Volume 8, Number 7 · April 20, 1967
Blow-Up
By Elizabeth Hardwick
The Death of a President
by William Manchester
Harper & Row, 710 pp., $10.00
What was the purpose of this book? A close reading of the text—and a considerable chore that undertaking is—suggests that the work, as it went along its entirely undistinguished way, grew aimlessly fatter and fatter, feeding on any sort of snack that turned up. No doubt it was commissioned as a heroic memorial and certainly that is what Manchester wanted to write. But the nature of his mind is such that pointlessness outruns any other intention. In his earlier Portrait of a President, his inability to understand character and his instant attraction to the same pointlessness made President Kennedy seem small, banal, and commonplace. The first book was the preview and the present one is the full-length feature. It would be untrue to say that his choice by the Kennedy family is a puzzle: it is not in the least. Few people with power and money realize that the eulogist blackens more reputations than the liar. The only hope for public figures, if they would be remembered as a genuine presence, is to be observed, perhaps almost surreptitiously, by another genuine person who may one day write down his thoughts. The dullest of figures can come alive in the mind of an attractive writer, freely remembering and interpreting.
Review, 2315 words
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