Ann Beattie has a quandary--not a problem, exactly, but a moment of pause. She is fascinated by the life of Pat Nixon, the wife of former U.S. President Richard Nixon, but though her inclination as a writer is to give Pat Nixon life in fiction, Beattie must acknowledge that precisely what makes Mrs. Nixon fascinating is that so much of her real substance--the things that made her "Pat Nixon," as opposed to "the First Lady"--took place outside the public view. The more one tries to pin her down in print, the less substantial she becomes. She is a literary soap bubble: mysterious, prismatic, ephemeral, but untouchable.
Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life is one part biography, one part novel, and three parts writer's guide, as Beattie negotiates the tightrope between telling Pat Nixon's story and inventing it. Along the way, Beattie discusses what it means to create fictional characters, and explores the questions writers must ask themselves in order to turn a character from a mere placeholder into a substantial (if literary) person--as well as the ethical dilemma a writer faces in turning a historical figure into a literary character. Ultimately, this is a dance each writer must perform with herself as well as her subject: "Mrs. Nixon," writes Beattie, "is a fictional character only to the extent we all are, having both public and private selves." --Dani Alexis Ryskamp, blogger at Intractable Bibliophilia