I recently finished Theodore Rex, which is the second volume of Edmund Morris’s major man-crush of a biography of Teddy Roosevelt. Morris is an odd bird of a writer; he’s exceptionally good at storytelling, and at conjuring up the details that allow you to see, in your mind’s eye, an event or moment from history. He’s also a kind of professional sycophant by proxy. Theodore Rex, and presumably his other presidential biographies (he’s the guy who wrote that strange, semi-fictionalized biography of Ronald Reagan), read as if they’ve been written by the subject’s bemused but basically worshipful aide-de-camp.
Morris loves him some Roosevelt, and can imagine no greater existence than one spent basking in the light of Roosevelt’s manly, virile, "bully" (to use a word that shows up a lot in the book) sun. In a typical passage, for instance, Morris writes of the "male buffoonery" that ensues when Roosevelt follows through on his promise, to the traveling White House press corps, to give them an evening of himself at the end of his summer cross-country train trip.
Roosevelt was sitting in his parlor with the Hoosier State’s quarrelsome senators … when two reporters marched in, waggishly attired in top hats and frock coats. "Mr. President, we desire to present you the keys of our great and beautiful car. The freedom of the Gilsey is yours, sir."
Roosevelt recalled that he had promised to accept the hospitality of the press on the final night of his tour. "My fellow Americans," he cried, his voice choked with fake sobs, "I am deeply affected by this spontaneous welcome, this unparalleled and unprecedented greeting." He allowed himself to be escorted forward. Fairbanks and Beveridge joined the general exodus of White House staff to the Gilsey.
As Roosevelt passed through the Senegal, two grinning black porters snapped to attention, saluting him with brooms. Hideous caricatures of "Teddy" lined the walls. A small group of cordoned-off reporters, pretending to be a welcoming crowd, cheered and clicked Kodaks. Roosevelt shook with laughter. "Well, this is bully!" He proceeded under and arch of spread trousers to his table in the Gilsey, where the menu sent him into further convulsions. It advertised "Haunch of Snow-fed Cinnabar Mountain Lion" and "Puree of Yosemite Mule.
…The subsequent dinner was private, but leaks indicated that the President "talked a string and ate like a farmhand."
It doesn’t take too subtle a psycho-cultural reading of this passage, or the book, to recognize that a lot of what floats Morris’s boat, and the boats of the hundreds of thousands of readers of the popular histories by Morris and his cohort of "Barnes & Noble historians," is a vicarious nostalgia for the days when men were allowed to be boys forever, when they didn’t have to give up their male buffoonery when they got married and had kids. (There’s also, of course, the not-so-subtle nostalgia for the more sinister accoutrements of male privilege — the grinning black porters, the wives and children left at home, the guilt-free hunting of large game animals and despoiling of the environment).
And the thing is, I get it. I miss being a boy too. I had a lot of fun, say, being the captain of the wrestling team in high school. We engaged in all sorts of male buffoonery. I had an awesome time, my junior year of college, living/partying/laughing/drinking in a duplex dorm room with seven of my closest male friends. It was a whole heap of fun. And not racist, misogynistic, or classist fun — just fun. Silly fun with people around whom I felt comfortable and with whom I could be myself and discover who that self was.
Some part of me wishes that I could have that back, that I didn’t have to devote almost all of my "free" time to taking care of my wife and daughter, or at least that I could alternate between the two worlds, or dip into Boyworld when I needed a break from GrownUpLand. In fact, I hope that I will be able, over the years, to bring some of that world back into my life (I could do it now, if I lived in the same place as any of my old friends, but I don’t, so I have to slowly go about the task of building some new old friendships; such is life in our transient culture).
The problem, I think, comes when the nostalgia for boyhood that so suffuses a book like Theodore Rex becomes an evasion of the challenge of extracting from adulthood the more intangible, but I’d like to think more sustaining, rewards that adulthood has to offer. Being a husband can be great. Being a father can be great. Being a citizen can be great. But they’re all, even under the best of circumstances, really hard.
Joking around with the fellas isn’t hard. Its rewards are immediate and well-known. And its anxieties are few. Life is hard.
