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american sphinx the character of thomas jefferson
for a man who insisted that life on the public stage was not what he had in mind thomas jefferson certainly spent a great deal of time in the spotlight and not only during his active political career . after 1809 his longed for retirement was compromised by a steady stream of guests and tourists who made of his estate at monticello a virtual hotel as well as by more than one thousand letters per year most from strangers which he insisted on answering personally . in his twilight years jefferson was already taking on the luster of a national icon which was polished off by his auspicious death on july 4 1896 ; and in the subsequent seventeen decades of his celebrity now verging thanks to virulent revisionists and television documentaries on notoriety has been inflated beyond recognition of the original person . br for the historian joseph j. ellis the experience of writing about jefferson was as if a pathologist just about to begin an autopsy has discovered that the body on the operating table was still breathing . in american sphinx ellis sifts the facts shrewdly from the legends and the rumors treading a path between vilification and hero worship in order to formulate a plausible portrait of the man who still today hover s over the political scene like one of those dirigibles cruising above a crowded football stadium flashing words of inspiration to both teams . for at the grass roots jefferson is no longer liberal or conservative agrarian or industrialist pro or anti slavery privileged or populist . he is all things to all people . his own obliviousness to incompatible convictions within himself which left him deaf to most forms of irony has leaked out into the world at large a world determined to idolize him despite his foibles . br from ellis we learn that jefferson sang incessantly under his breath ; that he delivered only two public speeches in eight years as president while spending ten hours a day at his writing desk ; that sometimes his political sensibilities collided with his domestic agenda as when he ordered an expensive piano from london during a boycott and pledged to keep it in storage . we see him relishing such projects as the nailery at monticello that allowed him to interact with his slaves more palatably as pseudo employer to pseudo employees . we grow convinced that he preferred to meet his lovers in the rarefied region of his mind rather than in the actual bedchamber . we watch him exhibiting both great depth and great shallowness combining massive learning with extraordinary naivete piercing insights with self deception on the grandest scale . we understand why we should neither beatify him nor consign him to the rubbish heap of history though we are by no means required to stop loving him . he is thomas jefferson after all our very own sphinx .
hardcover alfred a. knopf 1997 isbn 0679444904
abridged n isbn 13 9780679444909 number of pages 365 publisher random house inc release date 855014400000