Memories of the Ford Administration Paperback - 1996

From the jacket 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.

Media reviews

“Quintessential Updike . . . [a] comic and melancholy reflection on politics and passion.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
“Updike has the ability to evoke the micro-epochs that fascinate us. He can bring to life what seem to those of us who have lived them the vital differences between the decades of our lives.”—Chicago Tribune
 
“Compelling . . . Alf’s life and times are light and funny; Buchanan’s are dark and serious. Alternating between the two, Mr. Updike entertains and instructs . . . in gorgeous prose.”—The Wall Street Journal

Citations

• Booklist, 04/01/2001, Page 1456