Edmund Morris, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Theodore Roosevelt (and the
author of a critically panned biography of Ronald Reagan), has returned with
the third and final volume of his Roosevelt biography. Colonel Roosevelt, with its descriptive and narrative power, its
thorough exploitation of sources, and its interplay of man and nation, may be
the best biography ever written about the life of an American president. It
fascinates, in much the same way that Roosevelt's editor at Metropolitan Magazine described the
impression "TR" made on people: "all showing some signs of
having passed through a tidal moment in their lives."
Readers of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt were engrossed by Morris' narrative of Roosevelt
recovering from the death of his young wife and his mother by spending a year
in the western badlands, converting himself from an East Coast Harvard dude
into a man of action, able to connect with Americans from all walks of life.
Morris, who grew up in Kenya and South Africa and has a feel for the wilderness,
once again provides spellbinding accounts. The first, which opens the book,
sets Roosevelt in Kenya, hunting big game and collecting specimens of plants and
animals for the Smithsonian Institution. The second, which comes nearer to the
end, describes a harrowing trip TR took in the Amazon basin, to chart a
wilderness river for the Brazilian government—the river gets renamed Rio
Roosevelt—and of course to hunt, fish, and collect specimens.
To brilliant effect Morris
uses each trip as a device to structure meaning in TR's life. At the end of his
carefree African adventure TR sails down the Nile, closer and closer to a
return to Western civilization, and he receives news about American politics
that presages his coming break with President Taft. It is Heart of Darkness in reverse. As TR portages and paddles downriver in
the Amazon, the dangers increase (unfriendly locals, a mutineer among the crew,
ravenous insects, difficult terrain). Morris describes a low point in a diarist's
staccato:
"Clearing skies and
baking heat. Rapids, rapids, rapids. Portages too numerous to count. Occasional
fish dinners, but still no meat. Evasive tapirs. Grilled parrots and toucans.
Monkey stew. Palm cabbage. Wild pineapples. Fatty Brazil nuts. Disappearance of
fifteen food tins. Only three weeks of rations left."
TR and the others
gradually unburden themselves, Lear-like (in torrential rain no less) of their
possessions and much of their cultural assumptions. TR's son Kermit gets one of the crew killed through an
impetuous decision on the river and almost dies himself, but in the process
becomes, in his father's lights, a real Roosevelt. TR barely makes it out of
the Amazon alive.
When
Morris deals with domestic politics and international crises, he makes a strong
case for TR's continued relevance. Going against a tendency of some biographers
to see TR in retirement as a blustering blowhard, unable to get off the stage,
Morris shows the ex-President in all his complexity, at the center of progressive
thought and Progressive party politics. Morris makes a strong case that TR's
criticism of Wilson's policies in the first three years of the war were
correct, and that the nation would have been better off if it had heeded his
calls for preparedness and a defense buildup. It is a serious rethinking of the
pre-war years.
The Roosevelt family comes
alive in Morris's telling. Wife Edith remains as private as ever, but always
loving and supportive. All TR's sons go off to war, and Quentin, the dashing
pilot, dies in combat with a German ace. TR's grief at his sons' injuries and
Quentin's death remains a private matter, but Morris lifts the curtain for us.
Colonel Roosevelt settles some scores with academic historians who
pummeled Morris for his unorthodox narrative approach to his Reagan biography,
in a set piece in which TR lectures at the American Historical
Association:
"The imaginative
power demanded for a great historian is different from that demanded for a
great poet; but it is no less marked. Such imaginative power is in no sense
incompatible with minute accuracy. On the contrary, very accurate, very real,
very vivid, presentation of the past can come only from one in whom the
imaginative gift is strong."
With this book, Morris
rests his case.
Richard Pious
is Adolph and Effie Ochs Professor at Barnard College and the Graduate School
of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University. He is the author of The President, Congress and the Constitution (1984), The War on Terrorism and the Rule of Law (2006), and Why Presidents Fail (2008).
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