Memories of the Ford Administration Author:John Updike "Stunning...Alf's life and times are light and funny; Buchanan's are dark and serious. Alternating between the two, Mr. Updike entertains and instructs...in gorgeous prose." — THE WALL STREET JOURNAL — When junior college professor Alfred Clayton is asked to record his impressions of the Ford Administration, he recalls a turbulent piece of persona... more »l history as well. In a decade of sexual liberation, Clayton was facing a doomed marriage and the passionate beginnings of a futile affair with an unattainable Perfect Wife. But one memory begets another: Clayton's unfinished book on James Buchanan. In John Updike's fifteenth novel, he masterfully alternates between the two men, two lives, two American centuries--one Victorian, the other modern--shining an irreverent, witty, and sometimes caustic light on the contrasting views of social fictions and sexual politics....