In Defense of Facts

IT is a pity that Edmund Morris’s parents did not acquaint him more thoroughly with the teachings of Samuel Johnson. “Accustom your children constantly to this,” Johnson advised; “if a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end.”

One place it winds up is in books like Dutch. In the controversy over Morris’s book (I hesitate to call it a biography) about Ronald Reagan, I am firmly on the side of the critics. Peggy Noonan got it about right, I believe, when she observed in her review for the Wall Street Journal that Dutch is a “waste—of history’s time, the Reagans’ faith, the writer’s talent.”

About the Author

Roger Kimball

Mr. Kimball is publisher of Encounter Books, and co-editor and publisher of The New Criterion.

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IT is a pity that Edmund Morris’s parents did not acquaint him more thoroughly with the teachings of Samuel Johnson. “Accustom your children constantly to this,” Johnson advised; “if a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end.”

One place it winds up is in books like Dutch. In the controversy over Morris’s book (I hesitate to call it a biography) about Ronald Reagan, I am firmly on the side of the critics. Peggy Noonan got it about right, I believe, when she observed in her review for the Wall Street Journal that Dutch is a “waste—of history’s time, the Reagans’ faith, the writer’s talent.”