The Tragedy of Edmund Morris
I often think of Edmund Morris, the master biographer who died this weekend at the age of 78, as the man whom Ronald Reagan, the subject of his most famous biography, drove crazy.
Reagan drove a lot of people crazy. Anyone who spent time in the faculty lounges and graduate seminars of the 1980s, as I did, can tell you all about it. You had to see it to believe it, the intensity of it, especially now that Reagan has been declawed into the kindly, unexpectedly shrewd, avuncular master of misdirection that we know from pop biography and second-rate TV documentaries. Back then, though, the mere mention of his name could send professional eggheads, especially the ideological kind, into a scarlet fury. The dunce! Ignoramus! He’s gonna get us all killed!
The fury was unique for its time, but I suppose we’ve all gotten
