Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [262]
Years passed, and I did not see Nixon again. I continued to publish Julie and to see her from time to time. Then, by one of those bizarre twists of fate so common in book publishing, I became his editor. Even in our author-editor relationship, Nixon remained an elusive, enigmatic presence. One did not telephone him—one telephoned a member of his staff, who passed the question on to the president (as he was always called) then called back with an answer. It was made clear that under no circumstances was there to be direct communication: a holdover, no doubt, from the White House days, when nobody was allowed to see the president with news that he did not want to hear—or, at any rate, that H. R. Haldeman and Ehrlichman didn’t want him to hear. (Later on, when I published Ronald Reagan, I was surprised by the contrast. Reagan not only liked getting telephone calls but called himself, at odd hours, and I often had to wait while he and my wife discussed their horses or exchanged information about pig breeding, an interest they shared. They exchanged photographs of each other on horseback, and Reagan sent her an autographed photograph of himself with a prize pig at the Iowa State Fair.)
I had not expected that Nixon would take well to editing, but he did, albeit indirectly. No prima donna, he accepted editorial advice with good grace and turned out, unsurprisingly, to be very sophisticated about the publishing process. He approached book promotion with all the enthusiasm of a born campaigner. He discounted the major reviewers, whom he rightly assumed would write about his books with a liberal bias—“When they don’t like a book,” he wrote to me about the editors of The New York Times Book Review, “they pick a reviewer that shares their prejudices”—and went after the big television news shows, where he could appeal to his public over the heads of the reviewers.
Strangely enough, the postpresidential Nixon was as good on television as the old Nixon had been bad—perhaps because now he had nothing to hide. The role of elder statesman seemed to suit him better than the role of president. White House insiders had always complained of his uninterruptible monologues on foreign policy, but the monologues worked very well for him on the Today show and Larry King Live, where his pronouncements were treated with awe. Television celebrities, being as easily impressed by former presidents as ordinary mortals are, were unlikely to contradict him or ask tough questions. More important, television sold books.
The only problem in publishing Nixon came from Nixon’s supporters. His loyalists, particularly in Orange County, where he was regarded in much the same light as Bonnie Prince Charlie used to be in Scotland, were apt to cruise the local bookstores to check that his books were properly displayed or, God forbid, out of stock, and they did not hesitate to make their complaints directly to the head of Gulf + Western, often attributing any absence of books to liberal bias or to sabotage.
In August 1989 I received an unexpected invitation to dine at the Nixons’ house in Saddle River, New Jersey. (They had long since abandoned Manhattan for the friendlier Republican suburbs.) Nixon’s staff presented me with careful instructions on how to reach the house but seemed a little puzzled that I was driving myself. I could see why the instructions were necessary. Within a mile or so of a New Jersey commercial strip full of minimalls and service stations, the Nixons’ house was tucked away as secretly as Shangri-la: Behind high, dense growths of trees and hedges, it was impossible for any casual intruder to find—rather like any number of culs-de-sac in Bel Air, but without palm trees. The courtyard was a blacktop space big enough for a good-size motel.
The puzzlement of Nixon’s staff became clear as I pulled up