Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer
Recommended by: Duncan Newcomer
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln
Purchase →This biography wears glasses and Lincoln himself holds a feathered quill. To Kaplan the written word is first and foremost Lincoln’s legacy to democracy. More than a biography, this is a literary saga with the hallmark stories from 1809 to 1865 retold, almost as if for the first time, from the point of view of the books Lincoln read and the words Lincoln wrote.
This is not your standard biography of a President. You will read his lecture on agriculture at the 1859 Wisconsin State Fair as a poem rivaling Walt Whitman. All the drama, detail, and exciting research, pay homage to the President who owed as much to Shakespeare and the Romantic Poets as to the Constitution and politics.
But because Lincoln is Lincoln this book ends up aiming at a special kind of politics. Lincoln’s kind. Lincoln is ultimately concerned with the state of the common good. While Kaplan’s focus is on language Lincoln leads him to political ends.
Kaplan boldly places language before politics with the suggestive irony of his book title: “Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer” His argument is that Lincoln was a writer who became president not a president who became a writer. Hence he can conclude his argument by reversing the famous quip that “Mark Twain was the Lincoln of our literature” to his “Lincoln was the Twain of our politics.”
Words matter and Kaplan shows that was Lincoln’s core belief. They matter as ideas, as feelings, as political power. Careful honest words create the culture necessary for democracy. Lincoln, he says, saw “…language as the instrumental vehicle for civilization and culture.” He asserts that Lincoln was “incapable of separating principle from politics, philosophical values from electoral competition.” It is easy to see why Kaplan’s last chapter would be entitled “The Master of Language and the Presidency.” In Kaplan’s words, “His was a personality and a career forged in the crucible of language.” Lincoln was an extraordinary writer to Kaplan.