Memories of the Ford Administration is a 1992 novel by John Updike.
Plot introduction
Set in the early nineties, it concerns a historian and teacher, Alfred Clayton, and his response to a national survey requesting personal recollection of the administration of Gerald Ford. The novel is formatted as being Clayton's improbably long response, presented to his professional association, the Historical Association of Southern New England.
Major themes
Clayton idealizes those years and the sexual freedom they represented, and the novel cuts between his memories of the 1970s and scenes from his uncompleted biography of James Buchanan which he was writing at the time. Numerous parallels are drawn between the personalities of Ford and Buchanan, whom Clayton believes to have been largely wrongly blamed for bringing about the American Civil War through his weak leadership, and Clayton questions how correct the general perception of Buchanan's character as related by most historians actually is. Clayton also notes the way that sexual mores had changed, recalling that while in the 1970s it was considered very usual for teachers at junior colleges to engage in sexual liaisons with their female students, by the 1990s this was deemed to be totally unacceptable and even criminal behavior.
