Presidents are different from the rest of us. Their high office gives them power and control over policies and people. But the office does not give them control over a golf ball. When presidents pick up a club and swing at a golf ball, their swing determines the flight of the ball. Just as it does the rest of us, golf humanizes and humbles presidents.
First Off the Tee, by Don Van Natta Jr., describes the delight and distress golf has brought to our golfing presidents. Fourteen of the last 17 presidents played or play golf. The three who did not play were one-term presidents, and, contrary to Teddy Roosevelt?s warning that ?golf is fatal,? Van Natta notes that golf is fatal only to the election chances of presidential candidates who do not play.
Some presidents, notably Dwight Eisenhower, have been passionate players. Democrats criticized Republican Eisenhower for playing too much golf, but Van Natta informs us that his successor, Democrat John F. Kennedy, played often as a candidate and as president, secretly, so as to avoid similar criticism. Decades earlier, Democrat Woodrow Wilson played more?every day but Sunday?than any other president.
First Off the Tee is evenhanded politically. It includes Ike and JFK among the ?purists? golfers, Wilson and Ronald Reagan among the ?worst off the tee,? and Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton as ?cheats.? While evenhanded, its rating of the young JFK as the best presidential golfer suggests some nostalgia for the Kennedy Camelot image. Van Natta acknowledges that JFK rarely finished an 18-hole round, instead playing only the middle holes to avoid press attention to his presence on the course. As any golfer knows, a projected low handicap for the full 18 holes based on a partial round is suspect. In contrast, Reagan had a respectable 12 handicap as a young man, but Van Natta includes him among the worst presidential golfers because of his high handicap as an older man who played rarely.
Anecdotes about presidents? golf illustrate all golfers? anxieties and the game?s general allure. The prologue describes the 1995 Bob Hope Classic foursome of Bob Hope, President Clinton, and former Presidents George Bush and Jerry Ford, the first such presidential game. They were joined for the pro-am preclude by the defending Classic champion, Raleigh native Scott Hoch. When the three presidents were together in another setting, Nixon?s funeral, they quietly talked golf. Earlier, when Ford had faced deciding whether to pardon Nixon, Ford also had to decide whether to attend the grand opening of the World Golf Hall of Fame in Pinehurst. Ford did both, pardoning Nixon and then playing Pinehurst No. 2 and driving his first tee shot 270 yards. During Reagan?s presidency, when he was playing at Augusta National, a terrorist took over the pro shop. As the Secret Service whisked Reagan away from the course, Reagan quipped that he preferred ?to play through.?
A New York Times reporter, Van Natta had written critically during the Clinton presidency about Clinton?s claimed low scores and numerous mulligans (?Billigans?). Van Natta?s article apparently angered Clinton, but after the Clinton presidency a friendly golf game was arranged for Van Natta with Clinton and two Clinton moneymen. Van Natta?s first-hand account of the game is insightful. At their introduction before teeing off, Clinton disarmed Van Natta, a high handicapper himself, by offering him as many mulligans as he wanted.
Van Natta offers insights of another sort about the Presidents Bush in a second-hand account of the first golf outing involving a past-president father and a sitting-president son. Their golf caps bore the designations ?41? and ?43.? Van Natta reports that Bush 41 had an 11 handicap in his prime, and now is around a 22. Bush 43 plays at about a 15 handicap. According to Van Natta, Bush 41 plays very fast, Bush 43 ?goes for the green,? and both play by the rules.
First Off the Tee is for any reader interested in presidents? personalities or in the peculiarities of golf. As Van Natta says, ?the only thing the president cannot control is how the game plays?and, thus, reveals him.?
JOHN BLAIR, PUBLISHING HERO
John F. Blair, Publisher, based in Winston-Salem, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, and several books from Blair?s list, both old and new, are worth visiting (or revisiting) to mark the occasion?including a pair of new titles whose authors are touring Eastern North Carolina this month.
A former lawyer with a passion for literature, John F. Blair was 50 years old when he embarked on the publishing venture that bears his name, and his commitment to regional manuscripts?which he feared might get lost in New York publishing circles?continues to inform the press?s mission even today, nearly two decades after his death. With a full-time staff of only eight people (plus four part-timers), Blair now presents an average of 12 to 20 books each year?primarily regional nonfiction such as travel, folklore and history, but also at least one fiction title per year. Books from Blair?s lists have won each of North Carolina?s major literary awards, such as the Mayflower Cup for nonfiction (Ben Dixon MacNeill?s The Hatterasman), the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for fiction (Charles F. Price?s Freedom?s Altar) and the Roanoke-Chowan Award for poetry (Guy Owens? The White Stallion and Other Poems). And the publisher has also helped to bring regional authors national and even international acclaim; for example, after Steven Sherrill?s The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break failed to find a major New York publisher, Blair brought it out in 2000. The book?s subsequent success resulted in its ultimately being picked up for paperback release by Picador, earning an enviable review in the New York Times and gaining great popularity overseas.
Other notable titles published by Blair include the perennial classic Legends of the Outer Banks by Charles Harry Whedbee (still in print after four decades), Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail by Louise Shivers (just published in a 20th-anniversary edition) and My Folks Don?t Want Me to Talk About Slavery, a collection of oral histories by former slaves originally compiled by the WPA Writers? Project. In honor of the 50th anniversary, Blair is publishing Pirates, Ghosts and Legends: The Best of Judge Whedbee and a revised edition of North Carolina?s Historic Restaurants and Their Recipes, edited by Dawn O?Brien.
One of the company?s newest discoveries, B.J. Mountford of Emerald Isle, is touring Eastern North Carolina this month with her second mystery novel, Bloodlines of Shackleford Banks. In the book, National Park Service volunteer Roberta ?Bert? Lenehan, the heroine of Mountford?s first book, Sea-Born Women, returns for a mystery involving the death of another park volunteer and a foal on the southern Outer Banks. Mountford?s reading schedule includes a publication party at Dee Gee?s in Morehead City on Thursday, May 6, and then a series of regional readings/signings: Manteo Booksellers on Saturday, May 8; Kinston?s Book Depot on Wednesday, May 12; the Greenville Barnes & Noble on Thursday, May 13; Borders Books in Cary on Friday, May 14; Branch?s Chapel Hill Bookshop on Saturday, May 15; the Country Bookshop in Southern Pines on Sunday, May 16; Bristol Books in Wilmington on Thursday, May 20; and the Waldenbooks in New Bern?s Twin Rivers Mall on Friday, May 21.
Blair has also recently published Hungry For Home: Stories of Food From Across the Carolinas by Amy Rogers, co-executive editor of Charlotte?s Novello Festival Press and an NPR food essayist. The book gathers both recipes and stories from Southern cooks and Southern writers, the latter including Jerry Bledsoe, Josephine Humphreys, Jill McCorkle and Lee Smith (and with a singer-songwriter or two as well, such as James Taylor and Emmylou Harris). Rogers? tour schedule takes her to the Greenville Barnes & Noble on Thursday, May 6; the Barnes & Noble at the Streets of Southpoint on Friday, May 7; and the Cary Barnes and Noble on Saturday, May 8.
LOCAL INTEREST FROM ALGONQUIN
This month, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill publishes two debut novels of particular local interest.
Sheila Kay Adams has already gained fame as a singer and storyteller?a performer of Appalachian ballads passed down through seven generations of her family. Drawing on both her storytelling talents and her own family history, Kay?s first novel, My Old True Love, hearkens back to the 1800s and to a love triangle with unpleasant consequences: cousins rivaling for the best voice and the best woman; one of them marrying and sent off to the Civil War; the other left behind with the woman he loved and lost; and the revelations of secrets that will affect generations well past the turn of the 20th century. Adams has planned an extensive tour throughout Eastern North Carolina: McIntyre?s Books at Fearrington Village on Sunday, May 23 (followed by a concert to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Child Care Networks); Raleigh?s Quail Ridge Books on Wednesday, May 26; The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines on Tuesday, June 15; Bristol Books in Wilmington on Wednesday, June 16; and Heller Bookery in Southport on Thursday, June 17.
Coincidentally, Algonquin?s second debut novel this month also steps back into the 1800s. John May?s Poe & Fanny explores the love affair between Edgar Allan Poe?at the top of his game in 1845 but beginning a downward personal slide?and Fanny Osgood, a married poet and one of the leading lights of the New York literary scene. Among the characters in this fictionalized treatment of the real-life affair are Horace Greeley, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and James Russell Lowell, and, of course, 1840s New York itself. Also of historical note: the book?s appendix collects poems that Poe and Osgood wrote to and for one another. May?s May reading schedule takes him to the Country Bookshop in Southern Pines on Tuesday, May 11; to McIntyre?s Books in Fearrington Village on Friday, May 15; to Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh on Friday, May 21; and to Market Street Books in Chapel Hill on Thursday, June 3.
ALSO OF NOTE
Several other notable writers?both local authors and others on tour?will be offering area readings from new works this month. Julia Reed, senior editor of Vogue and a widely published essayist, comes to McIntyre?s Books on Wednesday, May 5, with The Queen of the Turtle Derby and Other Southern Phenomena, a collection of her smooth and stylish short works. Madeleine Albright brings her new memoir Madame Secretary to Raleigh?s Quail Ridge Books on Saturday, May 8. That same night, Fred Chappell reads from his new poetry collection, Backsass, at McIntyre?s (and he?ll join John May on Thursday, May 20, at Quail Ridge). On Tuesday, May 11, Carrie Brown discusses her new novel, Confinement, at Quail Ridge, and on Tuesday, May 12, Sarah Shaber also comes to Quail Ridge with her new mystery, The Bug Funeral, the latest in the Simon Shaw series. Brett Lott, one of the Oprah authors, brings his new novel, A Song I Knew By Heart, to Durham?s Regulator Bookshop on Thursday, May 13, and then to Quail Ridge Books the following evening. And fresh on the heels of How To Deal (the movie adapted from her books), novelist Sarah Dessen delivers The Truth About Forever; she?ll be reading from the new book on Saturday, May 15, at Quail Ridge Books, and on Saturday, May 29, at McIntyre?s.
DUKE AND STATE FANS, SKIP AHEAD
Book-length studies have recently been published for a pair of beloved UNC-Chapel Hill landmarks. Well Worth a Shindy: The Architectural and Philosophical History of the Old Well at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill traces the origins of this campus icon back to ancient Greece and Rome, to 18th-century English gardens and to the Temple of Love in the Garden of Versailles. The book features more than 100 pictures as well as guides to many similar structures around the world. Brandes Madry, a visiting scholar in the UNC-CH history department with long-term ties to the university, penned the study, which also features an introduction by William Friday.
Also recently released, A Haven in the Heart of Chapel Hill: Artists Celebrate the Coker Arboretum features text by Arboretum director Daniel Stern and work by 14 photographers and artists. The 32-page book traces the evolution of the arboretum (now a century old) and profiles some of the people involved in its development. Proceeds from the book support the Coker Arboretum Endowment.
ATTENTION, WRITERS: SPRING FORWARD!
The North Carolina Writers? Network Spring Conference promises writers across a variety of genres? fiction, mystery, creative nonfiction and poetry? the opportunity to learn from some of the state?s leading writers on Saturday, May 15, at Peace College in Raleigh.
Award-winning writer Randall Kenan talks about ?Working the Mojo: Making Your Fictional Characters Live and Breathe?; Quinn Dalton explores ways to ?Jumpstart Your Writing Practice?; PEN Award-winner Ruth Moose discusses the ?short short story?; and Sheila Kay Adams, whose debut novel My Old True Love?mentioned above?will speak, appropriately, on turning family history into fiction. (Adams will also perform a lunchtime concert.) Two mystery-related panels rely on the talents of local authors Margaret Maron and Kathy Hogan Trocheck; Faulkner Fox, a creative writing professor at Duke, discusses balancing creativity and truth in creative nonfiction; and the Raleigh News and Observer?s music critic David Menconi offers a lesson in writing profiles. Finally, Sally Buckner, poet and editor of the great NC poetry collection Word and Witness, discusses ?Following the Poem,? and Evie Shockley of Wake Forest University analyzes the political and the personal in poetry.