Mrs. Nixon

A Novelist Imagines a Life

Ann Beattie

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781439168721
• eBook ISBN: 9781439168738
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

From the award-winning author The New York Times Book Review called “a national treasure,” a fascinating, wholly original book about Pat Nixon that is also “a fully realized account of fiction, fiction writing, and the fiction writer” (The Boston Globe).

The rare First Lady who did not write a book, Pat Nixon remains one of the most mysterious and enigmatic public figures in recent history. Ann Beattie, like many of her generation, dismissed Richard Nixon’s wife. Decades later, she wonders what it must have been like to be married to such a spectacularly ambitious and catastrophically self-destructive man.

Beattie uses the elusive persona of Mrs. Nixon to examine how writers create characters, how they use detail, and what drives their storytelling. Like Stephen King’s On Writing, this fascinating and intimate account offers readers a rare glimpse into the imagination of a writer.

A startlingly compelling and revelatory work, Mrs. Nixon is an insightful and humorous examination of the First Couple who occupied the White House as the baby boomers came of age.

Notes

The Lady in the Green Dress

Hard questions on Vietnam: Joe McGinniss, The Selling of the President 1968 (New York: Trident Press, 1969), p. 111.

Stories as Preemptive Strikes

In this chapter and throughout the book, I am indebted to Julie Nixon Eisenhower’s Pat Nixon: The Untold Story (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986). Subsequent references will be to PN.

RN talking to pictures: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), p. 395.

Late-night phone calls by Nixon: Jonathan Schell, The Time of Illusion (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), p. 51.

“fragmentation”: Ibid., p. 6.

Plan to get prostitutes to yacht: Ibid., pp. 205–206.

Mrs. Nixon after mother’s funeral: PN, p. 27.

Raymond Carver, “Are These Actual Miles?” (formerly “What Is It?”), in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (New York: McGraw-Hill Paperback, 1987), pp. 210–211.

The Faux Pas

“funny shows”: McGinniss, Selling of the President 1968, epigraph.

Mrs. Nixon answered Wilkinson/Paul Keyes questions: Ibid., p. 157.

Mrs. Nixon, Without Lorgnette

Based on Anton Chekhov, “The Lady with the Little Dog,” in Stories, tr. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Bantam, 2000), pp. 361–376.

“And it seemed”: Ibid., p. 376.

“In his appearance”: Ibid., p. 362.

“Why did she love him so?”: Ibid., p. 375.

“felt compassion”: Ibid., p. 375.

Chekhov’s letter to his brother: “To A. P. Chekhov, Moscow, May 10, 1886,” in Letters of Anton Chekhov, ed. Avrahm Yarmdinsky (New York: Viking Press, 1973), p. 37.

“How?”: Chekhov, “The Lady with the Little Dog,” p. 375.

Approximately Twenty Milk Shakes

Suggested by reading John C. Lungren and John C. Lungren Jr., Healing Richard Nixon (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003), p. 68.

Friendly, Faithful, Fair

Cold stadium: PN, p. 125.

Shoes in a bag: PN, p. 133.

Gift of bowl: PN, pp. 187–188.

Ernest Hemingway, “Cat in the Rain,” in The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1966), pp. 165–170.

“Time will say nothing”: W. H. Auden, “If I Could Tell You,” in Selected Poetry of W. H. Auden (New York: Vintage, 1970), p. 69.

“I love you”: PN, p. 423.

Gatsby refutes: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925), p. 110.

“Yes, but”: PN, p. 457.

“never get any credit”: PN, p. 456.

Delmore Schwartz, “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities,” in In Dreams Begin Responsibilities (New York: New Directions, 1978), p. 6.

The Quirky Moments of Mrs. Nixon’s Life

Johnsons with dogs: PN, p. 250.

Queen at Balmoral: PN, p. 222.

Mrs. Nixon’s Junior Year Play

A. A. Milne, The Romantic Age (1922; repr., New York: Samuel French).

Dialogue from The Romantic Age: act 2, p. 40.

Mrs. Nixon Plays Elaine Bumpsted

Martin Flavin, Broken Dishes (1930; repr., New York: Samuel French).

Review in the Evening World: Back cover, Broken Dishes.

RN’s lists: PN, p. 152.

Mrs. Nixon Gives a Gift

“I have always wanted”: PN, p. 82.

Guy de Maupassant, “The Necklace,” in The Best Short Stories, Guy de Maupassant (Ware, Hertfordshire, England: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1997), pp. 111–118.

Nixon’s growing self-awareness: Lungren, Healing Richard Nixon, p. 38.

Caracas, Venezuela, 1958

Spit: PN, p. 174.

Commended by Eisenhower: Ibid., p. 175.

“At first the spit”: Ibid., p. 174.

Mrs. Nixon’s letters to her family: Ibid., p. 38.

“The girl turned”: Ibid., p. 174.

Don Hughes: Ibid., p. 175.

“Muerte a Nixon”: Ibid., p. 173.

Andrew Marvell: “To His Coy Mistress,” in A Collection of English Poems 1660–1800, ed. Ronald S. Crane (New York: Harper & Row, 1932), p. 41.

The Writer’s Sky

Keanu Reeves: “The Vulture Pages,” New York, October 18, 2010, p. 115.

Frank Conroy, “Midair,” in Midair (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), p. 7.

Katherine Anne Porter, “Virginia Woolf,” in The Collected Essays and Occasional Writings of Katherine Anne Porter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), p. 71.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-up (1945; repr., New York: New Directions, 1962), p. 208.

The Letter

“Dearest Heart”: PN, p. 68.

Mrs. Nixo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• The Lady in the Green Dress
• Stories as Preemptive Strikes
• The Faux Pas
• Major and Minor Events of Mrs. Nixon’s Life
• Mrs. Nixon, Without Lorgnette
• Approximately Twenty Milk Shakes
• Friendly, Faithful, Fair
• The Quirky Moments of Mrs. Nixon’s Life
• Moments of Mrs. Nixon’s Life I’ve Invented
• Mrs. Nixon’s Junior Year Play: The Romantic Age
• Mrs. Nixon Plays Elaine Bumpsted, a Role Formerly Acted by Bette Davis
• Mrs. Nixon Gives a Gift: Stories by Guy de Maupassant
• Mrs. Nixon on Short Stories
• Caracas, Venezuela, 1958
• The Writer’s Sky
• Mrs. Nixon Considers Automatic Writing
• The Letter
• Mrs. Nixon Reads “The Young Nixon” in Life, November 6, 1970
• Serving Mrs. Nixon First
• Letters and Lies
• A Story Occasioned by Considering Richard Nixon and Dolphins
• My Anticipated Mail
• Merely Players
• Mrs. Nixon Lies, and Plays Hostess
• Prophetic Moments
• My Meeting with Mrs. Nixon
• I didn’t Meet Her
• The Writer’s Feet Beneath the Curtain
• King Timahoe, with a Coat Neither Cloth nor Republican
• At Mr. Jefferson’s University
• Mamie Eisenhower is Included in Tricia’s Wedding Plans
• Mrs. Nixon Does Not Bend to Pressure
• Mrs. Nixon Hears a Name She doesn’t Care for
• The President, Co-owner, with Mrs. Nixon, of Irish Setter King Timahoe, Called “King,” Meets Elvis Presley, Known as “The King” but Called “Mr. Presley” by the President
• Mrs. Nixon Reads The Glass Menagerie
• Photo Gallery
• Mrs. Nixon Thinks of Others
• A Home Movie is Made About Mrs. Nixon in China
• Mrs. Nixon Gets the Giggles
• Cathedrals
• What did Mrs. Nixon Think of Mr. Nixon?
• Questions
• The Nixons as Paper Dolls
• Mrs. Nixon Is Taken on a Drive, 1972
• Rashomon
• David Eisenhower has Some Ideas While Sitting by the Fire
• The Death of Ivan Ilych
• Mrs. Nixon Joins the Final Official Photograph
• “The Dead” in New Jersey, 1990
• Mrs. Nixon Sits Attentively as Premier Chou Offers the First Toast
• Catalog Copy
• Cookies
• General Eisenhower Tries Role-Playing
• Mrs. Nixon N + 7
• Mrs. Nixon Explains
• Mrs. Nixon has Thoughts on the War’s Escalation
• Mrs. Nixon Indulges her Feelings
• Mrs. Nixon Uses her Powers of Persuasion
• Mrs. Nixon Reacts to RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
• Possible Last Lines, with (Curtain)
• My Back Porch in Maine
• Mrs. Nixon’s Thoughts, Late-Night Walk, San Clemente
• Chronology
• About the Author
• Notes
• Copyright