Loading up the syllabus in may feed an instructor’s ego…but does it serve the student or text? My reading list for “The Psychological Novel” remains amusing and alarming. Can anyone really come to terms with Mrs. Dalloway and Ulysses in one semester? I didn’t and won’t pretend that I do now.

Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano is probably on many summer reading lists or will be come fall semester. No doubt the 1947 novel was one of my “Psychological” readings that sophomore year because it was an easy fit. Just as it was for Clarissa Dalloway and Leopold Bloom, Volcano is a day in the life of Geoffrey “the Counsel” Firmin. As in London and Dublin, uneasiness hovers over Quauhnahuac, Mexico, which is magnified tenfold because it is The Day of the Dead. Social gatherings of varying success are prominent in all three. Similarly to Woolf and Joyce, Lowry’s literary and historic references can fill pages of an essay, exam, final project, or lexicon. Then there is the autobiographical appeal: The Counsel’s alcoholism didn’t require research on his creator’s part because it eventually killed him. Woolf’s mental illness and Joyce’s ego were equally destructive.

Since my unsatisfactory reading, Under the Volcano became something more than an English department convenience. In 1984 John Houston directed a definitive film version of Volcano (http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=410). The novel also appeared on “100 Best Books of the Twentieth Century” lists by, among others, The Modern Library (http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html) and Time (http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html). The author’s scarce output was anthologized in 2007 by NYR Books in The Voyage that Never Ends (http://www.nybooks.com/nyrb/book-search?q=malcolm+lowry.).

I didn’t need a movie or list to know that I missed something. The time was right to go back to Under the Volcano. I’m glad I did. Anyone who remembers every detail of a “memorable” bad day will relate to Volcano.

The easy comparisons are all there but there is more. Under the Volcano takes place over 24 hours but is not a fast read. Otherwise, Lowry’s masterly time shifts would be missed and his characters’ interior monologues unappreciated. The “old” and “new” worlds bisecting in 1938 Mexico becomes a metaphor for the nuclear age, which Lowry thoroughly constructs. The Counsel, his wife Yvonne, half brother Hugh, and best friend Jacques are hateful – but you’ll want to know more about them than the author generously provides.

Lowry’s many references are ironic; I had to look up a few to appreciate his gallows humor. They also appear on almost every page and grow tedious. However there are two worth mentioning because they are of personal interest. The Counsel is keenly interested in the Faust legend, putting Lowry in the same 20th century literary company as Thomas Mann and Boris Pasternack. Bad things or feelings surface when a horse appears. Almost every Andre Tarkovsky film has horses symbolizing a conflicted world.

Mann or Pasternack came long after college. So did seeing and loving Tarkovksy’s films. I don’t know if rushing through difficult texts in the classroom is a good idea: it depends on the instructor and the enthusiasm of each student. Still, if those four years are supposed to set up the future, then re-reading Under the Volcano is the valuable lesson it was originally intended to be.

The Iraq War…The War on Terror…The Surge…for every name, year passing in labyrinthine complexity, convoluted explanations offered on the campaign trial justifying one vote for war, and opinions from all sides, thousands of American soldiers are stationed the Middle East. Elizabeth D. Samet introduces several of them in Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature in Peace and War at West Point. Unlike President Bush with his cumulative “C” average from Yale, these rigorously educated members at the top echelon of the all-volunteer army know that good command and orders saves lives. They also know books matter.

An Ivy League-educated civilian who has taught at the USMA since 1997, Professor Samet’s memoir grew out of articles, interviews, and talks she’s done since her colleagues and ex-students were deployed. One of the best reasons for reading Soldier’s Heart is discovering that military maneuvers are far from the only thing taught at West Point. English is a required subject, and cadets have the option of minoring in it as well. Lit and composition classes serve another purpose: they are one of the few outlets this particular student body has for expressing his or her own opinions. Samet convincingly argues that future officers need both a communal, disciplined environment and the ability to think creatively for themselves so they and their unit come home alive.

Another reason why Soldier’s Heart is compelling reading is that its author does not consider herself an expert in military life. However, her descriptions of the monuments and rituals of her workplace are vivid. You’ll think again if you thought being stuck in traffic or on the subway was a good enough reason for being late for class.

Professor Samet refers to two nineteenth century works in order to better understand the orderly environment she teaches in and the current crisis affecting all within their picturesque Hudson Valley grounds. The first is the book that her peaked interest in West Point – Ulysses S. Grant’s Personal Memoirs. This presidential autobiography is renowned for its candor, especially those sections where Grant recalls his difficult years at “The Point.” The other is War and Peace, which one young captain brought with him to Iraq. Like Tolstoy’s deftly shifting focus between the nobility on the home front and their sons off fighting Napoleon, Samet divides Soldier’s Heart between the pre- and post-September 11 West Point. Perhaps the victorious General of the Union Army and literature’s most famous soldier-turned-author aren’t surprising choices (neither are Homer, Ambrose Bierce, nor World War I battlefield poet Wilfred Owen), but their timelessness takes on poignant importance.

Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature in Peace and War at West Point is a timely dual history/biography of West Point.

The title of Alex Ross’ The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century is a play on Hamlet’s last words. “Rest” for the Prince of Denmark was “silence.” However, Shakespeare doesn’t suffer from the image problem modern “classical” music does. The Bard’s plays can be transferred into contemporary settings, but this music is marginalized primarily because it is less than two centuries old. Beethoven was the ultimate head banger, but that didn’t prevent his music from being performed during his lifetime. What Mr. Ross does in his comprehensive, accessible, and entertaining book is prove that despite being ignored by music directors and arts administrators preoccupied with their subscriber base rather than programming, socialite board members maintaining the status quo, and the mainstream media – this music is very relevant.

It is worth mentioning what The Rest is Noise never attempts being. This is not a BS “cult of the personality” biography or history written by a so-called expert that does nothing but add classical music’s reputation for elitism and freakishness. As in his reviews and blog, The New Yorker’s chief music critic never lectures on or dumbs down his subject. Mr. Ross doesn’t suggest how or what to listen for in Jean Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony or Alban Berg’s opera Lulu. He writes for familiar, novice, and potential listeners. The omission of a discography deserves a standing ovation because it gives readers total freedom locating or downloading performances. While the New York Philharmonic is chastised for its treatment of their celebrated triumvirate of composer/conductor music directors Gustav Mahler, Leonard Bernstein, and Pierre Boulez, major cultural institutions are never condemned outright. In no way is The Rest is Noise a Music Appreciation 101 or Classical Music for Dummies primer.

So rather than going for the expected, Mr. Ross explains how modern classical music (dating from Richard Wagner’s operas written in the 1860’s) is an integral part of western culture. He doesn’t make this sentence sound as pretentious as it reads because history is on the music’s side. Even when this music is noisy like that of Charles Ives, it is worth knowing because it captures time in sound. What makes The Rest is Noise stand out among other classical music studies is Mr. Ross’ sharp analyses of how the outside world influences a composer’s inner life.

The book begins with the scandalous 1905 premiere of Richard Strauss’ operatic adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Salome and ends with an appreciation of John Adams’ 1987 Nixon in China (which the Metropolitan Opera is finally scheduling during its 2010-2011 season). Mr. Ross goes on to present other examples of hard-won twentieth century creativity. The better-known ones make for interesting reading: Igor Stravinsky, whose 1913 Rite of Spring foreshadows World War I, lived his long life in Europe and the United States and formed a prolific collaboration with another Russian èmirgè, choreographer George Balanchine. Dmitri Shostakovich wrote the autobiography the KGB never decoded in his Fourth Symphony and string quartets. Despite his limited access to the west, Shostakovich became great friends with the reticent Sir Benjamin Britten; Mr. Ross points out surprising similarities in their diverse styles. War wasn’t only the form of displacement: Aaron Copland, best known for the Fanfare for the Common Man, fell out of favor with critics and audiences alike when he experimented with the 12-tone music scale created by Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg fled Austria the Nazis to teach and compose in California where he lived not far from his rival…Igor Stravinsky, who too experimented with the 12-tone scale.

Thus, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century makes a strong case that classical music continues thriving in its own forms (e.g., opera, symphony, string quartet), in venues of all kinds. This music occassionally fuses with eastern instrumentation and continues influencing jazz, American musical theatre, and film soundtracks (Jonny Greenwood’s score for There Will Be Blood is far from first ignored by Academy Awards). Alex Ross has done a virtuoso job synthesizing material spanning decades, personalities, and location. He has written the ultimate “Program Notes” that deserve to be read rather than left under one’s seat.

How do you teach the American Civil War? Memorizing years (1861-1865) or statistics (22,000 wounded at Gettysburg, 23,000 dead at Antietam, 40% of the Union dead are unknown) tells you nothing. Looking at Matthew Brady’s photographs or visiting battlefields are slightly better reality checks. The songs and poems (particularly those by Walt Whitman) of that era do say much about the feelings of participants, witnesses, and survivors. Movies are trickier: at one end of the spectrum is Glory (1989), depicting the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry’s creation and destruction, while at the other is Gone With the Wind (1939) and, much more infamously, Birth of a Nation (1912) crystallizing attitudes rather than history. A more-balanced attempt at mass information is Ken Burns’ nine-part television documentary The Civil War (1990), a thoroughly researched treatment of a situation that intersects race, politics, gender, and the creation of “modern” warfare – that is, dying at enemy hands not seen in hand-to-hand combat, but from those firing weaponry killing many instead of one.

Then there is reading about it. Drew Gilpin Faust is a Civil War historian and as of July 2007, the first female President of Harvard University. Dr. Faust has brought this complicated and bloody war to life in This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. Self-appointed cultural prophets sounding yet again the death knell of the written word should buy or borrow this book to discover the powerful communication between a writer/teacher/historian and her readers. What gifted historians such as Shelby Foote and Bruce Catton explained in volumes Dr. Faust accomplishes in less than 400 pages.

This Republic of Suffering concentrates solely on the estimated 620,000 Union and Confederate soldiers who died in the conflict. (There is no actual death toll because enlisted and conscripted soldiers were buried in makeshift mass graves. Civilians were never accounted for.) Dr. Faust divides her history into three sections regarding the notification, identification, and internment of the dead. This factual yet matter-of-fact approach is valuable in understanding the Civil War and its aftermath. For example, the Victorian notion of a “Good Death” does not seem overtly sentimental. While Civil War participants (Stephen Crane, for one) and historians were the first to openly question whether dying for any cause was just, excerpts of letters soldiers wrote to families informing them of the death of a loved one are tributes far more meaningful than a public memorial. Dr. Faust also includes accounts of family members who went to battlefields and hospitals searching for sons, husbands, and brothers – not to gain reader sentiment, but to point out that government and social service agencies on both sides were either nonexistent or reliable. A different kind of war began after the Civil War’s end when former enemies vandalized each other’s gravesites.

Other half-taught history is clarified. Clara Barton earned her nickname “Angel of the Battlefield” not only because of her service as a Union nurse and founder of the American Red Cross, but for tracing information on dead soldiers decades after the war. Ms. Barton and former POW Dorence Atwater’s identification efforts at Andersonville (Georgia) prison is the most interesting part of the book. An early supporter of the Red Cross was a former Union general, President James Garfield. Garfield may well remain a trivia question (Name all the assassinated presidents!), but Dr. Faust’s inclusion of a quote by William Dean Howells describing Garfield’s wartime experience humanizes him.

Drew Gilpin Faust must be a gifted teacher, and I hope President Faust finds time to continue her research. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War is a valuable, non-morbid history lesson that should easily join required high school and college reading lists. Even readers not particularly interested in history will be impressed by Dr. Faust’s writing ability. There is another reason why this book is so crucial – it was written during the Iraq War when dead and severely wounded soldiers are disregarded and ignored by the Administration that sent them there. The one thing the Bush presidency has succeeded in is making Iraq an “invisible” war. Sadly, This Republic of Suffering couldn’t be timelier.

Recounting the accomplishments of director Elia “Gage” Kazan (1909-2003) is daunting. His career is a humanities class in twentieth century American culture: membership as actor/director in the influential Group Theatre (where Method Acting had its fractious origins); receiving Academy Awards for directing “Best Picture” winners “Gentleman’s Agreement” (1947) and “On the Waterfront” (1954) ; providing Marlon Brando, James Dean, Andy Griffith, and Warren Beatty with their big breaks; coaxing career-defining performances from Anthony Quinn, Natalie Wood, and Raymond Massey, giving Leonard Bernstein the opportunity to write his only film score, and what has to be one of the most distinguished resume listings of all time – directing the stage premieres of “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1947) and “Death of A Salesman” (1949).

However, Elia Kazan’s life is also a history lesson that neither this book nor any other can answer. In 1952 the director “named names” for the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Gage was far from only “friendly witness” who did, but his lifelong lack of public contrition for doing so made him a pariah. Kazan never received the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award (no doubt Tom Cruise and Brangelina one day will) and his Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement was bestowed towards the end of his life. It is this 1999 Oscar ceremony that frames Richard Schickel’s “Elia Kazan: A Biography.”

Schickel repeatedly drives the point that his book is “critical” biography, and it is. He does a fine job recounting Kazan’s dual Hollywood and Broadway careers and keeping it “A Biography’s” primary focus. The accomplishments of Kazan, his colleagues, and contemporaries make for exciting reading; the results of their work did not just become required reading and/or viewing, but the stuff of legend. The chronological listing “Elia Kazan: A Life in Public” Schickel provides as an Appendix is an excellent resource for both students and enthusiasts.

The chapters leading up to and dealing with Kazan’s HUAC testimony are cross-checked with references and pertinent background information. Among the documents Mr. Schickel quotes from is Kazan’s unapologetic “Statement” published in The New York Times after his HUAC appearance. It can be interpreted that while being a “friendly witness” caused professional unease, it was this ad that made him a polarizing figure in both left and right-wing Hollywood circles. There is little subtext on Schickel’s part that two of Kazan’s masterpieces, “On the Waterfront” and “A Face in the Crowd” (1957), were made after he appeared in front of HUAC. The great irony is that both films deal with falsehood.

Where “Elia Kazan: A Biography” falls short has nothing to do with politics but with the author’s intrusive personal comments. Richard Schickel is Time Magazine’s usually even-handed film critic and an outstanding film historian, but in “A Biography” he is occasionally too protective of his subject. Statements such as Jessica Tandy not deserving to play Blanche onscreen (she created the role on Broadway) or dismissing the various incarnations of Lincoln Center Theatre because they dismissed Kazan are undeveloped and unconvincing.

One of Gage’s frequent collaborators gets the brunt of Mr. Schickel’s abuse. “A Biography” should have been subtitled “I Hate Arthur Miller.” The author cannot forgive the playwright for not “naming names,” claiming “On the Waterfront” was his idea, or for his “Marilyn Monroe” play “After the Fall,” the last major play Kazan directed in 1964. (What is truly unforgivable was the Roundabout Theatre’s 2004 production of the play, which relied on a gorgeous set design rather than hiring a leading man who could say his lines with conviction or feeling. “After the Fall” is flawed but not undoable. Like Miller’s “The Crucible” and “A View from the Bridge,” it might make a good opera.) “After the Fall” not only caused problems for Kazan but for Miller as well – it was only towards the end of his life that Miller’s plays written after 1964 were fairly re-assessed.

Another writer Schickel goes after is Archibald MacLeish; Kazan directed his 1958 Pulitzer-Prize winning play “J.B.” Schickel’s unspoken problem with the poet/playwright seems to be that for many years he was, after Hemingway, the most publicly lauded (he was Librarian of Congress) member of “The Lost Generation.” In dismissing “J.B.,” Mr. Schickel may succeed in making readers curious about it – especially since nothing quite like it is currently produced on commercialized, tourist-hungry Broadway.

Queen Elizabeth II is one of the most famous women in the world. Not just because her portrait is printed on the British currency she possesses a great deal of, but also for her half-century reign and dogged public serenity in light of her family’s extreme public escapades. A fraction of the British cultural landscape she has reigned over encompasses Teddy Boys, the realization of The National Theatre, Frances Bacon, The Beatles, Cats, punk rock, and the careers of several Tony, Oliver, and Nobel-winning British playwrights. One of those playwrights, Alan Bennett, has made HRH the heroine of his delightful new novella The Uncommon Reader.

Like Peter Morgan’s screenplay The Queen, Bennett’s Elizabeth II is admirable. Unlike his previous The Madness of King George, The Uncommon Reader is a speculative imagining of a monarch’s private life. While history and current events mark every page, something more remarkable takes place: after her corgis surround a mobile library parked near the palace grounds, the Queen becomes an avid reader. She forms a Buckingham Palace book club of two with Norman, a (fictionalized) young member of kitchen staff – and the only one within her confined lifestyle who shares her love of reading.

Much to the annoyance of her family, senior staff, Prime Minister (unnamed but most likely modeled on Tony Blair), and heads of state, books become Elizabeth’s vocation. These influential, allegedly well educated non-readers fail noticing that the Queen’s reading makes her happy. “One reads for pleasure. It is not a public duty,” she informs her (also fictionalized) private secretary. Yet reading bonds Elizabeth with her subjects and their shared culture, making her as knowledgeable as her extraordinary namesake and ancestor.

Bennett takes Uncommon Reader readers and Elizabeth on a 120-page literary treasure hunt. Ackerley, Beaton, Forster, the Mitfords, Woolf, and, yes, Shakespeare are among the famous British authors dropped into the dialogue and narration. While the Harry Potter phenomenon is poked gentle fun at, the author also takes jabs at his own History Boys and The Lady in the Van. The Queen eventually reads on from her homeland writers to those beyond her kingdom’s former boundaries. These references and in-jokes prove that even the most regal bibliophile doesn’t need Oprah or a tenured professor to find the labyrinthine path books lead.

The Uncommon Reader is a fun mix of fact and fiction. Alan Bennett’s re-imaginings of Queen’s public duties would be truly memorable if they ever took place. The one serious message is that the rich and powerful depicted in this brief tale seldom appreciate the wonderful things they pay for or can afford. They define their lives by class and influence – not enlightenment.

The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews.By James Reston, Jr.Harmony Books (2007) Overall Rating: 85 Plot: 100

Character Development: 85

Style: 80

Pacing: 90

Along With: 

Frost/Nixon

By Peter Morgan

Faber and Faber Plays (2007) 

Overall Rating: 100

Plot: 100Character Development: 100

Style: 100

Pacing: 100

 Lost in the accolades for the recent Broadway production of Peter Morgan’s Frost/Nixon was the script itself.  The attention was justifiably on Michael Sheen’s dead-on portrayal of the playboy talk-show host seriously underestimated by his subject and the journalism establishment, and Frank Langella’s indelible, non-caricature character study of Richard Nixon.  There is something to be said about a disgraced president who was the inspiration for an opera masterpiece (John Adams’ Nixon in China), a classic Star Trek line (Mr. Spock convinces Captain Kirk in The Undiscovered Country to negotiate with the Kligons by reminding him that “only Nixon could go to China”), and a very good actor becoming a great one.

However, the acting challenges for Sheen and Langella would have never been there without malleable dialogue.  The first time I saw Frost/Nixon in May 2007 it was a dark depiction of a self-loathing man keen enough to know that, “I brought myself down.”  Two months later I went back to see Frost/Nixon and with nothing changed – except for Mr. Langella winning a Tony Award –, the play was a humorous observation of two male egos vying for attention.  I can’t help but wonder if the Frost/Nixon creative team watched one of Nixon’s well-documented attempts at macho lightheartedness: the formal, antiseptic Nixon-Bob Hope hosted “welcome home” dinner for former Vietnam Prisoners of War from Peter Davis’ Hearts and Minds (1974).

The Broadway footlights blinded two other major characters.  The first was the large television screen looming over the multi-purpose set.  Sound bites and video were successfully incorporated into two other recent British imports, Alan Bennett’s Tony Award-winning The History Boys and David Hare’s Stuff Happens, but here television became The Historian.  The climax of Frost/Nixon occurred when the ex-president’s face was frozen onscreen in extreme close-up after Frost’s questions regarding the then-unreported transcript of a June 20, 1972 conversation between Nixon and chief counsel Charles Colson exposing the President’s full knowledge of the Watergate break-in long before originally admitting to it.  As in the original 1977 broadcast, this highly theatrical moment was far more damning than Nixon’s lack of contrition or Sir David Frost.           

The other character was James Reston, Jr., a historian and college professor with a specialty in Nixon-era politics.  From 1976-1977 he was one of Frost’s advisors for the project.  (Not mentioned in Frost/Nixon and only touched upon by Reston in far too few anecdotes in his memoir is that his father James Sr. was a longtime New York Times editor/columnist who made Nixon’s Enemies List.)  Reston, the author of 13 books, started and then set aside his memoir chronicling his substantial contribution to the interviews.  The 30-year old manuscript he lent to Peter Morgan for Frost/Nixon has now been published as The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews.  In his Foreword, Reston remembered the interviews as having “the elements of Greek theatre,” and goes as far as nicknaming Nixon “Proteus” after Neptune’s sneaky shape-shifting son.  Morgan went one better and made Reston Frost/Nixon’s one-man Greek chorus.           

The slender 207-page (compared to Nixon’s own 1120-page RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon) personal history is something of a companion piece to the play and planned film adaptation.  (Ron Howard’s film version of Frost/Nixon, starring both Langella and Sheen, is scheduled for a September 2008 release.  Another upcoming book is the re-titled, re-release of David Frost’s Frost/Nixon: Behind the Scenes of the Nixon Interviews, which is scheduled for publication in September 2007.)  This is not entirely a bad thing.  Reston was there as both a witness and participant, which are the primary functions of a Greek chorus.It is timely that The Conviction of Richard Nixon was published during Frost/Nixon’s limited Broadway run.  This intelligent play and its subject are compelling enough to Google or watch the real thing on DVD.  However, the exclusion of a Bibliography and Index make the book appear a rush job.  Additionally, it would have been both valuable and fascinating learning more about Reston’s own research team that he put together for the interviews.  Nixon and Jefferson biographer Fawn Brodie is the only one he regularly referred to.

What The Conviction of Richard Nixon does best is clear up the literary liberties Frost/Nixon took with the real interviews.  This is a bit volatile because Morgan’s 80-minute, one-act play occasionally accelerates or re-imagines events for dramatic purposes.  Despite that, Frost/Nixon is not revisionist history.  If anything, it is a story of two men who want to regain control of their fate and the spotlight.  Still, it is disappointing learning that the unforgettable late night phone call between the drunken, verbally abusive ex-President and the surprised yet nonplused interviewer never happened.  Less disheartening is learning that it was no last-minute ruse when Frost finally broke through Nixon’s carefully constructed and embittered façade.  The Nixon/Colson transcript that Reston found in the public records at Washington’s Federal Court House (and included in his memoir as The Appendix) was kept secret for eight months because...Nixon’s cronies were keeping tabs on Frost and his team. The reader has no problem feeling or understanding Reston’s ire towards Nixon or the members of his inner circle that saw limited or no jail time.  Nixon’s incredulous description of himself as “the last casualty of Vietnam” gets a detailed rebuttal that goes beyond head shaking and Mr. Langella’s cadenced delivery of that line.  Following their separate meetings with Reston, Charles Colson and John Dean come across as middle-aged frat boys who got away with a “third rate burglary,” making their redemption – Colson’s through religion, Dean’s as the Watergate hearings’ most forthcoming witness – hypocritical.

Yet even with the President Ford’s pardon of Nixon, are these interviews really the trial Reston labeled them?  The pardon made justice impossible, but the scandal that is now a matter of public record – the latest batch of taped conversations released in mid-July 2007 of the newly re-elected Nixon still obsessing over George McGovern in un-presidential, uncivilized language – speaks for itself.  Thus, the value of both Frost/Nixon and The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews is they encourage the respective audiences to find out more, and in the public service Frost and his team accomplished by getting Nixon to admit that “I impeached myself” – the only time he publicly expressed regret and/or remorse over Watergate.

Neither Peter Morgan nor James Reston, Jr. had to beat readers over the head with the legacy of the Frost/Nixon interviews.  While it took $1 million of most of his own money going to Richard Nixon make it happen, David Frost wanted nothing more than to beat 60 Minutes at its own game.  And he did.  Too bad the impact of the interviews corroded over three decades into self-serving, poorly researched celebrity-styled journalism.  An exasperating example of this took place in September 2006 when Katie Couric included pictures of baby Suri Cruise on her inaugural C.B.S. newscast.  Another less serious instance was that the big entertainment news the June weekend of this year’s Tony Award ceremony was Paris Hilton’s jail time.  Sir David Frost himself eventually went back to the lightweight interviewing and projects that made him rich and famous.           

There is enough material on Richard Nixon and Watergate to fill several presidential libraries and rows of public library and bookstore shelves.  As Peter Morgan’s play proved, this historic figure continues to be the source of endless speculation and creative inspiration.  One good reason why is found in a Nixon quote incorporated into Frost/Nixon script that says volumes: “If the President does it that means it’s not illegal.”