C.
- Principal Characters: Alfred “Alf” Clayton, Norma, Genevieve Mueller, Brent Mueller, James Buchanan, Anne Coleman
- Genres: Long fiction, Historical fiction
- Subjects: Family or family life, Sex or sexuality, South or Southerners, Autobiography, Historians, Adultery, Presidents, Biography
- Locales: Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, New Hampshire
Historian Alfred L. Clayton was born in 1936, “the lonely only child of an elderly Republican couple,” and was named after Governor “Alf” Landon of Kansas, loser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a landslide. As this novel opens, Clayton has been requested to write his “memories and impressions” of the presidential administration of Gerald Ford for a written symposium on that administration to be published in a scholarly journal. The years of the Ford Administration coincide with a period of turmoil in Clayton’s marriage, when he abandoned his wife Norma (the “Queen...
[The entire page is 1812 words long]
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