Edmund Morris' new biography of Ronald Reagan uses a fictionalized narrator to tell a partly fictional story. Smelling a new genre, and--more importantly--a hot topic, Crimson Arts trailed Morris on a morning of guest appearances, interviewing him all the while. Here's the transcript. (See Review page B-5)

Scene: T. Anthony's Pizzeria and Restaurant on the corner of Babcock and Commomwealth, 9 a.m. on Friday, Oct.8. A large neon sign screams "Espresso" on the window of the shop, vaulting the otherwise unchanged 50s era exterior into the 90s. Edmund Morris has just ordered scrambled eggs and ham, a blueberry muffin and a cappuccino. "I think the cappuccino has all the necessary ingredients of the continuation of life," he'll assert later in the day, and insists on buying me one. The cappuccino is handed to us in paper cups, having shot, fully formed, out of a large brown machine with the push of a finger. If Mr. Morris noticed this lack of sophistication, which, considering the level of observation shown in his book, I'm sure he did, he didn't comment. He's much too polite for that. We sit in a vinyl booth, at a table covered in red Formica, underneath a wall filled with photographs of the BU football team while electric fans hum overhead. Two burly Boston cops sit in the booth behind ours, shouting at the short order cook in a Boston accent worthy of a Jordan's Furniture commercial. Their noise does not drown out the precise, thoughtful speech and South African accent of Mr. Morris, however, and somehow the two tables, worlds apart, settle into an even coexistence. The short order cook begins to sing the theme song of the brady bunch over the strains of Madonna's "Like a Prayer" coming from the juke box, as I ask my first question.

The Harvard Crimson: You've researched two American Presidents--TR and RR. What do you think makes a great president?

Edmund Morris: A great president should embody with out any equivocation the hopes and desires of the American people at the time of his election. I think in the case of Theodore Roosevelt, the new young president (he was the youngest we've ever had, by the way) embodied the intoxicating feeling at the turn of the century that America had at last become a world power. Reagan, at the moment of his accession, embodied a general national desire to put aside all the self-doubt and gloom of the 1970s and recover the optimism and patriotism of the 1950s. So to put it very simply, our presidents should represent the best of us. And when they represent the worst of us--as in the case of Nixon--the American people themselves begin to have a feeling of self-doubt, as was the case in the aftermath of Watergate. You weren't even alive. As your father will tell you, the 70s was a depressing time.

THC: Well, it's interesting because I was a child running around with my mother working at the White House for Reagan when I was little, so I have a very a childlike, but very strong, idea of his physical presence as what a President should be.

EM: Physical presence--yes, exactly. There is a very important phenomenon called the Physicality of Power...The physical--the body--should not be underestimated...when you're trying to explain the mesmerism of something that's past. And it's not necessarily a question of physical beauty either, although Reagan certainly was beautiful--

THC: Yes, my roommates certainly thought so when they saw his earlier pictures!

EM: Thought that he was gorgeous? He was. Theodore Roosevelt, on the other hand, was not gorgeous, he was very ugly. But somehow his physical apparatus was overwhelmingly tactile. When Theodore Roosevelt walked into a room and when Reagan walked into a room, you could see people luxuriating in their physical aura. A lot of Hitler's power had to do with his strange beak, the fat curved back, awkward gestures and that hyptonisingly strange face. Never underestimate the power of the body in politics.

THC: So are you going to vote for Bradley next time?

EM: Well, he's got a big body, but to me he's dull. He's got a dull body, a dull face. But bigness certainly helps--short guys have a very hard time--as we know with Michael Dukakis and Jimmy Carter.

THC: What was your relationship with Reagan like before and after the book?

EM: My relations with him were always the same as anybody, anybody who came into his orbit. Reagan had no interest in individual human character. Therefore it was all one, whether the Biographer walked into the oval office, or a Labor Union leader, or the President of Bangladesh. So I never got past that genial bon ha mie.