Volume 20, Number 15 · October 4, 1973
Death of a Salesman
By Garry Wills
The Making of the President—1972
by Theodore White
Atheneum, 391 pp., $10.00
Us and Them: How the Press Covered the 1972 Election
by James M. Perry
Potter, 288 pp., $3.95 (paper)
Campaign '72: The Managers Speak
edited by Ernest R. May, edited by Janet Fraser
Harvard, 318 pp., $7.95
The Boys on the Bus
by Timothy Crouse
Random House, 314 pp., $7.95 (to be published on November 19)
Right From the Start
by Gary Hart
Quadrangle, 334 pp., $7.95
The Long Shot: George McGovern Runs for President
by Gordon L. Weil
Norton, 253 pp., $8.95
Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72
by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, with illustrations by Ralph Steadman
Straight Arrow, 506 pp., $7.95
The 'Whitiad,' now into its second decade, gets worse stanza by stanza. The race this time is between Professor McGovern ('the underthrust of his learning could carry his conversation to the uplands of history') and Old Pro Nixon ('then his mind locked into tight reasoning'). The author seems to mistake them, in mid-interview, for Plato and Aristotle. Most people did not catch on to White until his 1968 volume. It was one thing to attend the enthronement in 1960 and describe at length the Emperor's nonexistent coronation robes. People wanted to be fooled by Kennedy, and White was just the first in a long line of celebrants (Schlesinger, Sorensen, Salinger, just to dip into one part of the alphabet). But not even Nixon's voters considered him majestic. When White managed to squeeze out a modicum of awe for this President, he blew his act.
Review, 4754 words
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