The president reads experimental fiction

The president feels summer being undercut by winter. There's no proof it's being undercut, it's just a feeling at this point and the president is attentive to feelings.

It's October, the time of year when summer gives way to fall and when fall is soon to give way to winter, when these feelings arise. The president is a man who feels winter more than most people feel winter, winter is that time of year when a man needs a big-burly overcoat to hunker down into, an overcoat to be worn on the walk from The White House to the South Lawn where the helicopter awaits the flight to Florida.

The president is going on vacation. He needs something to read.

He liked reading Samuel Beckett once upon a time, but he's grown tired of Beckett. The poets now bore him, especially the language poets, such frauds. Memoir? Don't even think about it, everyone's writing memoir. Creative non-fiction holds some interest, the president likes the sound of it, creative non-fiction. He says the words over and over--creative non-fiction, creative non-fiction, creative non-fiction. Why hadn't someone on staff thought of that?

Reagan read Zane Grey, maybe I'll try Zane Grey, the president thinks. Zane Grey, a post-modern writer of fiction, particularly those books written in the experimental phase of his career from 1932 to 1940, concluding with Twin Sombreros. Grey wrote most of his fiction posthumously--more than 20 new Zane Grey books were issued after his death in 1939--which the president finds remarkable.