“History is itself probed with multiple views of the same man and the same scene. Successive, flittering Rashomon vignettes of Nixon, comic and tragic, pathetic and horrifying, remind us of a man who was complex from his earliest days.”
A Harvard student named Gabe, soon to graduate, riding his bicycle a bit too fast around the bend of a curve of road in Cambridge beside the Charles, is hit by a truck. Upon awakening in the hospital, he finds himself stricken by a secondary infection, which enforces a long stay. With a lot of time now, Gabe heeds his wonderful girl-friend, Arlene’s suggestion about a writing contest and is lured into writing about Dick Nixon in love, not once but repeatedly. As Gabe writes, an interest that the reader may not have imagined herself or himself having about Nixon in love not only quickens but grows by the page in intensity. The book is a tour de force that weaves magically the originally sketchy story of how Dick met Pat, fleshing it out until it is as real and appealing as the initial story of the love between quirky Gabe and attractive Arlene.
Meanwhile, through the gushing and imaginative flow of words about Dick and Pat, this novel raises for contemplation the art of story-telling, past and present, in novels and movies and plays of the past, in an insightful and cliché-popping exploration of literature in life.
History is itself probed with multiple views of the same man and the same scene. Successive, flittering Rashomon vignettes of Nixon, comic and tragic, pathetic and horrifying, remind us of a man who was complex from his earliest days. The first chapter of NIXON IN LOVE is no exception. In it, Dick is described as he rides to what will become his first meeting with Pat, an audition:
on his way to church to audition for The Dark Tower, Dick thought as he drove slowly along in his Chevy how much he wished that he owned a Sound Mirror. It would be like magic. Dick chuckled for the hundredth time imagining recording his father, and showing the old man how contradictory his opinions were. Dick would not have to cross the line of criticizing or arguing with Dad – a rule Dick made and kept religiously – Dick held ‘honor thy father’ to mean ‘let the old man figure out his own mistakes’ – Dick would only have to play the recorder back to Dad. But would Dad even hear himself? There was the rub that sapped all the fun out of it. Dad was going deaf as a post. Dick, on the other hand, was beginning to hear everything more acutely than when he’d been in school. Even in law school, Dick had been too much the speaker, too little the listener. He was changing, he was growing up. How great it would be to rehearse a speech, or prepare for trial by speaking into one of Semi Begun’s machines. Semi Begun. One day Dick must buy a Sound Mirror. One day.
A sliver of American history is made vivid in these few lines, juxtaposing an invention of Semi Begun’s developed and popularized in the Thirties with, the reader will infer, Watergate and the famous Presidential tapes.
Nixon’s complex character is similarly brought out by an entertaining but logical and close reading of a short love note:
I rustled through photocopies Arlene made. One was great, a love note from Dick to Pat. This one contained the immortal words of Dick Nixon, Lover:
“You see I too live in a world of make believe – especially in this love business,” I read. What lady would not savor those last three words? His courtship of his bride-to-be was “this love business.” Captured the man. He had no idea. Dick went on, “And sometimes I fear I don’t know when I’m serious and when I’m not.”
Now, that deserved an award for Most Opaque Declaration of Love Ever. Opening the door to enter the World of Love — LOVE BUSINESS is the plaque on the door to the cellar — and only stumbling, falling down the stairs all the way to the basement floor. “Jack and Jill,” in three arias: I love you. Then: Fully invested in this Love Business. Lastly: Am I serious? I fear I do not know. Is that not wonderful? Spooky, even. Bizarre. Not simply that he did not know if he was serious but instead holding onto fear – fear in waves – that, implicitly contrary to his desire, he did not know and might not, in fact, be “serious.” This note is just too precious, especially rich given the photos and anecdotes of Dick in those days being a solemn, serious, earnest worker with no sense of kick-up-his-heels fun. Forever serious. Except when he feared he might not be – in love. Then, neither serious nor not serious, but fearful. Sometimes fearful. That is the note he sends to Pat. Oh, it does not get any better. Dick excelled in superficial faux revelation, revelations which, upon close examination, vanish into thin air. Cat-chasing-its-tail logic erasing lines just as soon as they were written.
Other glances at the past includes one not historical but spiritual as a supernatural theme tantalizingly surfaces in the possibility of reincarnation coming to light, to the surprise of all concerned. A reader, like the characters, will want to weigh the possibility – simultaneously with the novel’s characters — that he or she has made the transit between birth and death before, and the nearly-identical theory that a limited number of stories are immortal and recapitulate, in just the way that Joseph Campbell explained myth’s place in our lives.
This is only on its surface a déjà vu of a book, with familiar elements that a reader will think teasingly he or she has seen it before. In the end, the reader who exposes himself or herself to NIXON IN LOVE’s kaleidoscopic visions, visions that skip between lives and worlds and stories, however familiar, will realize: here is a new and unique take on life, on literature and, of course, on Nixon in love.
The author, Wayne Soini, promises a reader directly:
“You will not want to put NIXON IN LOVE down once you start it, and you will not forget it. You will, however, find your friends staring at you in surprise when you recommend that they, too, read a book called NIXON IN LOVE.”