::Mrs. Nixon by Ann Beattie::
"Even if you write for a very long time and then get something down that pleases you and surprises you and all those other lucky things, you'll still disappear. You'll be a different you if your words are ever published, and there will be less and less possibility of ever connecting with them in the same way. You erase yourself every time you write." —Ann Beattie
In the end, you can't simply give Mrs. Nixon a pass, as if her marriage were some kind of terrible accident of fate over which she had no control and to which she was shackled to the bitter end against her will. You can't admire her poise, her determination to make the best of things, her character as a mother and a public figure, her judgment and discretion as Beattie (and others) so obviously do, without acknowledging that she truly did, by all available evidence, love Richard Nixon. There must have been something deeply lovable and, yes, even honorable about Nixon that has escaped us, or that we simply, stubbornly don't want to see. How, otherwise, could Mrs. Nixon, a decent woman by all accounts, not only have loved him, but stayed loyal and supportive all those many years?
This is the essential question that Mrs. Nixon—the woman, not the subject of this novel—poses and it's too bad Beattie didn't take it up; it would have made this a far deeper, better, intellectually challenging, soul-searching piece of "fiction."
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