Interview with Conrad Black

Here's a long audio interview with Conrad Black.

Review of Invincible Quest by What's on Winnipeg

Here's a review of The Invincible Quest in What's on Winnipeg.

National Post "Invincible Quest" Excerpt 5

The fifth excerpt from The Invincible Quest in the National Post describes Nixon's resignation.

Montreal Gazette Reviews Invincible Quest

The Montreal Gazette reviews The Invincible Quest:

This is an awkwardly written book written about one of America's most awkward politicians by an author caught in his own awkward predicament...

Slogging through more than 1,000 pages is challenging enough; wading through the bizarre word choices and infelicitous phrasings made reading this book an ordeal. In Black's world, the loud Bella Abzug was "voluminous" not voluble, you snatch defeat from the "stomach of victory," not the jaws. The title itself is nonsensical - how can a "quest" be "invincible"?

The semi-literate prose is unfortunate, because when he is not butchering the English language, Black tells a good story. He offers some fresh perspectives on his compelling subject, whose legendary life fused Greek tragedy with the American dream. Black appreciates Nixon's great achievements while condemning his foolish, self-destructive mistakes...

By the way, just now, instead of Invincible Quest I almost wrote Infinite Jest.

Review of Nixon/Agnew Book

Here's a review of Jules Witcover's new book, Very Strange Bedfellows: The Short and Unhappy Marriage of Richard Nixon & Spiro Agnew.

National Post "Invincible Quest" Excerpt 4

Today's excerpt from The Invincible Quest describes the first hours of Nixon's visit to China in 1972.

Another Conrad Black Interview

Here's a two-part video interview of Conrad Black with CTV. Part one; part two. (Each clip is about 4 1/2 minutes.) In part two, you can see the actual book. It's big! Also, the book is dedicated to Black's wife, Barbara; the back cover is a picture of Black and Nixon together.

Invincible Quest Excerpts - Bookends

Here are two more Invincible Quest excerpts that complement each other nicely. The first, from the CTV website, is from the very beginning of the book. The second, from Macleans, is much longer and is from the end of the book, right after Nixon's resignation. The Macleans excerpt might actually be two excerpts with a gap, because at one point it suddenly jumps from 1975 to Nixon's death in 1994.

Invincible Quest Review

Peter C. Newman has a lengthy and favorable review of The Invincible Quest in Macleans.

National Post "Invincible Quest" Excerpt 3

Today's excerpt from The Invincible Quest printed in the National Post is about Nixon's loss in the 1962 election for California governor; it also foreshadows his comeback.

Nixon's Nixon Study Guide

Here's a study guide put together in conjunction with the San Jose Rep's recent production of Russell Lees's play Nixon's Nixon. Great layout, chock full of cartoons and magazine covers and recommendations for further reading.

National Post "Invincible Quest" Excerpt 2

Today's excerpt from The Invincible Quest printed in the National Post describes Nixon's Checkers speech. Black mocks the speech a bit, calling part of it "maudlin" and stating that Nixon "oscillated between the slick Southern California salesman and Uriah Heep," but he describes it as effective.

Interview with Nixon Secret Service Agent

Here's an interview with Thomas D. Sloan, who spent three and a half years protecting the Nixons at their Saddle River, NJ, home in the 1980s. The "waterlogged and mold-riddled" house will soon be demolished by its current owner; the closed-circuit security system and guard booth from the home will be donated to a local museum.

"We used to have people who were nosy and used to try to come on the property -- to push the envelope," Sloan said. "People used to pull up to the gate, and of course we'd be alerted because of the motion detectors and infrared cameras. We'd walk out there and tell them it was private property. If they'd try to come back and social-engineer their way back on, it never worked."

What Frost/Nixon Gets Wrong

Robert Zelnick, who helped David Frost conduct his research for the famous Nixon interviews, writes in the Weekly Standard about Frost/Nixon, and what the play gets wrong.

National Post "Invincible Quest" Excerpt 1

Canada's National Post is running five excerpts from The Invincible Quest this week, starting today. The first excerpt is about Alger Hiss and the Pumpkin Papers. My favorite part:

Nixon met a huge scrum of journalists on the morning of Dec. 6. From this session came the famous pictures of Nixon looking at the microfilm recovered from the pumpkin. Unfortunately, no journalist had the presence of mind to bring a pumpkin and add it as a prop, though the pictures were hokey enough as it was. Some of them showed Nixon with a magnifying glass, like Sherlock Holmes, squinting at the film (which would have been ineffectual, because the film could not be read without a projector).

Guardian Piece by Conrad Black

The Guardian has published what appears to be either an excerpt from Conrad Black's new Nixon book or a promotional teaser. To call it favorable toward Nixon is an understatement. It also appears horribly overwritten. And I was looking forward to reading this.

By leaving so quietly and without recriminations, he had made it temporarily unseemly to all but the nastiest Nixon-haters to speak too ill of him. Most important, and most subtly, he had taken in hand his opponents' terrible, swift sword. The great puritanical conscience of America, irrepressible no matter how overlaid by the mawkishness, cynicism and pecuniary baseness and vulgarity of some parts of American life, had been roused to end his presidency. He had already mustered it anew to revisit the issue of Richard Nixon himself, the patriot more sinned against than sinning, even before he had handed over his office.

His achievements had been great. He had stolen nothing, physically threatened no one, obeyed the law after some hesitation, gone quietly from office, loved his country, and been singled out unjustly as a uniquely opprobrious president, which, in fact, he was not. It's not clear that Nixon had any criminal intent. He had gone, the hate would fade away, and the subject of the hate would become a matter first of forgetful indifference, then mystery, then guilt. It would take time, but America had punished Richard Nixon, one of its unique and most devoted sons, and he, by clinging to his mother's "peace at the centre" and her Quaker turning of the other cheek, no longer being able to return blow for blow, as was his natural impulse, would punish America. He would torment the national conscience that had tormented him and that had been roused to an Old Testament destruction of his career.

Conrad Black Interview

Oliver Burkeman of The Guardian has interviewed Conrad Black about his new Nixon book. Excerpts relating to Nixon:

The fact that Black has chosen this moment to publish a biography of Nixon is extraordinary but you do not need to know all that much about the former Telegraph and Spectator owner to see that it is entirely characteristic.

Nor should it come as a shock to learn that Richard Nixon: The Invincible Quest is a work of rehabilitation, portraying the disgraced president as brilliant, brave, and misunderstood. It's hard not to see the book as a straightforward act of Freudian projection - or, failing that, as a tribute from one wronged man of history to another. Look what happens, it seems to say, when scandal-hungry journalists and envious rivals try to bring down a successful maverick.

Black bristles at the comparison, partly out of deference to Nixon - and partly out of deference to himself. "I feel terribly presumptuous comparing myself to so exalted a person," he says in his Canadian baritone. On the other hand, Nixon did behave in a "terribly tawdry" manner over Watergate, even if he's far less guilty than believed....

Black's book is a persuasive defence of Nixon, crediting him with steering America steadily in the world, avoiding isolationism but also knowing when not to get involved in "quixotic or presumptuous" missions abroad. Even the Watergate cover-up emerges as shabby, rather than grandly criminal: Black's point, convincingly made, is that Nixon doesn't deserve to be in a special category of badness, worse than all other presidents, before or since.

"The US simply can't pretend that this guy was some aberration, some kind of mutant, who ran on furry feet into the White House and hid his real nature, until the brave people of the Washington Post pulled back the shower-curtain one night, saw the cloven hooves, and threw him out."

Still, blame for Nixon's downfall must ultimately rest with the president himself, Black argues: he lacked something - some internal mechanism of self-correction - that might have held him back from the precipice. "He did not seem to have the ability to see when he was crossing the line into absolutely sleazy and outrageous things," Black says....

The Nixon book is another salvo in the conflict [surrounding Black's trial]. "I'm sending everyone a message. I'm saying: this is war ... you'll be aware of these stories that I was living in Toronto as some kind of Howard Hughes, my hair to my navel. So I thought this could be my way of demonstrating to my tormentors that they hadn't even prevented me from writing a book."...

A significant chunk at the end of Black's Nixon biography is dedicated to the disgraced president's life after resignation. It is one of the book's most absorbing stretches; the biographer seems fully to enter the mind of his subject. Nixon's fall from grace was steep and painful - but, as Black tells it, he soon began to recover, gradually gaining a role of behind-the-scenes influence in American political life. The lesson of his book, Black says, is: "Be careful about any rush to judgment." There is something "still there, gnawing away at the conscience of the country, saying 'wait a minute. Are we sure we didn't mistreat this guy?'" He drains his coffee cup and glances at his watch. It is time to leave: he has a court case to win.

Nixon vs. Bush

From Jules Witcover: Who’s Worse, Nixon or Bush?

Nixon’s fall from grace in 1974 cast a heavy shadow over some historic achievements, most notably his opening to China. But his sins, deplorable as they were, mostly concerned domestic matters. They did not leave his party in the hole that Bush’s radical adventurism abroad has dug for the Republicans, and for the country he has so catastrophically led, without any compensating accomplishments akin to Nixon’s, domestic or foreign.

Conrad Black on his book

Here's a video clip of a recent Canadian TV interview with Conrad Black, author of the new Nixon biography The Invincible Quest. In this clip, Black talks about Nixon's relationship with Eisenhower and how Nixon was involved in Eisenhower's nomination as president.

"Invincible Quest" Excerpt

According to the Globe and Mail, an excerpt from Conrad Black's massive new biography of Nixon, The Invincible Quest, is contained in this week's Macleans, a Canadian newsweekly. Black is currently on trial for corporate fraud.

During a break in the trial, Lord Black was overheard lining up a date next week to tape a reading of a short excerpt from The Invincible Quest, a 1000-plus page tome on the disgraced 37th president. Apparently, CBC Radio wanted to run a three-minute segment of Lord Black reading from his work. But while the author seemed keen to do it - aren't most authors? - his "people" were more wary.

In fact, the impression was that they thought it might be a setup. As a result, negotiations ensued. In any event, this is the week for Lord Black's turn at positive publicity. TVO plans to broadcast its interview with him on the book this Friday. That conversation, with Allan Gregg, was taped just before Lord Black headed off to Chicago for his showdown with U.S. prosecutors. And this week's cover story in Maclean's magazine is an excerpt from the book, dubbed a "World Exclusive." In the excerpt, the author depicts the early stages of Mr. Nixon's campaign to put his life back together - and restore his reputation - after scandal.

I'm looking forward to this book. Too bad it's not being published in the U.S. until the fall. I may have to get my hands on a Canadian copy.

Frost/Nixon Tony Noms

Frost/Nixon received three Tony nominations this morning:

• Best Play


• Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play (for Frank Langella as Nixon)


• Best Direction of a Play (for Michael Grandage)

Congrats!

Paul Jackson on Nixon

From columnist Paul Jackson in the Calgary Sun:

I have always admired President Richard Nixon and refused to capitulate under the scathing attacks received whenever defending him.

Nixon knew nothing ahead of time about the Watergate break-in.

His only error was to try and defend his friends who had committed it rather than throw them to the wolves.

Because of that misplaced loyalty, he was hounded out of office by a vicious Liberal news media and devious Democratic politicians and lawyers.

Hmm... I'm not a Nixon expert, but what about firing the special prosecutor and trying to use the FBI to save himself? What about the fact that the House voted 410-4 to open an impeachment inquiry?

Introduction

This will be a blog that tracks news about Richard Nixon. Although he's been dead for 13 years, he's been prominent this year: three new books about Nixon were published this spring, with a massive biography by Conrad Black on the way (published in Canada and the U.K. this month and in the U.S. in the fall). There's also a new play on Broadway, Frost/Nixon, about David Frost's 1977 interviews with Nixon, and last year there was a revival Off-Broadway of another Nixon play, Nixon's Nixon, about Nixon and Henry Kissinger during Nixon's last night in the White House.

Why me? I have a fascination with Richard Nixon. It's an apolitical fascination. I was born during Watergate, and I don't feel any particular passion for or against Nixon. I just find him an intriguing character.

Part of it is Watergate - it's a great story, filled with suspense, starting with a minor burglary and eventually snowballing into a political crisis for Nixon, ending in his resignation under threat of impeachment.

Pat of it is the dramatic arc of his life story - rise (Congress, Senate and the vice presidency), fall (two electoral defeats in a row - for president in 1960, and for California governor in 1962), rise (twice elected president), fall (Watergate), and then his attempted vindication as an elder statesman until his death.

And Nixon himself is such an engrossing, flawed character. The paranoia; the paradox of a man raised as a Quaker who, in private, cursed like a sailor and made drunked late-night phone calls; a man who rose to the presidency even though he lacked a natural politician's charisma and could come across as awkward in public.

This blog is an experiment. I intend to collect news about Nixon, his life, and his administration. Maybe there won't be much or maybe there'll be a lot.

We'll see.