Eloquence, Command Performance, Alice

Denis Donoghue's Eloquence is a maddening book for me to read. I'm interested in writing, I'm familiar with the description of elusive concepts, and I'm quite well read. I found him extremely esoteric, and he has the habit of discussing short stories by their titles, and not their authors. It was mercifully short. I also read Jane Alexander's Command Performance, and it was well structured and well written, but I found her naive about the workings of politics. Of course President Clinton would not invest in a fight over gay images in art! He has nothing to gain form it, and at the time he was looking at a lot of other troubles. Finally, I read Stacy Cordery's biography of Alice Roosevelt Longworth. What an unhappy life that woman led! Her mother died at her birth, her father was shot (after leaving the White House), she married an older man who turned out to be an alcoholic, she bore another man's child who eventually committed suicide...She certainly was a survivor. The biography is a sprint through a large number of events.