| Excerpt From the
Book:
People
have been telling me why they killed
Richard Nixon ever since 1974. ....
—It
brought our family together again, T.J., just when I thought commercialism had
broken us down into irredeemable fragments. That night was the reemergence of
the magical for us. We all disrobed. I realized with shame that my children had
never seen me naked. We painted one another’s bodies. My son Jack and I had
never shared anything like the moment when I held up Nixon’s hair and Jack ran
the rough flint knife around his head to lift the scalp. We washed the skull out
together, the four of us, our eight hands bumping into each other in the utility
sink. Such a powerful feeling to find Suzy’s hand in the gore. To slip my
fingers between hers, lubricated with the blood of Nixon himself. It saved us,
T.J. Once a week we take down the drum we made of his skull, we build a fire,
and we dance all night together. When I think of how close we were to coming
apart . . .
I suppose it must be something about me. If you keep waking
up married to abusive alcoholics, eventually you have to admit you must be
seeking them out, looking for the incipient drunk in the sweet, smiling face. So
many Nixon stories would not find me did I not need them. And as I have little
interest in the merely violent—I don’t watch sports or American movies—and as no
one seeks me out to tell me why they killed anyone else, I suppose it
must be about Nixon.
Richard M. Nixon, in the words of one journalist who covered
his 1972 campaign for President 'represents that dark, venal and incurably
violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world
has learned to fear and despise.’
|
