"Ah, you publishing scoundrel!" That is what the imperious old woman in Henry James' The Aspern Papers hisses at her ambitious lodger when she finds him snooping through her yellowed letters for his own scholarly endeavors. To the old woman, he revealed himself as the lowest form of life. Her reaction is not unlike that of Nancy Reagan and her husband to the publication last week of Donald Regan's For the Record. Like the woman in the story, the Reagans acted as if betrayed by someone whose loyalty they had depended on, as though they were the innocent victims of a...
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