The New York Times has a nice take today along with this gem of a quote from Joan Didion:
The striking lack of contextual analysis in all his books about presidents going back to Richard Nixon has angered some readers and critics, most famously Joan Didion, who in an appraisal of six Woodward volumes (from the 1980s and ’90s) wrote, “These are books in which measurable cerebral activity is virtually absent.”UPDATE: I amend what I said above. This piece is a really good analysis of Woodward's four books on Bush and he is properly acknowledged for the gold he got, though still criticized for what he fails at.
I might be the only one who comments on this post, but it's a good one. Check out Writing Frontier's piece "All the dead president's men" at http://writingfrontier.com/2008/07/12/all-the-dead-presidents-men/
ReplyDeleteEnjoy.
Hi WF, yeah I had forgotten that Woodward was caught not reporting speech fees to the post, but I also seem to recall that he actually hasn't been paid much by the paper for years.
ReplyDeleteBelieve Broder got caught doing it, too, and ended up being embarrassed and apologizing, but not fired.