A WALK IN THE WOODS
Might actually, and did. Or seemed to, anyway. Like I say, it was only a moment, and it was over in a moment–presumably as soon as the Gipper’s handlers got him back to the hotel room, calmed him down, and made him repeat to them exactly what he’d told Gorbachev. There was never any real danger of a spontaneous breakthrough. There was much too much at stake for that. The whole logic of nuclear diplomacy–the whole history of the nuclear age–militated, as it were, against it.
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And, of course, develop a heap o’ respect and affection for each other in the process. The concept’s distinctly hokey. But Blessing handles it with wit and a love made vivid by his passion for nuclear disarmament and its catch-22s. The character Botvinnik, especially, is a marvelous thing: a charming bullshitter who slowly discloses the horror beneath his charm.
