Title: Booknotes 10th Anniversary
Date: April 4, 1999
BRIAN LAMB, host:
"Bright Shining Lie" was kind of like the Reagan book by Edmond
Morris, one of those that was always about to come out. And this was
back in 1988, and I remember reading in the '80s that Neil Sheehan's
near the finish line on this book. I first remember reading about
"Bright Shining Lie" in some kind of newsletter. And I remember
picking it up, and there was some interesting background information
on the book, and saying to myself, `I just know what's gonna happen to
this book. When it comes out, it's gonna be dealt with very quickly;
just the nature of commercial television.' And it just dawned on me,
maybe we could do something that allowed the audience to get a big
picture.
Mr. NEIL SHEEHAN (Author, "A Bright Shining Lie"): (From 1988) As a
reporter, never could escape from Vietnam. I went there first as a
r--as a--it was my first assignment in 1962 as a wire service
reporter. I spent two years there, went--went back to New York, got a
job with The New York Times, was sent back to Vietnam for a third
year, came to Washington in '66 to cover the Pentagon with all the
war--anti-war protests, etc.
And then one day found myself in--in Arlington Cemetery at the funeral
of a friend, John Vann, and realized that I wanted to leave something
behind other than another magazine article and another--or another
newspaper story, and I felt that through him I could write a book that
would really tell the story of the war.
LAMB: And he stayed for two and a half hours, and we had five
30-minute programs. And then on the end at--we stripped him across
Monday through Friday, we had Neil Sheehan come back to the studio and
take calls. And it was pretty interesting stuff.
SUSAN SWAIN (C-SPAN Executive Vice President): It was clear that had
we tapped a hunger for people to have serious discussion about
important books. And that's really where it all began.
(Graphic on screen)
10th Anniversary BOOKNOTES
SWAIN: It took us a few months to get it all organized and to work
out some of the details. It definitely has its own personality, and
we wanted to cement what some of those attributes might be--the
non-fiction books, the one hour, people could only come on one time;
all those things that are special about BOOKNOTES.
LAMB: I have no idea who named it BOOKNOTES. It wasn't me.
SWAIN: I very vividly remember, even though it's been 10 years,
sitting in offices on the afternoon of Friday, the weekend we were
launching, and it still had no name. The name in the end, BOOKNOTES,
is a simple one, but it has worked for us.
LAMB: When I travel and--and meet folks, it's called Book Nook, Book
Shelf, Book Beat, Book-everything but BOOKNOTES.
(Graphic on screen)
10th Anniversary BOOKNOTES
Announcer: C-SPAN's look back at the 10 years of BOOKNOTES will begin
in a moment.
(Announcements)
(Graphic on screen)
BOOKNOTES 10th Anniversary
Vietnam
LAMB: The Vietnam thread in our BOOKNOTES programs reflects probably
people my age and older. It cuts pretty deep with folks my age. Even
people who went to Vietnam, and on the other side, people that went to
Canada. I mean, it's--none of us have really completely figured out
how it all happened.
Mr. ROBERT TIMBERG (Author, "The Nightingale's Song"): (From July
1995) I think what we're edging to is did I--was I wounded over there?
Yes, I was. And--and I came home and I had a have bad years. And I
then said it's time for me to go on with my life, and I did. I mean,
I put Vietnam very much off to the side. I mean, it was--I mean, I--I
think in--in a way, this was--in--in--in this way, at least, I think I
feel particularly close to Senator McCain, who I think said, you know,
`Whatever happened is over. And whatever I'm gonna be, good, bad,
whatever, whatever--you know, whatever destiny has in store for me,
it's gonna--I'm gonna make it happen, what--Vietnam or no Vietnam.'
(Excerpt from November 1998)
LAMB: This is the front page of The New York Times and the famous
General Lon.
Mr. JOHN MORRIS (Author, "Get the Picture: A Personal History of
Photojournalism"): Right.
LAMB: What would you call this?
Mr. MORRIS: Well, you could call it an--an execution.
LAMB: Would you have been responsible for getting that photo on the
front page of The New York Times when it was published?
Mr. MORRIS: Well, I sure w--I sure did my best and it succeeded. It
came in before the early afternoon, the preliminary page-one
conference that day. And I don't usually--I didn't usually take
pictures into that conference. But that day I--I took it in because I
wanted to make sure that everybody would know it was there and that it
would get used.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from September 1988)
LAMB: How many other reporters were there when you got there?
Mr. SHEEHAN: Very small number then.
LAMB: Do you remember any of them?
Mr. SHEEHAN: Oh, sure. Most of them have stayed friends of mine
over the years. There were less than a dozen of us then; Halberstam
for The Times; Malcolm Browne, and--who's now with The New York Times,
as--as a science writer.
LAMB: He was AP then?
Mr. SHEEHAN: He was AP. Peter Arnett.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from January 1994)
LAMB: Did you ever think you were going to die while you were
reporting on the Vietnam War? Was it ever close?
Mr. PETER ARNETT (Author, "Live From The Battlefield"): Put it this
way, I wouldn't have been surprised at any point that death would've
taken me, and--not surprised at all.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from September 1993)
LAMB: There's a picture in your book of three people--you're included
in this picture. The gentleman on the left is David Halberstam. The
gentleman on the right is Neil Sheehan. And the gentleman in the
middle is you. AP, UPI and The New York Times, all in one competitive
group there.
Mr. MALCOLM BROWNE (Author, "Muddy Boots & Red Socks"): That was one
of the rare times when we were actually on the same operation
together. I don't even remember what the operation was. But, of
course, we were all very active competitors, out to cut each other's
throats professionally, although we were good friends off the field.
(End of excerpt)
LAMB: There have been a lot of observers, close observers, in Vietnam
who have written lots of books, and I know in my own case I wanted to
keep asking the questions until I kind of got to the bottom of why did
we get there?
Mr. PETER JENNINGS ("The Century"): (From December 1998) I did two
very early dilettante visits in 1965 and '66, very, very short
dilettante visits, and it didn't take more than that to realize that
the country didn't have a particular sense of what it ultimately
wanted to accomplish in Vietnam.
(Excerpt from May 1997)
LAMB: You did one of the last interviews with John Kennedy
Mr. WALTER CRONKITE ("A Reporter's Life"): Yeah.
LAMB: ...in 1963 about--and one of the things you talked about was
Vietnam.
Mr. CRONKITE: I--I sensed that he was fed up with Vietnam at that
point. He was fed up with the leadership, the civilian leadership in
Vietnam, remarked upon it at some length. And--and it just seemed to
me that--that he was too bright to have wanted to remain in a
circumstance where it meant that we were going to have to take over
that war and run the war in an environment which quite clearly was
going to require a great deal more effort, more dedication of men and
material than would've had ever been planned. And I just feel that he
would've--he would've gotten out.
(End of excerpt)
LAMB: BOOKNOTES number one was on Vietnam, and it just seemed to me
the symmetry of it all that BOOKNOTES number 500 should deal with it,
if possible, and Library America came out with its two-volume set,
"Reporting Vietnam."
(Excerpt from January 1999)
Mr. PETER KANN ("Reporting Vietnam"): I--I think most reporters who
covered Vietnam for any length of time became critics, some more or
some less, but all to some extent became critics of the way the war
was being waged.
Ms. FRANCES FITZGERALD ("Reporting Vietnam"): I--I agree with Peter,
more or less. I think that part of it was generational, too. I mean,
the--the first reporters who went there in the--you know, 1959 and so
on, tended to come from World War II and to have certain assumptions
about what happens or what reporters ought to do when America goes to
war. And those assumptions were really broken by Neil Sheehan and
David Halberstam, Mal Browne and so on.
(End of excerpt)
LAMB: I think the symbolizism--and it--and it may not be fair to the
iss--si--different sides of the issue--but the symbolization and it
wa--was that Peter Kann, a conservative running a conservative
institution, and Frankie Fitzgerald, a liberal writing liberal
thought--and I don't want to overlabel them because they might not
agree with that--found themselves calmly discussing Vietnam all these
years later, having some disagreements, but more often than not
agreed. And I think--I think it surprised everybody.
SWAIN: Vietnam has been a trend throughout the entire 10 years, and
that is because of the generation that this network was born in, that
it--the host of the program and many of its producers come from. The
impact of Vietnam continues to be very much a real thing in this city,
and BOOKNOTES tends to reflect that.
LAMB: I suppose it all came to a head with the two hours right here
with Robert McNamara, that was probably the pinnacle in all this. I
had really never met him when he came here to the studio a couple
years ago. And I don't think he knew what he was getting into. I
mean, he was--it was a fairly hostile atmosphere wherever he went,
because he had been the lightning rod; people have very strong
feelings about him.
(Excerpt from April 1995)
Mr. ROBERT McNAMARA ("In Retrospect: The Tragedy And Lessons Of
Vietnam"): In the book, I relate that--I--I talk about the
protesters, and I had great sympathy for the protesters. My wife and
my children and my friends' wives and children shared many of the--of
the views of the protestors. But in any event, one day, I believe it
was 1965, a man burned himself to death before my--in front of my
window--below my--below my window.
LAMB: Morrison.
Mr. McNAMARA: His name was Morrison. He--as the flames were
consuming him, he had a child in his arms, and passers-by were
observing this and they shouted, they screamed, `Save the child!' He
threw the child out of his arms.
LAMB: 1965?
Mr. McNAMARA: I believe it was 1965. The child is alive today. The
mother of the child, the wife of Morrison, wrote me a note, and I'd
like to read it if I can. It's a beautiful, beautiful letter. He was
a Quaker, by the way, and she obviously is, as well. And she says,
`To heal the wounds of war, we must forgive ourselves and each other,
and we must help the people of Vietnam to rebuild their country. I'm
grateful to Robert McNamara for his courageous and honest re-appraisal
of the Vietnam War, and his involvement in it. I hope his book will
contribute to the healing process.'
(End of excerpt)
LAMB: He came on the show and we did two hours non-stop. And I think
that he was surprised that he had this kind of an opportunity to say
everything he wanted to say. He was quite emotional that day, as he
had been on that tour.
Mr. McNAMARA: (From April 1995) The lines I ha--I can't read them
from here, but I know them well; I know what they say. They say, `We
shall not cease from exploring, and at the end of our exploration, we
will return to where we started and know the place for the first
time.' Now I haven't ceased from exploring, but I'm a little further
along than I was 15 or 30 years ago. And I think I see a little more
clearly, not as clearly as I will a few years hence or before I
die--but I see more clearly today than I saw five, 10, 30 years ago,
events. And to tell you the truth, I didn't really see clearly enough
to be confident in my judgment about the mistakes we've made in
Vietnam until two or three years ago. I saw clearly for a long time,
at least I believed it was a failure.
LAMB: Having this man, who a lot of people blame for the Vietnam War,
have to explain it in front of your eyes was a very interesting
experience. And I suspect--just like the audience watching the
program, they were probably both surprised and angered at different
moments, but in the end, at least he was dealing with this subject
that, for so many years, he had refused to talk about.
(Graphic on screen)
BOOKNOTES 10th Anniversary
Race
LAMB: Well, the Vietnam War is one thread through BOOKNOTES and race
is another, because that's as big a problem as this country has
figuring out what to do about the differences of skin color and
cultures.
(Excerpt from September 1994)
LAMB: I didn't do it, but I--if I had more time, I think I would've
gone through and counted the number of times you used the word
`nigger' in the book.
Mr. HENRY LOUIS GATES Jr. ("Colored People"): Quite a lot.
LAMB: What's the point?
Mr. GATES: Well, I'm quoting people. I'm quoting my father. I'm
quoting my uncles. I'm quoting sometimes my mother, the people I grew
up with. This is a book about black vernacular culture. This is a
book about what black people thought and felt when no white people
were around. I tried to imagine myself as a video camera on the sofa
of our living room, circa 1955, 1960, 1965 and finally 1970. And we
used the word `nigger' all the time; sometimes it's used very
lovingly, sometimes it's used in a mean-spirited way. But it's a
natural part of our--of our culture, of our language.
(End of excerpt)
Mr. JOHN LEO ("Two Steps Ahead Of The Thought Police"): (From August
1994) I have very severe doubts about affirmative action. I think it
has allied itself with the PC movement and created a furtive culture
on campus, where the culture now on campus is not allowed to talk
about affirmative action. To raise any doubts about it, whether
you're black or white or whatever, is to be deemed racist. And that
threat of being called racist keeps--keeps it undiscussed.
(Excerpt from October 1994)
LAMB: What was it like in the classroom?
Ms. MELBA PATTILLO BEALS ("Warriors Don't Cry: The Battle To
Integrate Little Rock's Central High"): Hell, a living hell.
Somebody'd walk past you and drop maybe a lighted piece of notepaper
in your lap. And then somebody'd else come by and pour water on you.
Most of the teachers by th--the--say, second or third week we were in
school were even those who were most rational were by then harassed by
segregationists into ignoring what happened to us.
(End of excerpt)
Ms. BELL HOOKS (Author, "Killing Rage: Ending Racism"): (From
October 1995) You notice in the book that I use the term `white
supremacy.' I prefer that term to racism, because it implies that all
of us, no matter our color, can hold white supremacists' attitudes.
And for people who don't understand that, I try to explain white
supremacists' attitudes can be just a belief all black people are
lazy. I mean, there are a lot of black people out there saying,
`Well, black people are lazy.' So that the--the notions of
inferior-superior thinking around race isn't just something white
people hold. It's something all of us are socialized into white
supremacists' attitudes.
LAMB: This is a program where it's fairly low-key, chance for
different people to tell us their story, again, without confrontation
on--on all sides.
(Excerpt from April 1996)
LAMB: Let me just mention names of people you write about and get a
quick take on them in here. Benjamin Chavis.
Mr. STANLEY CROUCH ("The All-American Skin Game, Or The Decoy Of
Race"): Irresponsible, opportunist, screwball.
LAMB: Louis Farrakhan.
Mr. CROUCH: Well, I mean, he's--well, he's kind of--he's--well, he's
a political and intellectual and spiritual pestilence, but he's
a--he's--see, he's connected to the kind of nutballs that appear
periodically in the United States. I mean, you know, Father Coughlin
or Nathan Bedford Forrest. I mean, you've always had these loons who
appear in--in America, and they--they conflate a--a bizarre brand of
politics, racism, paranoia and real frustration with the complexity
of--of realizing our democratic ideals, and they gather cult
followings.
(End of excerpt)
Mr. SHELBY STEELE (Author, "A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal Of
Black Freedom"): (From November 1998) We now think that it's--`I'm
black and I'm proud, and it was my blackness that did so'--our
blackness did nothing. It was u--it was used by white America at that
time to oppress us. It was used against us and a--against our
humanity, and it was--our humanity was so tenacious, it's w--our--our
story's one of the great human stories in the world that we were able
to withstand that oppression and--and to--to persevere and--and
come--come through to today. And to get to--to this point and now
embrace our race rather than our humanity seems to me to finally have
come to a point where we're almost agreeing with--with those who
oppressed us.
(Excerpt from August 1994)
LAMB: On page 209 of your book, you say that celebrities such as
Harry Belafonte, Dick Gregory, Donald and Shirley Sutherland, Otto
Preminger, Angie Dickinson, Jane Fonda and others contributed to the
Black Panther cause. Why and what was their cause?
Mr. HUGH PEARSON ("The Shadow of the Panther"): Well, the cause was
one of--it was--it was kind of a two-pronged thing. The--the notion
that--of taking up arms against the establishment--again, like I--like
I--I was saying a little bit earlier, this was a very common notion
back in '67, '68, '69 that the establishment was wrong and something
needed to be done about the establishment. You had to overthrow the
establishment. And the Black Panthers were more or less seen as the
vanguard of--among people who decided we needed to take up arms
against--because Huey Newton would say, `Look, pick up the gun. We
have to pick up the gun.' So you had a lot of people, like the people
you just named, whose--who basically had the idea something does need
to be done about the establishment.
(End of excerpt)
Mr. KEITH RICHBURG (Author, "Out of America: A Black Man Confronts
Africa"): (From March 1997) And that I remember my father taking me
in the middle of this riot up to a major intersection--intersection
called Grand River in West Grand Boulevard. And there was a store I
used to go shopping with--with my mother there quite frequently, and
I--I was watching it suddenly--little nine-year-old kid watching this
store burning to the ground. And I remember it--I couldn't understand
what was going on, what's a riot. And I remember--I remember my
father saying to me, you know, `I--I wanted you to see this so you'll
always remember what your people are--are doing to their own
neighborhood.'
Mr. JOHN LEWIS (Author, "Walking With The Wind"): (From May 1998)
I--I--I love books, books are important. I remember when I was
growing up, I couldn't check a book out of the--out of the library
because I was black, and they didn't allow blacks to come into the
public library in Pike County, Alabama, in Troy. And--and we had very
few books that--in our home. So anytime I could get a book, I would
read. I wanted to read the book.
Ms. LANI GUINIER (Author, "The Tyranny Of The Majority"): (From June
1994) You know, I don't dwell on racist experiences, which is not to
say that I haven't had any, but one of the lessons that my mother
taught me when I was a kid is to try to take myself out of my own skin
and out of my own shoes and step into somebody else's shoes and try
and see where they're coming from. And so even when somebody might do
something to me that I thought was really unfair and that may have
been motivated by prejudice or bias, I would often try to see where
they're coming from and then see if there was some way we could sort
of move the conversation or the experience to another plane rather
than to sort of wallow in the sense of victimhood. I just don't like
to see myself as a victim. I see myself, really, as a survivor.
LAMB: It's--it's a very important issue. It took a lot to solve the
problem. Our role in this is to try to get as many different points
of view on that subject as possible and then, again, let the audience
make up its own mind as to what--which way they think we ought to go.
(Graphic on screen)
10th Anniversary BOOKNOTES
(Visuals shown of following books, with footage of authors: "The
Crosswinds of Freedom" by James MacGregor Burns; "In The Name Of God:
The Khomeini Decade"; "And The Walls Came Tumbling Down" by Ralph
David Abernathy; "Whose Broad Stripes And Bright Stars? The Trivial
Pursuit of the Presidency 1988" by Jack W. Germond & Jules Witcover;
"From Beirut To Jerusalem" by Thomas L. Friedman; "The Acting
President" by Bob Schieffer and Gary Paul Gates; "What I Saw At The
Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era" by Peggy Noonan)
(Graphic on screen)
10th Anniversary BOOKNOTES
Announcer: C-SPAN's look back at the 10 years of BOOKNOTES will
continue.
If you'd like to receive a commemorative BOOKNOTES 10th Anniversary
bookmark, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to BOOKNOTES 10th
Anniversary, C-SPAN at 400 North Capitol Street, Northwest, Suite 650,
Washington, DC 20001. The first 1,000 entries will receive the
bookmark. One bookmark per address please.
(Announcements)
(Graphic on screen)
BOOKNOTES 10th Anniversary
Sex
(Excerpt from November 1991)
LAMB: If you had to give a reason for somebody going out and spending
$23 for this book, in a nutshell, in a paragraph, what would it be?
What do they learn in this book that they won't get anywhere else?
Ms. SUZANNE GARMENT (Author, "Scandal: The Culture Of Mistrust In
American Politics"): Well, the chapter on sex is really good, for
starters.
LAMB: I want to ask you about that.
(End of excerpt)
SWAIN: BOOKNOTES, because it's anecdotal and because we're interested
often in the lives of people and how they affect history, you'll find
frequently brings up topics of scandal and sex. The reason for that
is there's a lot of it that goes on and there's a lot of interest in
it.
(Excerpt from November 1991)
Ms. GARMENT: Fannie Fox became a name that was on the `must' list
for every serious student of American politics.
LAMB: Now was there--would that have happened 25 years ago? Let--I
mean, when it happened, was--was there something special about that
time that made that such a visible scandal?
Ms. GARMENT: Well, at that time, the authorities were becoming less
willing to cover these things up when they involved congressmen and
other high officials. In this case, I'm not sure of what they could
have done since there was--since there was a--a newsman right there on
the scene. But, in general, what was happening was that congressmen
who were arrested for solicitation, for instance, used to be--before
that time, were never booked.
(End of excerpt)
Mr. RON CHERNOW (Author, "Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller,
Sr."): (From May 1998) He has this afternoon ritual where he goes out
with a party of people in this large touring car. He always sits
tightly wedged between two buxom women on either side. He has a
blanket that he draws over their laps and up to their necks, and his
hot itchy fingers would stray under the--the blanket.
Mr. EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN (Author, "Dossier: The Secret History of
Armand Hammer"): (From December 1996) Then his wife, Frances Hammer,
his third wife who he's married to, found out about their liaison and
demand--and demanded Hammer do something about it. So rather than
give up his mistress, or rather than to leave his wife, he found hi--a
solution that was typical to the kinds of solutions he found. He had
his mistress totally change her identity, change her hair, change her
appearance, wear a wig, ch--and change her name from Martha Kaufman to
Hilary Gibson. And then he told his wife he fired Martha Kaufman.
And his wife said, `Oh, that's good.' And he said, `And there's a new
woman who's much better, Hilary Gibson,' who looked, by the way, 10
years older because of the white wig.
Mr. FREDERICK KEMPE (Author, "Divorcing The Dictator: America's
Bungled Affair With Noriega"): (From March 1990) The hardest job was
not coming up with the information; it was coming up with the
corroboration. And hours were spent that the reader won't even
notice, trying to make sure that I didn't overstep the bounds when I
write that the man is bisexual. Believe me, I have talked to people
who were intimately involved with Noriega in one way or another, and I
was able to confirm that to my satisfaction.
(Excerpt from July 1993)
LAMB: But--but let me a--ask you about this, so you talk about the
homophobia of--of J. Edgar Hoover, then you kind of refer to the fact
that he and Clyde Tolsen were what?
Mr. DAVID HALBERSTAM (Author, "The Fifties"): Well, there was this
odd thing. They were always together. They were each other's best
friends. I mean, I don't think anything ever happened. I don't
believe these stories, you know, that they have now about Hoover
dressing up in drag. I don't believe it for a minute. I mean, J.
Edgar Hoover's whole life was devoted to getting dirty stuff, gossip
on other people. The last thing in the world he was going to do was
provide gossip for his enemies. I mean, he just wasn't going to do
that.
But there was this odd relationship between him and Tolsen. They were
together at every meal. They went to work together. You know, they
ate alone. Nobody else--you know, nobody else need apply. The two of
them eating lunch and dinner a--almost every day of their life. I
mean, it was an unusual friendship. I mean, I don't think anything
was consummated, but it really did make people talk about them.
(End of excerpt)
Mr. JACK NELSON (Author, "Terror In The Night: The Klan's Campaign
Against The Jews"): (From February 1993) Well, I never once said he
was a homosexual. I never th--I--I can't say I didn't think about it
because, for one thing, I got a--a--a--a letter--an anonymous--an
anonymous letter on FBI stationery saying that he was a homosexual and
that he and his top associate, Clyde Tolsen, were homosexuals. I
never cared whether he was or not. It didn't make any difference to
me. If I'd had to guess, I would have guessed he was asexual, but I
didn't know and I didn't care.
(Excerpt from November 1997)
LAMB: When they got married, there was a letter that you publish
here...
Ms. SUSAN BUTLER (Author, "East To The Dawn: The Life Of Amelia
Earhart"): Yes.
LAMB: ...to her husband-to-be...
Ms. BUTLER: Yes.
LAMB: ...from her. Has that been published before, by the way?
Ms. BUTLER: Yes, it has.
LAMB: And it reads--I'll read just a little bit--`There are
some'--this is--when did she give this letter to him?
Ms. BUTLER: The morning of the wedding.
LAMB: The morning of the wedding.
Ms. BUTLER: The morning of the wedding. Doesn't seem to have phased
him a bit.
LAMB: `Dear G.P., I feel the move just now as foolish as anything I
could do. I know there may be compensations, but have no heart to
look ahead. In our life together, I shall not hold you to any
medieval cold--code--code of faithfulness to me, nor shall I consider
myself bound to you similarly.' What's she saying here?
Ms. BUTLER: She's saying--she's saying that she's not going to be
faithful to him, and that he doesn't have to be faithful to her; that
he has to let her have her freedom.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from April 1993)
LAMB: There is a picture in the book, right here...
Ms. NADINE COHODAS ("Strom Thurmond & The Politics Of Southern
Change"): Yes.
LAMB: ...of Senator Thurmond standing on his head.
Ms. COHODAS: That's right, the famous prenuptial headstand. This is
right before his marriage to his first wife, Jean Crouch, who was, at
that time, 20, 21 years his junior. She had just graduated from
college, and he had seen her, found her attractive, invited her to
work in the governor's mansion. A romance blossomed. They announced
their engagement and--and a lot of titters, etc., but to Scholl, as
the caption in Life magazine said, that he was plenty vigorous and
virile, he stood on his head.
(End of excerpt)
Ms. SALLY QUINN ("The Party: A Guide To Adventurous Entertaining"):
(From December 1997) One night, we went to a cocktail party at Gwen
Kafertz's, the old Washington hostess, and she had a beautiful sloping
lawn and lots of buffet tables, and my mother and I walked over to a
buffet table. Now this is, I hate to say, somewhere in the
neighborhood of over--let's say, over 30, 35 years ago, and we were
standing there getting some shrimp or something together, and all of a
sudden, both of us went `Ah!' and we turned around and looked and
there was Strom standing between us with one hand on my mother's
behind and one hand on mine, and just smiling and beaming and just
feeling so pleased with himself. And, of course, my mother, who's
very Southern, just as the way Strom is, and from Savannah,
Georgia--we're both from Savannah--mother said, `Oh, Strom, you old
devil,' you know. And we just thought it was the cutest thing, and we
told everybody about it, that wicked old Strom Thurmond.
(Excerpt from October 1995)
LAMB: When you were in the--the boss' chair at The Post, you get some
notes once in a while from an anonymous woman at The Post.
Mr. BEN BRADLEE ("A Good Life"): I did get that, yes.
LAMB: What kind of notes were they?
Mr. BRADLEE: They were--they were very ma--they were kind of mash
notes and I didn't--I didn't know who sent them until the person
involved wa--had quit The Post to go be a television anchor in New
York and confessed to me that she had written them and said that
th--that--that she was leaving because she couldn't work out her
emotions about me.
LAMB: Her name?
Mr. BRADLEE: Sally Quinn.
LAMB: What did she say in those notes?
Mr. BRADLEE: Well, I can't remember them now, but it was--it was--it
was...
LAMB: Did you save them?
Mr. BRADLEE: No, I didn't save them. And, in fact, I didn't save
them at the time, so I just--I said--you know, I thought it might be
somebody playing a practical joke. You know, this was the days of
dirty tricks, so I moved on and I'm awfully glad that she confessed to
being the author.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from November 1991)
Mr. MARTIN GILBERT ("Churchill: A Life"): When Churchill was 20 and
a young soldier, he was accused of buggery, and, you know, that's, you
know, a terrible accusation. Well, he ended up prime minister for
just quite a long time.
LAMB: Why was he accused of buggery and what is it?
Mr. GILBERT: You don't know what buggery is?
LAMB: Define it, please.
Mr. GILBERT: Oh, dear. Well, I--I'm sorry. I thought the word
we--buggery is what used to be called a--the--an unnatural act of the
Oscar Wilde type is how it was actually phrased in the euphemism of
the British papers. It's--you don't know what buggery is?
(End of excerpt)
Ms. BLANCHE WIESEN COOK ("Eleanor Roosevelt"): (From April 1993) I
leave it up to the reader as to whether or not she had a full sexual
affair with Lorena Hickock, who, when she met her, was the highest
pra--paid reporter for the Associated Press, but it does seem to me
that the letters which--and there are thousands of letters which they
wrote to each other--reveal a very passionate friendship.
Ms. DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN ("No Ordinary Time: Franklin And Eleanor
Roosevelt"): (From October 1994) I think the person that I'm
interested in for Franklin is not simply Lucy Mercer, who everybody
assumes is the central romantic figure in his life because she had an
affair with him back in 1918, and it almost broke up Eleanor's
marriage. But there's another woman that I think had an even more
central role to play in his life, and that was his secretary, Ms. Ela
Hand. She had started working for him when she was only 20 years old
in 1920. She loved him all the rest of her life. She never married.
And everybody in Washington knew that she was really his other wife.
(Graphic on screen)
BOOKNOTES 10th Anniversary
Sex
SWAIN: And while we don't want to dwell on it, it is and has been an
aspect of human history since time immemorial. And that's one of the
things you have to learn about it. When this city was tying itself in
knots for much of 1998 over the impeachment process, it was great
context to look back and learn that there have been scandals in
presidencies as long as there have been presidents, and that often
there was a sexual component to that. So there's just one example why
it's good context to learn that everything knew was here once before.
Mr. RICHARD NORTON SMITH ("Patriarch"): (From February 1993) Sally
Fairfax has been described as Washington's great love. That may or
may not be true. We don't know. She was a young woman of dazzling
virtuosity who, I think, impressed a young man who was terribly
self-conscious; not only of his lack of formal education, but his lack
of polish.
LAMB: I mean, the book we did on Thomas Jefferson was all--not all
about his mistress here; it was his mistress in Europe.
Mr. WILLARD STERNE RANDALL ("Thomas Jefferson: A Life"): (From
December 1993) In--in looking at Jefferson in love in Paris, I think
we have quite a different slant on the man. It's not only Jefferson
in love, but Jefferson is discovering the importance of women. In
Paris he learned to respect the intellects of the women of the salon
who really ran the French government; not all that well sometimes, as
Marie Antoinette could attest. But Jefferson, I think, opened his
mind in those years and had a wonderful time, I think, with Maria
Cosway, an educated, brilliant painter. And I think it changed him
into a--a much more sophisticated individual.
LAMB: But I think it is instructive to see how much personal
relationships have impacted history, and they're all over the place.
(Excerpt from August 1993)
LAMB: Some point--a couple points you talk about the--the romance
between Stephen Douglas and the woman that married Abraham Lincoln.
Mr. HAROLD HOLZER ("The Lincoln-Douglas Debates"): Mary, right. I'm
not sure if I would call it a romance, but I would--th--that's been
exaggerated by films and novels. They certainly knew each other.
Douglas spent a good deal of his early years in Springfield before he
moved to Chicago. And he was supposedly quite interested in--in this
young Lexington, Kentucky, belle, Mary Todd, who was shipped from
Lexington to Springfield to live with her sister so that she could
catch a--a husband. And he was a pretty attractive candidate for
marriage: successful, booming voice, leading politician. But
she--she cast her eyes on this unlikely fellow who supposedly said to
her, `I'd like to dance with you in the worst way,' prompting her to
say that was exactly the way he danced.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from February 1998)
LAMB: What's the Mary Todd and--is it embranglement?
Mr. DOUGLAS WILSON ("Honor's Voice: The Transformation of Abraham
Lincoln"): Embranglement. The Mary Todd embranglement is simply the
fact that as a result of this situation where Lincoln wanted out of
their relationship and Mary resisted, and Lincoln became
emotionally--began to sink into kind of a despondency. For--and for a
week in January of 1841 he was simply out of it. He was
dysfunctional. Then she presumably released him, according to some of
the testimony, and--but she wanted him back. And Lincoln felt guilty
that he had made her unhappy by breaking up the relationship, and this
situation went on for a long time, almost two years, until all of a
sudden, unbeknownst to most of their friends, they had been seeing
each other and become reconciled. And they announced, to the
amazement of their friends, that they were gonna get married that very
day.
The embranglement is this entanglement that Lincoln got himself into
with Mary Todd and he never really could get himself out of. And so
the solution was to marry her.
(End of excerpt)
Mr. AUGUST HECKSCHER ("Woodrow Wilson: A Biography"): (From January
1992) But these courtship letters to Mrs. Gault show a president so
preoccupied by wooing this beautiful woman that sometimes you wonder
how he had time to carry on the business of the--the nation at all.
(Excerpt from unidentified BOOKNOTES segment)
LAMB: Was he loyal to his wife?
Mr. DAVID McCULLOUGH ("Truman"): He certainly was. Absolutely.
LAMB: No funny stuff.
Mr. McCULLOUGH: Never, never, never.
(End of excerpt)
LAMB: Well, again, a lot of people have a tendency to think this is
the first time this has ever happened, and it's a constant in history.
(Graphic on screen)
BOOKNOTES 10th Anniversary
American Presidents
LAMB: I think there have been 24 presidents represented on BOOKNOTES
since 1989 when we started. American presidents, a definite thread:
wives of presidents, families of presidents, children of presidents.
It's a great way to tell American history.
(Excerpt from April 1994)
Mr. MARK NEELY ("The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and
the Promise of America): My favorite thing was the letter that
Abraham Lincoln wrote to General Sherman, General William T. Sherman,
during the Civil War. Sherman was busy. He was laying--getting ready
to--he had just captured Atlanta and was getting ready to march to the
sea. But it was a presidential election year, 1864. And in those
days, they didn't have absentee voting. And so in many of the states,
the soldiers, who were, many of them, eligible to vote, would be
campaigning in the South and couldn't vote at home. And so Lincoln
wrote a--a letter to General Sherman asking him, since there was a
very tight state election in Indiana, to furlough as many soldiers as
he could to vote in the state election in Indiana.
And he said, `It isn't an order.' Lincoln was commander in chief, but
he didn't order him to do it. But he said, you know, `It's important
to the Army that the Republicans win this election.'
Well, Sherman didn't like politicians and...
LAMB: You said he hated politics.
Mr. NEELY: Yeah, he ha--yeah. Sherman hated politicians and
politics. And he wasn't very cooperative. But it's wonderfully
illuminating about Abraham Lincoln's abilities and character. Here
he--he always took the high road, but he never neglected the low road.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from October 1996)
LAMB: You say in here that Jefferson was demonstrably a racist.
That--those are the exact words.
Mr. CONOR CRUISE O'BRIEN ("The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the
French Revolution, 1785-1800"): (From October 1996) Ab--absolutely
yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. The whole--the whole idea in--in--in
his writings, even when he's condemning slavery, he's also arguing,
`Hey, maybe the--maybe'--he use--he al--he--he--he studs his writings
on the subjects, but maybe--I'm not con--what it all amounts to is
`I'm not convinced that they are fully really human beings.' That's
it.
(End of excerpt)
Mr. ARI HOOGENBOOM ("Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior & President"):
(From April 1994) Hayes traveled more than anybody up to that date.
In fact, they called him Rutherford the Rover.
SWAIN: We specifically look biographies about presidents--How did
they develop their leadership style? What were their
influences?--hoping to understand them and therefore the decisions
that they made that affect so much of us.
Mr. ROBERT CARO ("Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson"):
March 1990) Once when Johnson was still a young assistant he got
pneumonia, which, of course, was very serious back in--in those days.
Mrs. Johnson was back in Texas on a vacation. And Rayburn sat next
to Johnson's bed all night in the hospital in a straight-back wooden
chair. He was so afraid--he was a chain smoker; he smoked all night.
But he was so afraid of making a movement and disturbing him that he
didn't brush--want to get up and brush the ashes away. So when Lyndon
Johnson woke up in the morning, Sam Rayburn was sitting there with his
lapels covered with this cigarette ash. As soon as he saw that Lyndon
Johnson was awake, Johnson recalled, Rayburn leaned over and then
said, `Lyndon, don't worry about anything. If you need anything, call
on me.'
(Excerpt from August 1998)
Mr. ROBERT SOBEL ("Coolidge: An American Enigma"): (From BOOKNOTES,
August 1998) They knocked on the door and Coolidge's father answered
with a lantern in his hand. `What is it?' `President Harding has
died. We have to speak to Calvin Coolidge immediately.' And he called
upstairs, and Coolidge later said, `I knew something was wrong from
the tone of his voice.' He came downstairs, he learned about this. He
went upstairs, got dressed, prayed, went across the street to the
general store, which is now open, and called Washington to find out
what he has to do. And they said, `You have to be sworn in
immediately.' `Well, who can do it?' `A judge.' `There's no judge
here. My father's a notary public. Could he do it?' The answer is,
`Yes, he can.'
So he went back into the house, and by the lantern, father holding the
family Bible, Coolidge is sworn into the presidency at a little after
1:00 in the morning.
LAMB: You say in your book he went back to bed.
Mr. SOBEL: Went back to bed, got up the next morning, dressed,
washed up, got into the car--walked out. And as he walked out he
noticed a--a--a stone was missing from the step and he said to his
father, `You better get that fixed.' Gets into the car, starts driving
off, and he tells him, `Stop.' Stops the car, goes to the family
cemetery and goes to his mother's grave, prays, gets back into the
car, then he's off to the train.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from January 1998)
LAMB: You wrote this, "He laser locks me with eyes so deep and so
blue that looking into them is like falling into a swimming pool." Who
are you talking about?
Mr. ROGER SIMON ("Showtime: The American Political Circus and the
Race for the White House"): (From January 1998) Bill Clinton. If you
go out into the crowds after Bill Clinton speaks, and many reporters
have, you--and interview people, you find the same comment over and
over again, whether you're in Petaluma or Poughkeepsie, and it's, `He
made me feel like I was the only person in the crowd.'
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from October 1997)
LAMB: You also have a picture--we showed one earlier of Bill Moyers,
but he's another one of Bill Moyers standing with Lyndon Johnson.
What do you see in that picture.
Mr. JEFF SHESOL ("Mutual Contempt: LBJ, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud
that Defined a Decade"): Well, the--Johnson is giving Moyers the
treatment in that picture. It was well known in the 1950s, when
Johnson was majority leader, as the `Johnson Treatment' and that he
would use his huge size and his large hands to basically bend people
backwards. He would get into their faces and--and cow them
physically. And you can see him moving in on Moyers like that. It's
a very intimidating thing, and certainly many were intimidated by it
through the '50s and '60s.
Mr. PAUL JOHNSON ("A History of the American People"): (From March
1998) Gerry Ford, incidentally, has one extraordinary gift, which I've
never come across elsewhere to the same degree. He never forgot a
name or a face, and that applied to unimportant people as well as
important people. And that, of course, is why he got so high in the
system.
(Excerpt from October 1995)
LAMB: Who was the most interested in the day-to-day press?
Mr. MARLIN FITZWATER ("Call the Briefing! Bush & Reagan, Sam &
Helen"): Well, President Bush was the most interested. I mean, he
was really a news junkie. I mean, he would read all the papers before
I ever got in in the morning. He'd always--I'd check with him about
7:15 in the morning. He'd say, `Did you see this Times story? Did
you see this Wall Street Journal piece?' I said, `Mr. President, I
haven't seen anything. I've been on the road driving in all morning.'
And he'd been up since 5:30 reading the papers.
At night he had four television sets in his study in the--in the
private quarters of the residence, and often he would invite me up
there and we'd watch all the newscasts simultaneously or
st--st--staggered, if they were. And he would compare the newscasts
by--from each correspondent in each network.
(End of excerpt)
SWAIN: The other thing i--about presidents that--that's a great way
to study American history because it takes history of a certain
period--four years or eight years or, in FDR's case, longer, of
course--where you can see a personal view of all the events that were
happening in the nation. So it's a way to get a real sense of what
America might have been like during the Gilded Age or during the Great
Depression through the decisions and the life of the person who led
it.
Mr. CHRISTOPHER MATTHEWS ("Kennedy and Nixon"): (From May 1996) They
met at a National Press Club reception for returning GIs from World
War II who had been elected to Congress. It was just for veterans who
had all come back from the service about a year before. Billy Sutton,
who was press secretary to--to Jack Kennedy, a freshman from
Massachusetts, introduced him to Richard Nixon, a freshman from
California. And Jack Kennedy said, `You're the guy that beat Jerry
Voorhis, aren't you?' And Nixon said, `Yeah.' And Kennedy said--he
said--and Kennedy said, `That's like beating John McCormack up in
Massachusetts,' because Voorhis was a big New Dealer. He was a
five-termer, very respected, probably the most respected member of the
House. And it'd be like beating Mo Udall, or somebody like that,
somebody everybody liked.
And Kennedy was so impressed that this guy had knocked off the big
guy, and--and Nixon, of course, not very good at small talk, says,
`Well, I guess I feel great.' You know, that's all he could come up
with. But that was their first meeting.
Mr. JAMES HUMES ("Confessions of a White House Ghostwriter"): (From
May 1997) Nixon was--is a--a--a person who was sometimes awkward
in--in social situations, but he was the warmest in a intellectual
situation. He was the warmest of all of them. He--he was an
introvert or an intellectual in an extrovert's profession. So while
you knew you'd see him at a cocktail party, (imitating Nixon) `Well,
you know, the Redskins, they're really gonna kick butt,' I mean, but
he--he was being one of the boys, and he wasn't quite.
(Excerpt from October 1997)
LAMB: You say his brother Thomas died of alcoholism?
Mr. PAUL NAGEL ("John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life"):
His brother Thomas died--John Quincy Adams' brother died.
LAMB: Right.
Mr. NAGEL: And his brother Charles died.
LAMB: Of alcohol?
Mr. NAGEL: Mm-hmm. It com--it came to--it's a--in--it's a--the
family is probably pretty good evidence that a weakness for alcohol
can be genetically transmitted.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from September 1997)
LAMB: How much drinking did he do in his life?
Mr. GEOFFREY PERRET ("Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier & President): Not
a lot. He--I mean, it's ironic. The most famous drunk in American
history was not a heavy drinker. The trouble with Grant was that he
could get drunk on two drinks. And not only that, he would start
walking into the furniture and ne--need the wall for support. Well,
it was always obvious that--that Grant had been drinking. Some people
we know could--could drink a bottle and you would never guess, but he
was the other way around.
And the--there was really only one reason why Grant drank, and that
was he--he was deeply and passionately in love with his wife. Grant's
marriage was not a limited partnership; it was a romance from
beginning to end. And when he was away from Julia for very long, he
felt desperately lonely. He missed her tremendously and he would
start drinking.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from March 1996)
LAMB: The longest inaugural?
Mr. WAYNE FIELDS ("Union of Words: A History of Presidential
Eloquence"): Harrison. The first Harrison spoke, I think it
was--must have run about an hour and a half.
LAMB: William Henry.
Mr. FIELDS: Yep. And it was an important speech because it's almost
longer than his presidency. He died within the month. So
the--and--and there are lots of people that think he died because he
was outside too long giving that speech.
LAMB: The shortest?
Mr. FIELDS: The shortest is probably the--the last FDR that--with
the third and fourth inaugurations, Franklin Roosevelt shortened his
speeches considerably. And the fourth he's in bad health, and so
it's--it's a different kind of occasion.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from February 1999)
LAMB: Who was the first president that lied to us about his health?
Mr. RICHARD SHENKMAN ("Presidential Ambition"): Yeah, you opened a
can of worms with this one. This is a big one. You've got Arthur
lying about having Bright's disease, this fatal kidney disorder.
The very next president, Grover Cleveland, he comes down with cancer,
has a secret cancer operation while he's president, doesn't even tell
the Cabinet or his vice president about it. There's a conspiracy of
silence about this. He only lets a very few people know about it
because there are all kinds of repercussions if this word gets out
that he's gonna be operated on for cancer. So what happens? He keeps
it quiet, the press finds out about it, he lies. And then they drop
it. They're not used to a president lying yet, and so they're willing
to kind of give him the benefit of the doubt.
Woodrow Wilson, running for office, pretends to be in perfect health.
It turns out that he had had two strokes as a young historian and a
president of of Princeton. Two strokes; one kept him for several
months with one side of his body partly paralyzed.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from April 1994)
LAMB: How many presidents have been fly-fishing?
Mr. HOWELL RAINES ("Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis"): Well,
several. Hoover was a devoted fly fisherman. And Cal Coolidge fished
with a fly rod, but with worms most of the time, and that irritated
Hoover. He used to tease his fellow Republican about that. President
Eisenhower like to fly fish. President Bush is a--is an ardent
fisherman, but a novice--a self-described novice, as he says in my
book, at fly-fishing. President Carter was the best fly fisherman
ever to occupy the White House.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from October 1998)
LAMB: You say that Ronald Reagan used the word freedom more than
anybody, either before or after him.
Mr. ERIC FONER ("The Story of American Freedom"): Any president.
Well, see, this is the kind of research you can do nowadays. I
wouldn't call it high-level research. All the papers of all the
presidents are on CD-ROM, and you can literally search for the word
freedom or liberty. And if you do so, you will discover that Ronald
Reagan used those words more than any other president. Now that
doesn't prove a lot in and of itself, but it does emphasize this--his
very concerted effort to reshape the notion of liberty in his own
image, just as FDR did.
(End of excerpt)
LAMB: It just connects on--in the real world, because so often what
happens on a network like this is you're--you're talking off in
wonkland. And this brings it back down to these are people and making
the c--I've always said making the connections in life and--is what
this network does, as--as well as anything we do. And I think that
the public who watches what a town like this does, is doing the same
thing. They're s--a little bit suspicious. There's a lot of power
here, a lot of money here. And the more often we can--can make these
little connections, the--the--I think, the more useful programs like
this can become.
(Graphic on screen)
BOOKNOTES 10th Anniversary
American Presidents
(Excerpts from interviews with former presidents and President
Clinton)
Former President RICHARD NIXON ("Seize the Moment: America's
Challenge in a One-Superpower World"): I had the privilege of knowing
Churchill we--we--when he was past his prime. But be--past his prime,
he was ahead of almost any other leader you could possibly know.
Former President JIMMY CARTER ("Always a Reckoning and Other Poems"):
Except for my own father, Hyman Rickover had more influence over me
than any other man I've ever known.
LAMB: If you could sit in that Oval Office with any other American
president that you've never met...
Former President GEORGE BUSH ("A World Transformed"): Abraham
Lincoln.
LAMB: Why?
Mr. BUSH: Just because of such a--such a huge presence for
preserving the Union, and in the process eliminating slavery.
LAMB: You said that you could've been a writer. In your lifetime,
your favorite writers?
President BILL CLINTON ("Between Hope and History: Meeting America's
Changes for the 21st Century"): Well, when I was a young man I loved
Thomas Wolfe and Wil--William Faulkner, the great Southern writers.
(End of excerpt)
(Graphic on screen)
10th Anniversary
BOOKNOTES
Announcer: C-SPAN's look back at the 10 years of BOOKNOTES will
continue.
If you'd like a commemorative BOOKNOTES 10th Anniversary bookmark,
send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Booknotes, 10th
Anniversary, C-SPAN, at 400 North Capitol Street, Northwest, Suite
650, Washington, DC 20001. The first 1,000 entries will receive the
bookmark; one bookmark per address, please.
(Announcements)
(Graphic on screen)
BOOKNOTES 10th Anniversary
The Dedication
LAMB: Question they're least likely to expect is the question about
who is person that the book is dedicated to. Often the dedication is
written in initials. `This is dedi'--you know, `This is to A.B. from
C.C. to G.G.' And it's--it's an insider thing.
(Excerpt from December 1989)
Can you tell us who these people are?
(Graphic on screen)
For J.B.R. and S.F.R.
Mr. JAMES RESTON Jr. ("The Lone Star"): (From December 1989) That's
my mother and father.
LAMB: Why'd you use initials?
Mr. RESTON: Well, until you asked it was sort an attempt to--of the
author to--for it to be a rather private moment. For some reason that
just aesthetically felt better than--than to say `for my mother and
father.'
LAMB: And you've never done that before?
Mr. RESTON: Never have. I've been waiting for the right book, and I
think this is the right book.
LAMB: And the names J.B.R. stands for?
Mr. RESTON: My father.
LAMB: James...
Mr. RESTON: Barrett Reston.
LAMB: Reston. And S.F.R.?
Mr. RESTON: Sarah Fulton Reston.
(End of excerpt)
LAMB: They think that no one's going to pay any attention or care,
and when you ask the question, some of the reasons for the dedication
are things that you never forget.
(Excerpt from February 1992)
LAMB: Up front you have a dedication in the book here to your sister.
I assume, because of the dates, you lost your sister back in 1984.
How?
(Graphic on screen)
To my sister
Nancy LaFon Gore Hunger
January 23, 1938 - July 11, 1984
Vice President AL GORE ("Earth in the Balance"): She died of lung
cancer. And she was the very first volunteer for the Peace Corps.
LAMB: First ever?
Vice Pres. GORE: First ever. When I first ran for public office,
she told her husband she was gonna have to take a few months away
from--from him, and came and took the toughest counties that I had in
that district and--and just worked full-time and really made the
difference.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from May 1994)
LAMB: Who's Moira?
Mr. STEPHEN AMBROSE ("D-Day: June 6, 1944"): That's my wife.
LAMB: How much does she have to do with these books?
Mr. AMBROSE: Indispensable. At the end of every day, I--I want to
hear how it came out. And--and one of the things that drives me as a
writer is curiosity. And I never can know what really happened until
I sit down and have to write it up. After I spend eight, 10 hours at
the typewriter, I'm dying to hear what I wrote. But I don't want to
just read it. I want to read it aloud and get a reaction and
response. So at the end of every day she sits down with me and--and
if I've done 10 pages that day or 15, she listens and then she jumps
me. She's always accusing me of triumphalism and making me cut back
on that. I like to fly the flag high, and Moira wants to be a little
more critical than that.
(End of excerpt)
Mr. RICHARD HOLBROOKE ("To End a War"): (From June 1998) The book is
dedicated, as it says on that page, to three cherished colleagues who
did not reach Dayton: Joe Kruzel, upper right; Bob Frasier, upper
left; and Nelson Drew at the bottom. Bob Frasier was my deputy. Joe
Kruzel was a senior assis--deputy assistant secretary at the Pentagon.
And Colonel Drew was at the White House. They died in an armored
personnel carrier that was directly behind my vehicle as we tried to
get into Sarajevo the first time.
LAMB: I will never forget Stanley Weintraub telling me that the
book--I mean, I asked him if it was dedicated to his father.
(Excerpt from February 1994)
Mr. STANLEY WEINTRAUB ("Disraeli: A Biography"): What I remember
most about my father was that he was a tremendous reader, although he
had very little education.
(Graphic on screen)
In memory of my father, Benjamin Weintraub, and my father-in-law,
Benjamin Horwitz, who each shared a name with Disraeli
Mr. WEINTRAUB: I think he didn't have education--formal education
beyond the fourth grade. But when he died in his sleep, he was found
reading Shakespeare's "Othello."
(End of excerpt)
LAMB: There is an amazing amount of thought that goes into who that
book's going to be dedicated to.
(Excerpt from July 1998)
LAMB: You dedicate your book to your husband...
Ms. F. CAROLYN GRAGLIA ("Domestic Tranquility: A Brief Against
Feminism"): Yes.
LAMB: ...who you call the foundation of it all.
Ms. GRAGLIA: Right.
LAMB: Why?
Ms. GRAGLIA: Because he--he is the foundation of it. If it hadn't
been for him, I never would have had any of these feelings.
(Graphic on screen)
This book is dedicated to my husband, Lino, the foundation of it.
Copyright (C) 1998 by F. Carolyn Graglia
Ms. GRAGLIA: It--it--it was because of this tremendously satisfying
marital relationship that I ever was able, I think, to feel secure
enough not to need the security of a job.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from November 1995)
LAMB: You have a dedication here, `To Catherine, with love.' Who's
Catherine?
Mr. CHARLES KURALT ("Charles Kuralt's America"): Catherine is a
little bit of a mystery; some friends thinking that she must be a
secret lover have sidled up to me and asked me that question. `Hey,
who's Catherine?' Catherine is my well-loved sister, who--who, with
her family, lives on Bainbridge Island out in Washington. And she and
I became very close during this year because we mainly, along with my
brother Wallace, were responsible for taking care of our dying father.
(End of excerpt)
Mr. TIMOTHY PENNY ("Common Cents"): (From April 1995) In terms of
politics, my mother is my inspiration. She--she was John Kennedy
Democrat back in 1960. I was all of nine years old at the time. I
helped with dishes after supper every night and I got my political
doct--indoctrination right there at the kitchen sink.
(Excerpt from October 1992)
Mr. GEORGE WILL ("Restoration"): They're exceptional people that
have had--they've both been here longer than term limits would allow
them to stay on most recipes.
(Graphic on screen)
To
Pat and Liz Moynihan and Jack and Sally Danforth
Were more of the people who came to Washington like
these four, this book would not have been written.
Mr. WILL: Most term limits would be two terms for the Senate. They
bring a seriousness and a gravity to public life that rises well above
careerism.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from October 1991)
LAMB: For Len, Sara, Paul, and Annie.
Ms. SUZANNE GARMENT ("Scandal"): Annie Garment is age nine and has
her father's temperament, and had just wrote an autobiography in which
she said she wanted to be the first female chief justice of the
Supreme Court, but if she could really be anything she wanted, she'd
be her dog, Lola. So Annie's got her priorities straight.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from March 1993)
LAMB: You dedicate this book `To the Hamden under-fifteen Boys'
Soccer Team from their Coach.' What was behind that?
Mr. PAUL KENNEDY ("Preparing for the 21st Century"): Well, I said
first of all it's probably the only sort of international work of
scholarship which got dedicated to a boys' soccer team.
Secondly, in writing this book, which is a very complex one, I felt a
need for therapy. And I have to say that getting away from my writing
and getting away from teaching at Yale and going and working with
these young men--I've been coaching them since they were 10 years old
now--is a--just a wonderful relief. You come back relaxed and you get
on with thinking through your books.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from November 1997)
LAMB: You dedicate this book to William Fletcher Hightower.
Mr. JIM HIGHTOWER ("There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos"): That's my daddy, known as High.
So if you want to know where I get these little witticisms and kind of
crazy things, start with the fact that my daddy was named High.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from September 1998)
LAMB: Why do you dedicate this book "To the memory of G.M."? Why
didn't you use the fellow's name?
Mr. SIMON WINCHESTER ("The Professor and the Madman"): Well, in a
way--I--I don't want to be impertinent to you. I--I will confess as
to who it is. I--I like that to be a little secret that people--they
only find it out at the end of the book. And, in fact, it's my little
test for finding out if people have read it, because th--people have
come to me and said, `Loved your book, Simon, but tell me who is
G.M.?' And then I--I know that they actually haven't read it.
(End of excerpt)
(Graphic on screen)
BOOKNOTES 10th Anniversary
The Writing Process
(Excerpt from August 1996)
Ms. ELEANOR CLIFT ("War Without Bloodshed"): If there was one lesson
that I think both of us learned is that writing a book and--and
getting it through to conclusion takes a lot longer than you--than you
ever imagined. It's--it's--I--it's sort of like getting a bill
through Congress.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from October 1995)
Mr. EVAN THOMAS ("The Very Best Men--Four Who Dared"): For me, it's
joy. I get a writer's high. I find it euphoric. The hardest thing
is waiting for the reviews. That's what's hard about it. The doing
of it, for me, is sheer pleasure.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from June 1998)
LAMB: What's the hardest part of writing this book?
Mr. RICHARD HOLBROOKE ("To End a War"): My wife saying, `Get it over
with so we can get on with the rest of our lives.'
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from January 1999)
LAMB: And what did you think of this process of writing your first
book?
Ms. VIRGINIA POSTREL ("The Future and Its Enemies"): It was the most
difficult thing I've done and the most fun thing I've done.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from June 1997)
LAMB: Beyond the money, why do you do it?
Mr. TOM CLANCY ("Into the Storm"): I think it's like the clerk of
Oxford, gladly would he learn and gladly catch, you know,
it's--it's--Brian, it's what I do, it's my job.
(End of excerpt)
LAMB: I find that any time people go into the details about where
they write and how they write and when they write, everybody stops and
listens.
(Excerpt from July 1994)
Mr. SHELBY FOOTE ("Stars In Their Courses"): I write with a dip pin,
which causes all kind of problems, everything from finding blotters to
pen points, but it makes me take my time and it gives me a real
feeling of satisfaction that I'm getting where I'm going.
LAMB: What's a dip pin?
Mr. FOOTE: You have to dip it in the ink and write three or four
words and dip it again. And it--it has a real influence on the way I
write, so different not only from a typewriter but from using a pencil
or a fountain pen.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from October 1996)
LAMB: Is writing hard or easy for you?
Ms. NELL IRVIN PAINTER ("Sojourner Truth"): Writing is easy,
actually, but I write about 100 drafts.
LAMB: A hundred drafts of...
Ms. PAINTER: Of everything.
LAMB: ...of everything.
Ms. PAINTER: Yeah.
LAMB: A hundred?
Ms. PAINTER: Well, OK, 98. But in the old days, I--let me explain
this. In the old days when I used to write on a typewriter, I would
start my--my drafts on that yellow paper. Remember yellow paper? So
I--you know, I'd just open my mind and just keep going. I would never
know exactly what I was going to say until my fingers were on the
keyboard. And I'd just type, and a lot of it would be junk. So I'd
retype it. And then I'd put in more and it would get better, and
it--so I--these were called zero-minus drafts, and they were on the
yellow paper. And then I would cut them up and cut and paste and I'd
have these cut-and-paste yellow s--p--sheets, and then finally, it
would begin to look like it should. And then I'd start typing on
white paper and then I'd have white paper with yellow parts on it. By
the time it got to all white paper, that was the first draft.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from October 1996)
LAMB: So how do you go about it?
Mr. ANDREW FERGUSON ("Fools' Names, Fools' Faces"): Well, you
just--you just make coffee--you make a lot of coffee and you sit down
in front of the screen and you just sort of type out a word and then
you go and talk on the telephone and you go get some more coffee, then
you come back and you make yourself type out another sentence. And
you go--if you're at home, you rearrange your ties or, you know, you
clean off your dresser and then you go back and do it again. Then you
make another phone call, and essentially, pretty soon, your editor's
on the phone saying, `Where are--is my copy? I need your column.' So
then you sit down and you just do it. It's very unpleasant.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from May 1995)
LAMB: How did you go about writing the book?
Mr. PETER BRIMELOW ("Alien Nation"): Well, I just sat in front of
the word processor until blood came out of my ears.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from previous program)
LAMB: If we could see you in your environment, writing this book,
what would we see?
Mr. FORREST McDONALD ("The American Presidency"): You'd see me
writing in the nude most of the time.
LAMB: In the nude?
Mr. McDONALD: Yeah. Well, we live in total isolation out in the
country. They don't even read the electric meter because the electric
man can't find it. We have to read our own meter. And we've got
wonderful isolation and, you know, it's warm most of the year in
Alabama. And why wear clothes? I mean, they're just a bother. You'd
see me sitting on the--on the porch--we--we have a house that's mainly
glass and otherwise screen--and sitting out on the porch with a--with
a big 8 1/2-by-14 yellow tablet and writing. I write it out by hand.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from October 1993)
LAMB: Is this the--what--what you look like when you're writing, a
cigarette in hand and a...
Mr. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS ("For the Sake of Argument"): Yeah. Yeah,
I sometimes write in bars, too, in the afternoons.
LAMB: In bars?
Mr. HITCHENS: Yeah, I'll go out and find a corner of the bar, quite
like--if the noise isn't directed at me--in other words, if there's
not a phone ringing or a baby crying or something--I quite like it if
the jukebox is on and people are shouting the odds about a sports
game, and I'm just hunched over a bottle in the corner. And I write
in longhand, anyway, so I can do it anywhere.
(End of excerpt)
LAMB: And it may be a bit romantic to hear what it's like to be a
writer and to understand that--how they do their craft. I--I have
more respect for writers--good writers and authors than just about
anybody that I come in contact with. And it's because they really
know something. They spend a lot of time. It's hard. They do it
alone. Th--they have to have a lot of personal commitment, and it
takes years. And the only thing you hope is that people will
appreciate all that went into their writing.
(Excerpt from June 1996)
LAMB: All right, if we were able to hang around Ted Sorensen, just
watch you go about writing, what--what would we see?
Mr. THEODORE SORENSEN ("Why I Am A Democrat"): Well, you'd see me,
first of all, using a pen and pad. And I'm sorry to say I have not
yet mastered the computer. As I write, I edit and I circle and I
cross out and it becomes impossible for anyone to read, other
than--than myself. You would see me, at times, get up and go and get
the dictionary or even the thesaurus in order to get exactly the right
word. It's a very inefficient use of my time. But I feel very
strongly about the English language, which I think is a beautiful,
expressive language, and having exactly the right word is important to
me.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from May 1994)
Mr. CAL THOMAS ("The Things That Matter Most"): People ask me
sometimes about the process of writing, particularly writing a column.
I discussed this once with the actor and entertainer, Steve Allen, who
has so many gifts, and I said, `You know, does it--does it ever amuse
you that people compliment you for your gift, as if you'd lined up
when they were being passed out and took one from here and one from
there?' And it did, and it does me as well. I don't know how I do it.
I don't know how ideas come to me. They just do. It's just a gift.
(End of excerpt)
(Graphic on screen)
Behind the Scenes
BRETT BETSILL (BOOKNOTES Director): We're standing in C-SPAN's Studio
A, which, for the first eight and a half years of the BOOKNOTES
history, was really C-SPAN's only studio and the only place we had to
produce the BOOKNOTES program. And from a technical standpoint, the
BOOKNOTES program is very simplistic. It take--it takes a director,
an audio person, and it used to take two camera operators standing
behind each camera that we had. And we had a third camera, also, for
a wide shot for the closing of the program. But it's still pretty
simplistic, no real set, except for two chairs, a coffee table and a
black curtain at the background. So we keep it simple, keep the focus
on the conversation.
And about two years ago, we s--had a second studio built, what--what
we call Studio B. This being Studio A, naturally, Studio B was next,
and that's just across the hall here. Now Studio B we--we built for
redundant purposes, just in case we had more productions going on, and
we also decided to make it the primary studio for BOOKNOTES
productions. And one of the biggest advantages for the production
over here is the addition of robotic cameras. It pretty much
eliminated the need for a person to actually stand behind the camera
and to operate the camera and just enhanced the feeling for the guest
and the host that it just be a conversation between two people without
the--the technology getting in the way of the production. The cameras
are operated from the control room by one person--all three cameras
are operated by one person, and with no other human beings in the--in
the studio, it just makes it even more simple as far as the actual
feeling that--that goes on with the interview.
ROBIN SCULLIN (BOOKNOTES Producer): We'll go down this hallway and,
as you may have known, this is a 57-minute interview.
Unidentified Woman: Yes.
SCULLIN: The author comes to C-SPAN and we meet them and just bring
them back into what we call the greenroom. I find it's very important
to tell them this is an hourlong conversation. There are no stops or
starts. There are no second chances, but there are no interruptions,
either. So I think those subtle pros and cons, if you will, are
important to tell. Even the most experienced interviewee needs to--to
be reminded of--of, you know, `This--this is the way we work here.'
And I also tell them that--the basics, as viewers would know who watch
BOOKNOTES, that Brian, the host, holds up the book in the beginning
and holds up the book at the end just so that viewers can see the
cover. Oftentimes, he'll hold up the book and show pictures.
Sometimes we prepare what's called a still store of a picture in
advance, or a series of pictures, if there are a lot of pictures in
the book, because the pictures often bring the book to life.
(Excerpt from BOOKNOTES taping)
BETSILL: Three, two, one. Their mike's in, cue.
LAMB: Lady Soames, when you think back on your parents, Winston and
Clementine Churchill, what comes to mind? What do you think of when
you think of your mom and dad?
Lady MARY SOAMES ("Winston & Clementine"): Two marvelous, very loving
and very lovable people.
(End of excerpt)
SCULLIN: The control room for BOOKNOTES is two-tiered. The director
is sort of the heartbeat in the first row. Behind the director and in
that series of people is the producer and the associate producer. And
then I sit right to the left of the associate producer, watching the
program, taking careful notes if there's anything, as I mentioned
before, to follow along as to whether we're gonna go to any photos.
(Excerpt from taping)
Lady SOAMES: Really, I think that one of their--one of their late
marriage anniversaries, I think that was taken in the '60s.
LAMB: And that's it for "Winston & Clementine: The Personal Letters
of the Churchills." Our guest has been Lady Mary Soames. We thank you
very much.
(End of excerpt)
BETSILL: And--and clip their mikes, Bob.
SCULLIN: Well, that was the fastest hour we've had here in a long
time.
Lady SOAMES: It's what?
SCULLIN: The fastest hour we've had here in a long time.
Lady SOAMES: Really? Was it all right?
SCULLIN: Yes. All of a sudden, it was two minutes left.
Lady SOAMES: Oh, right. Really?
LAMB: We were out of time.
SCULLIN: Really. It just brought the--all the letters to life.
Lady SOAMES: It was so nice talking. He--he really got me going.
LAMB: Where...
SCULLIN: If you want a second hour, if you want to know more, if
you're frustrated that the time has run out, that that's a real sign
that the--the BOOKNOTES and the author have--have opened up to you.
Lady SOAMES: Thank you so much.
LAMB: Well, it's really a pleasure having you with us. Thank you.
SCULLIN: Like C-SPAN, BOOKNOTES has its own mission of sorts, and
it's a very simple mission. The books that are considered and that
are on BOOKNOTES are non-fiction. They are hardcover, and many of our
authors write a lot of books. David Halberstam comes to mind. He has
written, oh, probably 15 to 20 books. But no matter how big a
historian you are or how many books you write, you can only be on
BOOKNOTES once. It's a one-shot deal. And I think that was done at
the beginning of the program just in a s--in--in a sense of fairness.
LAMB: There's no answer to how we choose the books. There's really
no answer. It's--we don't do some of the biggest of the big for the
reason that they're everywhere. We do some of the smallest of the
small, meaning "small" publishers and fairly obscure books that you've
never heard of, because they have a story to tell that might fit in
with the overall mission of the network.
SCULLIN: The other part of the selection process that's very
important and involves a little extra outreach is to the University
Press market, to try and get a sense of what a professor's writing
about and what history is out there that's not being done by the "big"
publishers, that doesn't have a big display in Barnes & Noble or at an
independent bookstore, what books are sort of quieter books, written
by professors that still are little gems.
(Music plays and montage of books and authors shown)
Announcer: C-SPAN's look back at the 10 years of BOOKNOTES will
continue.
"Booknotes Life Stories" is a new book based on 10 years of C-SPAN's
BOOKNOTES programs. It contains a collection of essays about the
individuals who influenced American policy and culture. Inside the
book, stories of American patriots by writers from the 1700s, such as
"John Adams" by Joseph Ellis, "Henry Clay" by Robert Remini, and
"Sojourner Truth" by Nell Irvin Painter; from the 1800s, "Ulysses S.
Grant" by Geoffrey Perret, "W.E.B. Du Bois" by David Levering Lewis,
and "Marcel Proust" by Shelby Foote; and in the 1900s, "Whittaker
Chambers" by Sam Tanenhaus, "Katharine Graham" by Katharine Graham,
and "Lee Harvey Oswald" by Norman Mailer. "Booknotes Life Stories" is
now available in your local bookstore. All proceeds go to the C-SPAN
Education Foundation.
(Graphic on screen)
Those Difficult Issues
SWAIN: People who watch BOOKNOTES probably see that authors reveal a
lot, sometimes surprising themselves in the course of the interview.
And if you ponder a bit about what--what the chemistry is that makes
that happen, some of it is owing to the darkened intimacy of the
BOOKNOTES set and an hour conversation. We do everything we can to
make it feel as little like a television production as we possibly
can. It is a one-on-one extremely intimate conversation in--in the
dynamics between the host and the author, and television just happens
to capture that.
(Excerpt from March 1997)
LAMB: You write about both Grace's and yours--your depression through
your life. Ex--how bad was it and when did you have it?
Mr. LEONARD GARMENT ("Crazy Rhythm"): Well, it was a--it was in--in
Grace's case, it ul--ultimately turned out--turned out to be a killer.
I knew from a long walk and talk we had Christmas--Thanksgiving night
that she sort of made clear that she--she said that she was not going
back to any hospital. You--the--what the sequence of possibilities
after that were kinda closed away from my thought, and--and she began
to--with the bad weather and the c--and then the same, you know,
family is always--is one of the sad things, it's sort of--sort
of--it's--it's the same, home is the same. It's good, bad, it doesn't
change that much--Philip Larken poem. And I--I could sense there was
real trouble, and we--we scheduled an appointment--I arranged an
appointment for family therapy; that is to go to see a psychiatrist
that we all--that we knew, a ver--a very able person. And we were
supposed to be there--the date was for a Friday, 4:30. The kids were
there, I was there. She had--she said she had certain other things in
the morning that--to do in--shopping and some other--and, of course,
when--when we were there, she didn't show up and we--she didn't show
up. She never showed up.
(End of excerpt)
SWAIN: BOOKNOTES takes the stress away and allows authors to relax,
get over that adrenalin rush of `five-four-three-two-one, you're
on-camera, go,' and commercial break happening in a few minutes, and
be themselves. They write about heart-wrenching human experiences in
their books. It is difficult to talk about them in stressful
environments, where you've got this and you're--got three minutes to
talk about the main subject of your book, and that's it and I want
it--people to buy my book so they'd better hear what I think about
topic A, and not so much about me. Our hourlong format, once again,
allows you to move beyond topic A to the individuals.
SCULLIN: Christopher Dickey wrote a book about growing up with his
father and all sorts of experiences, and it was called "Summer of
Deliverance." And his father's a famous writer, and he had talked
about it in the book and he had talked about the importance of
becoming close with his father before he died.
(Excerpt from September 1998)
LAMB: He came to town, staying at the Georgetown Inn.
Mr. CHRISTOPHER DICKEY ("Summer of Deliverance: A Memoir of Father
and Son"): Staying at the Georgetown Inn, yeah.
LAMB: He was drunk.
Mr. DICKEY: Yeah, and what you have to know is that this is very
soon after my mother had died and I had desperately wanted him to quit
drinking then, and had held him in my arms after the funeral when he
went i--when he had the shakes, and he had promised me he wasn't gonna
drink anymore. And I had quit drinking, and I thought, `OK, maybe we
can--we can build something here.' So then I was supposed to meet him
at--at Georgetown--at the Georgetown Inn, and I went to--to pick him
up--to meet him at the hotel, and I waited in the lobby and waited in
the lobby, and he didn't show up and didn't show up. And finally, I
got them to open his room and I went in, and he was passed out on his
bed.
(End of excerpt)
SCULLIN: There were elements that he admitted to us that--after the
taping, that he had never gone into before, that I don't think anyone
can quite explain why, other than there's the opportunity and some
authors who have been maybe alone in a room, writing this book for so
long, it comes out.
(Excerpt from June 1995)
LAMB: This is on the back of your book, this picture. How old are
you here?
Mr. DeWAYNE WICKMAN ("Woodholme: A Black Man's Story of Growing Up
Alone"): Eight years old. That's a picture of me that was taken in
the third grade. It was the picture that I carried to the place of my
mother's employment on the last full day of her life, and I offered
her a package of pictures. You know, back in those days--back in
1954, when you were s--when you had your school picture taken, the
schools trusted you to take the pictures home with a little sheet, and
your parents could look at the sheet and determine which combination
of pictures they would want, and then they'd drop a check or some cash
in an envelope and send--and return the unwanted pictures back. That
was a choice that was offered me that day. I took those pictures to
my mother's place of employment, and she said to me, as I
recall--after suggesting that maybe we didn't have the money to buy
them, she said, `Let me discuss this wi--with your father.' And those
pictures were found scattered about the front seat of the automobile
in which my parents were found in the early hours of the morning of
December 17th, 1954, after the murder-suicide.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from July 1995)
Mr. JOHN HOCKENBERRY ("Moving Violations: A Memoir"): I was in this
car and I know I was hurt pretty badly. I was conscious the whole
time. And I was scrunched up in the back seat, and bleeding from my
head and I had some trouble breathing because my ribs were broken--a
bunch of ribs were broken. And I put my hands down, as you naturally
would--you're kinda crouched in one of these American-made car back
seats, where they don't have much in the way of leg room. And I put
my hands on my knees, and nothing. It was like they were somebody
else's knees. And at that moment--and I describe it in th--in the
book--that was the moment that began this other journey in this other
body.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from November 1997)
Ms. IRIS CHANG ("The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of
World War II"): "The Rape of Nanking" is one of the greatest
atrocities of world history. In December of 1937, the Japanese swept
into the capital of China, which was then Nanking, and within six to
eight weeks, they butchered, raped and tortured hundreds of thousands
of Chinese civilians.
(End of excerpt)
LAMB: Iris Chang, first of all, is so young that--when I interviewed
her, I think she was 29--that it kind of takes you aback that somebody
that age--and I was never that aware when I was her age--would delve
into a subject so intense, so painful.
(Excerpt from November 1997)
LAMB: On the other page, at the top, what's that--what's that photo?
Ms. CHANG: I still have problems looking at it. That's a woman
who's been impaled after she's been raped.
LAMB: Right down here. And where did you find this?
Ms. CHANG: This, again, came--came from China and...
LAMB: Is it...
Ms. CHANG: ...it--it was--it's--it's--i--it came from the Chinese
archives.
LAMB: And the photo above it?
Ms. CHANG: That's a picture of a woman who's been gang-raped and
she--as you can see, she's been tied to the chair so that she can be
raped whenever the soldiers were in the mood for it. And, again, I
mean, I--I have a hard time even looking at these pictures even now.
(End of excerpt)
(Graphic on screen)
Personal Lives
SCULLIN: There's a reason that BOOKNOTES interviews sometimes take a
very personal direction. I think it's, hopefully, obvious to anyone
that watches it that you can catch your breath a lot of times on
BOOKNOTES, and the format is very patient.
LAMB: I almost always ask people about what I read about in their--in
their books, and their personal lives are often written about in their
books. It's just a natural. I think they're sometimes surprised.
What I've learned over the years is that people, when they write their
books, they sit in a room by themselves, it's often either early in
the morning or late at night--and somehow they--it doesn't cross their
mind that people will ever ask them about it in an interview
somewhere.
(Excerpt from April 1996)
Ms. NOA BEN ARTZI-PELOSSOF ("In the Name of Sorrow and Hope"): I
will tell, as I saw it, the story of my grandfather, the man, the
human side, because there was a lot that has been said about Yitzhak
Rabin, the politician, peacemaker, soldier, prime minister, and
nothing has been said about the man.
LAMB: Talked about your hands in the book.
Ms. ARTZI-PELOSSOF: That's right.
LAMB: So you don't like your hands.
Ms. ARTZI-PELOSSOF: I hate them.
LAMB: Why?
Ms. ARTZI-PELOSSOF: 'Cause they're ugly. Just because.
LAMB: You say they're small, full of freckles.
Ms. ARTZI-PELOSSOF: They're small, full of freckles, and they're
fat.
LAMB: Wh--why did you feel the need to write about that?
Ms. ARTZI-PELOSSOF: Because they're really similar to my grandpa's.
LAMB: Same shape, same size?
Ms. ARTZI-PELOSSOF: Same--same sa--shape, they're a bit smaller, I
guess, but--because they are really small--but--and he--yeah, but
they're like his.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from October 1997)
Ms. ANITA HILL ("Speaking Truth to Power"): The tumors were very
painful and, on a normal day, I would start out in some amount of
pain. I--to start, I'd feel like OK in the morning, but with some
pain. And by the end of the day, on a normal day, I would have enough
pain that I--I would take pain medic--cation. Now none of those days
were normal at the time of the hearing, and certainly, during the
testimony, there was so much stress that I was in--in incredible pain
by the end of that day and the days that followed.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from January 1997)
LAMB: How much can you see now?
Mr. HENRY GRUNWALD ("One Man's America"): Well, looking at you now,
I see the outline of your face. It's a bit of a blur. I am not sure
that I can see whether you are, at this moment, smiling or frowning or
something in between. I can see the outline of your suit. You're
holding something, which I take it, is a book. I know that because
you held it up before. Couldn't identify it exactly now.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from August 1995)
LAMB: Did you ever date women?
Mr. ANDREW SULLIVAN ("Virtually Normal: An Argument About
Homosexuality"): Yes, though very uncomfortably.
LAMB: And you're always uncomfortable?
Mr. SULLIVAN: Yes, incredibly uncomfortable, not around women. And,
in fact, I loved going on dates with them, but then there was that,
like, unbelievable panic and fear towards the end of it that I'd have
to kiss or, like, do something else that I--I couldn't--I mean, if you
were told to go on a date with a guy when you were 17 and you
were--you were able to go through the motions and have the dinner and
everything, but then you knew you'd have to, like, kiss him, I mean, I
think there'd be a moment when you panicked; you just don't want to do
this, OK? And it's exactly the same. It's hard to--it's the
same--the truth is, you know, growing up gay is the same thing as
growing up straight, essentially. You're the same people. We're the
same people. We have the same feelings.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from previous program)
Mr. JIMMY CARTER: This is about my sister, who was an avid
motorcyclist, who was a hostess for a bunch of rough motorcycle
drivers who would stop at our house on the way to--to Daytona every
year. And--and when my sister died, the bikers came into Plains and
stayed with her--at her bedside for several days before her death.
And--and--and during her funeral, they formed a--a motorcycle cortege
in front. There were 37 motorcycles, one Harley-Davidson--they had to
be Harley-Davidsons--so one in--one in front and then 36 behind it.
And on her tombstone there in Plains, there's an inscription, `She
rides in Harley heaven.'
(End of excerpt)
LAMB: So that's all I do, I read the books and I--I see something
about a person's life and I say, `Boy, I'm gonna ask about that.'
(Excerpt from January 1999)
LAMB: How did you and your wife meet?
Mr. TOM BROKAW ("The Greatest Generation"): Well, Brian, you're not
gonna believe this, but we met the summer before I moved there because
my roommate at a summer camp where we were working as Boy Scouts had
her picture in his trombone case. And he would open up the trombone
case every night and take out the picture of this girlfriend, Meredith
Auld. And I'd have to stare at the picture with him and he'd kinda
look at it moonily. And then midway through the summer, she wrote him
a Dear John. We wrote a withering reply to her. And I had no idea
that I would be moving to Yankton, and my parents came to me at the
end of that summer--we worked in construction--and said, `We're moving
to Yankton.' And I thought, `Well, I know, really, two people, I know
my roommate and I know this girl in the trombone case.' And I went to
the swimming pool the first weekend I was there and there was this
lifeguard who was the girl in the trombone case.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from November 1991)
Mr. JAMES RESTON ("Deadline: A Memoir"): Writing a book is
a--of--of memoirs is a funny thing, and I think it's an unavoidable
thing, that when you come to the end of the book, you've come to the
end of your life story and you--it's very hard not to feel that you've
come to the end of your life.
LAMB: Take my crutch away there.
Mr. RESTON: Having said that, by the end--the final chapter is Love
and Hope and here I cribbed a--a--a little verse from Alfred Duff
Cooper, who used to be head of the Admiralty in Britain. And he
said--and this is a reference to myself and my wife. `We will not
weep that spring that be past and autumn shadows fall. These years
shall be, although, the last, the loveliest of all.' And that has
proved to be true. You see, young love is marvelous, but old love,
that's the real jewel.
(End of excerpt)
(Graphic on screen)
The Things We Learned...
LAMB: The whole thing about C-SPAN and--and--and the BOOKNOTES thing
is that we're constantly learning, and it's uns--unexpected learning.
(Excerpt from November 1998)
LAMB: Who's the man with the bow tie?
Mr. A. SCOTT BERG ("Lindbergh"): Yes, the picture up above walking
with Lindbergh is the superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, a
man named Colonel Norman Schwarzkopf.
LAMB: Is he still alive?
Mr. BERG: The colonel is--is dead, but his son, the general, lives
on, needless to say.
LAMB: Did you...
Mr. BERG: I even went to talk to the general just to--General
Schwarzkopf was not around during the--during the crime, but I wanted
to see what it was like to grow up in the Schwarzkopf household.
What--did that Lindbergh crime loom? Did it linger in the house?
And, indeed, it did.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from January 1997)
LAMB: "The Libertarian Reader" is a name associated with Ayn Rand.
Alan Greenspan.
Mr. DAVID BOAZ ("Libertarianism: A Primer"): Alan Greenspan.
LAMB: Where were they ever together?
Mr. BOAZ: Well, Alan Greenspan became very close to Ayn Rand when he
was a young man in New York, was a great admirer of her philosophy and
personally close to her and contributed one or more essays, I think,
to one of the books that she edited that were mostly her essays and
some other people, and I assume that he still maintains that
admiration.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from October 1996)
LAMB: You say that your hobby--both of your hobbies early in your
life was reading.
Mr. MIKHAIL GORBACHEV ("Memoirs"): (Through Translator) I've read
many of the books by your writers: Theodore Dreiser, Scott
Fitzgerald, to say nothing of Mark Twain and Jack London. And I could
go on and on. And I read them. I read more than one book by each
author. If I started reading Jack London, I wanted to read all that
he wrote.
(End of excerpt)
LAMB: Let me give you an example about nuggets. Emory Thomas in his
book on Robert E. Lee--I just don't believe this--but tells us...
(Excerpt from August 1995)
LAMB: How tall was he?--5...
Mr. EMORY THOMAS ("Robert E. Lee: A Biography"): Oh, I say he's
5'11".
LAMB: But you said he had four and a half C-sized shoe?
Mr. THOMAS: Yeah, tiny feet.
LAMB: Now mine are, I think, eight and a half. You mean that he
really would have half the size of...
Mr. THOMAS: Exactly. Tiny, tiny feet. The--there's--I have
no--no--no explanation for that, but it's--it's true, and you get--I
can get these numbers from Edward Valentine, who did a sculpture of
Lee. He was supposed to do it from life, and he did take the
measurements while Lee was still alive. And one of the things he
measured were those feet.
(End of excerpt)
LAMB: We could live without all this information, but it does, again,
intrigue us when we find out...
(Excerpt from July 1995)
LAMB: What'd you get an F in?
Representative NEWT GINGRICH ("To Renew America"): Oh, I got an F in
an English course one time that I just couldn't do it. It was
Southern short stories, and I failed. I mean, I just failed. I got
an F once in a political science class for having missed most of the
final because I was off doing something political. I mean, I
just--there were periods of my undergraduate career when I was fairly
irresponsible.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from May 1996)
LAMB: You coined `Slick Willie'?
Mr. PAUL GREENBERG ("No Surprises: Two Decades of
Clinton-Watching"): Right. With the approbation of my publisher
then, Ed Freeman. And I wasn't sure exactly when, and thanks to the
good people at the Pine Bluff Public Library and going through
editorial page after editorial page, to the best of our knowledge, the
library staff and mine, we were able to bracket it at September 27th,
1980, during that gubernatorial campaign. That was when, on a
Saturday edition, we referred to Bill Clinton as Slick Willie. It was
in connection with his having him--having painted himself at a
Democratic convention as being in the long line of reform governors
that had followed Orval Faubus, which put him in the line of Winthrop
Rockefeller, Dale Bumpers and David Pryor. And we were aghast and
horrified at that because even then, we thought of Bill Clinton as a
trimmer, a compromiser, rather than a forthright spokesman for reform.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from March 1994)
LAMB: Eighty percent of the soldiers in the Union army voted for
Abraham Lincoln in--What?--1864?
Mr. JAMES McPHERSON ("What They Fought For, 1861-1865"): 1864 when
he ran for ur--for re-election. Yeah. That's an extraordinary fact
because back in 1860 when he ran for the first time, the opposition
party got about 45 percent of the vote, and one can assume that that
would include at least 40 percent of the men who then enlisted
and--who could vote and then enlisted in the Union army. So for the
opposition vote to go down from 40 percent or 45 percent to 20 percent
during the war means that this war experience really transformed the
soldiers into supporters of Lincoln and his war aims.
(End of excerpt)
Ms. ROBIN SCULLIN (BOOKNOTES Producer): I think certain authors from
either different parts of the country or who've had different
background than other people in America, if they include details in
their book, either lists or phrases that are explained in the book
but--you know, if you're watching BOOKNOTES and you haven't read the
book, you're not gonna pick up on--on what the author's--you know,
what kind of atmosphere or what kind of, you know, regional flavor, or
whatever the--the word may be, the author's trying to create.
(Excerpt from March 1998)
LAMB: You use the word `gummit'...
Ms. MOLLY IVINS ("You Got To Dance With Them What Brung You"):
Gummit.
LAMB: ...G-U-M-M-I-T, gummit.
Ms. IVINS: That's the way Texans say `government.' `Now that
gummit'--you know, `we've got to get the gummit off our backs. We've
got to get the gummit off our'--you know, that's the way people talk.
I just write the way people talk. I don't invent this stuff.
LAMB: What about bidness...
Ms. IVINS: Bidness.
LAMB: ...B-I-D-N-E-S-S.
Ms. IVINS: That's exactly the way Texans say the word `business.'
Bidness.
LAMB: They all sa--all Texans talk that way?
Ms. IVINS: Near--when--I'm--I'm not sure I could say all anymore.
We've got a lot of Texans who've moved in from somewhere else, but
it--almost anyone who's--who's a native will say that, bidness.
LAMB: Now what about sumbitch?
Ms. IVINS: Sumbitch is not a--a dirty word in Texas. It's not like
SOB. A sumbitch is the Texas word for `fella' or `guy.' `Well, he's a
good ol' sumbitch. And then that sumbitch said to me, he said'--and
there's no--there's no offense intended.
(End of excerpt)
Ms. SCULLIN: It's really trying to discover where the author's
coming from, and if an author writes a certain sentence, what does
that mean or have--have we interpreted this the way the author meant
it? And sometimes, no, the meaning is completely different than what
you would think, hearing the language.
(Excerpt from February 1994)
LAMB: What's a redbone?
Mr. NATHAN McCALL ("Makes Me Wanna Holler"): A redbone is a
light-skinned black woman.
LAMB: Why--where's the term from?
Mr. McCALL: It--it's a street term. It's a street term.
It's--it--it--you know, we come in all complexions, you know,
from--from blue-black to redbone, redbone being the lightest
complexion black person that you can imagine. And so it's just our
way of describing, you know, a--a very, very light complexioned black
person.
LAMB: What's jonin?
Mr. McCALL: Jonin.
LAMB: I knew I'd get that one, jonin.
Mr. McCALL: Jonin.
LAMB: J-O-N-I-N.
Mr. McCALL: Yeah, J-O-N-I-N. Right. It's a--it's a term that we
use to mean joking. You know, in our community, you know, where I
grew up, it--you know, it's a big thing to be able to jon on somebody.
You hear people today call it ragging, to jon on somebody. Another
term is playing the dozens, where you get two people together and they
make fun of each other just for fun, and it's an art, you know. It
would be--it's a competitive art. It would be like if you and I sat
here and we were to start jonin, then I might hone in on your tie, you
know, and you might look at my turtleneck and say, `Where'd you get
that funny-looking turtleneck?' Then I might look at your shoes and
say, `Well, look at those shoes,' and then you might take my bla--you
know, my jacket, you might hone in on my jacket. Then I'd say, `Well,
what about your funny haircut?' you know, and--and we'd go, you know,
tit for tat, you know, and people, i--you know, it draws a crowd. And
people would stand around to see who could jon the best.
And if you got the best of me, then somebody in the crowd might take
you on and you would have a jonin session. And you'd s--you'd take it
from the top, you know, and he'd say, `Well, you know, look at that
funny shirt you have on. That's--you know, you bought that shirt from
Sears, you know,' and you might look at him and say, `Well, no,
actually, your mama bought me this shirt.' And so sometimes if--you
know, sometimes it was very friendly. Sometimes it would get really
vicious. Sometimes, you know, you had guys who would jon each other
so hard that--that one person might get mad and want to fight.
(End of excerpt)
(Graphic on screen)
BOOKNOTES 10th Anniversary
The Biography
Ms. SARAH TRAHERN (BOOKNOTES Producer 1990-1995): Biographies, I
think, are my favorite types of books we do on BOOKNOTES. They're
successful because they're very pointed. People can get a sense about
someone, and--and particularly when an author writes a biography, they
have immersed themselves in the lives of another person.
(Excerpt from September 1998)
LAMB: What did Thurgood Marshall think of Malcolm X?
Mr. JUAN WILLIAMS ("Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary"):
Marshall was very, very dismissive, did not think much of Malcolm X,
thought that he was, you know, pretty much a pimp and a drug runner
and didn't think that he had mu--done much to change America. When
they had meetings, when they were together, he said most of the time
they were spent calling each other names, sons of bitches and
everything else. There were times when he felt threatened by the
black Muslims and by Malcolm X; that Malcolm X would call him some
half-white son of a gun and things like that, and that Malcolm X was
always in conflict with pe--with people, with establishment, with
leadership.
(End of excerpt)
Mr. STEPHAN LESHER ("George Wallace: American Populist"): (From
February 1994) And he grew up with that tradition, a tradition of
insipient dislike, if not downright hatred, for the North. The sense
that the North had imposed poverty and ignorance on the South
following--during and following the Civil War. He grew up and he read
books that I read, textbooks in school, which talked about the sins of
carpetbaggers and scallywags--a great deal of hyperbole, but that's
what he learned in school as a kid.
(Excerpt from February 1995)
LAMB: You say in the book that she was always photographed from the
side. For what reason?
Ms. LYNN SHERR ("Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony In Her Own
Words"): She had a bad right eye. He right eye she had some problems
with in childhood. I think we might refer to it as a wandering eye
today. It has a medical name. She had some surgery which made it
even worse, and she--she had a touch of vanity to her. I mean, one of
the things I discovered about this woman is that she just wasn't this
prim, proper, uptight lady that we think of, or this--this very dour
profile on the one-dollar coin. She--she had great personality, and
she was quite vain about that wandering eye. You will almost never
see a front-on photograph of her. She always would turn her head.
And--and that's why we have all those profile pictures of her.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from June 1997)
LAMB: By the way, how old is she in this picture on the back of the
book?
Ms. SYLVIA JUKES MORRIS ("Rage For Fame: The Ascent of Clare Boothe
Luce"): There, she's 20 years old, just married to--about to marry
George--George Brokaw.
LAMB: Go back to the--also in the acknowledgements, you talk about
that the Library of Congress has 462,000 items, 312 linear feet.
Ms. MORRIS: Yes.
LAMB: How did they get her papers and what's a part of all those
papers at the Library of Congress?
Ms. MORRIS: Yes. Her--her--her collection at the Library of
Congress turned out to be larger than most presidential collections
that the library holds, because I think, as we said, "Rage For Fame,"
she knew she was going to be famous from--from childhood. And so she
kept every scrap of paper that was sent to her and copies of all the
letters that she sent out.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from July 1990)
LAMB: Here's a picture of Clarence Mitchell. Do you know what year
that was taken, the one on...
Mr. DENTON WATSON ("Lion In The Lobby"): That is 1957. Oh, yes,
that's a very memorable picture. That was taken after the all-night
filibuster by Strom Thurmond, Senator Strom Thurmond, against the 1957
Civil Rights Act. Senator Thurmond was the only one on the
senator--he broke an agreement not to filibuster the bill, and
Clarence Mitchell and, for a while, Mrs. Thurmond kept his company up
there in the gallery until she got tired and could not, you know, stay
the whole course, but Clarence Mitchell stayed the course.
(End of excerpt)
Ms. DEBORAH SHAPLEY ("Promise & Power: The Life And Times of Robert
McNamara"): (From March 1993) I compare him to the Flying Dutchman
because the Flying Dutchman dared nature in the legend and--and was
cursed by God for having tried to sail around the Cape of Good Hope
against the storm and was cursed to sail forever because he had been
too bold, and there's a lot of hubris in McNamara, and--and in a way,
all of this global travel has such a restless air, as though there's
no place he can come to rest because he's still so controversial in
his own country. I won't say he doesn't have a home in the United
States, because he's very well-respected by people in the arms control
community and the international banking community, but, in a sense, he
doesn't have a home, I think, until he comes to terms with us.
(Graphic on screen)
BOOKNOTES 10th Anniversary
The Memoir
Ms. TRAHERN: The memoir books are a very interesting category for us
on BOOKNOTES. They're not straight autobiographies, but they're often
written by prominent public policy officials, such as General Norman
Schwarzkopf, former presidential adviser Clark Clifford, former
defense secretary Caspar Weinberger. And while they don't write about
their whole life, they usually write about chapters of their lives.
General NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF ("It Doesn't Take A Hero"): (From November
1992) The night before the war is about to begin, at about 11:00 or
12:00 at night, I did what most people do. I sat down and wrote a
letter to my family. I wanted them to know at that last minute that
they were important to me, that--that they were the last thing that
was in my mind before this terrible war started. I don't know why,
but, you know, it's--it's amazing how many people I've talked to who
did exactly the same thing.
(Excerpt from November 1995)
LAMB: You say that you haven't been on a presidential campaign trip
since Nelson Rockefeller. How come?
Mr. DAVID BRINKLEY ("A Memoir"): Well, I'm almost embarrassed to
tell it because it's--I hate to talk about it. He was running for
president, traveling the country, and I was traveling with him part of
the time, not all the time, and until I began to notice it--this is
when television was much newer and more--much more of a novelty than
it is now. And I was on the air every night then, and wherever I went
in those days, I drew some kind of crowd, of curiosity seekers and so
on. And then Rockefeller was not a terribly strong candidate for
president. He was rather weak, in fact, and did poorly when the
voting began, but in any case, during the campaign, I began to notice
and he began to notice that I drew--that more people gathered around
me than gathered around him, which told nothing except that I was on
television a lot and he was not. But it was embarrassing to him. He
was running for president and I was just an ordinary reporter.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from June 1994)
LAMB: What about Quayle jokes? When did they get under your skin?
Mr. DAN QUAYLE ("Standing Firm"): You'd be surprised on how I was
just able to block that out entirely. First of all, if I would--if
I'm up late at night, I watch "Nightline." I don't watch Jay Leno or
David Letterman. I--I prefer to watch "Nightline." So I really--I
didn't watch these shows. You really don't have time to--to watch
them. Furthermore, if you do and you sort of dwell on it, you're not
gonna be able to do your job, so I just blocked it out.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from April 1994)
LAMB: About halfway through the book, you say you don't believe in
God.
Mr. PETE HAMILL ("A Drinking Life: A Memoir"): Well, I didn't.
I--I don't say that as an--as an--an assertion that I'm particularly
proud of. I always think that, `God, I--I never had the imagination
to do this,' or something. Whatever it was, I just couldn't get it.
I co--you know, I--I was--I was one of those people, and I think there
are many who are--who are sort of born secular, you know.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from September 1995)
LAMB: Why did you tell us that Lyndon Johnson had an affair with your
secretary.
Mr. PIERRE SALINGER ("P.S.: A Memoir"): She did. He did.
LAMB: How did you know that?
Mr. SALINGER: I did, because she was my mistress before she fell in
love with Lyndon Johnson. I forgot to say that.
LAMB: In the book, you didn't say that.
Mr. SALINGER: I didn't--I have never named anyone else, but the same
person happened to be a mistress of mine as well.
(End of excerpt)
Ms. SCULLIN: I think that biography and autobiography are--are very
telling about--in essence, you can study all the public policy and
kind of wonk books you want, but if you have someone who can bring
people to life.
(Excerpt from June 1995)
LAMB: When did you meet the first politician that you worked for?
Mr. ARMSTRONG WILLIAMS ("Beyond Blame"): Oh, Senator J. Strom
Thurmond. This is a--this is a story. When I was 16 years old--16, a
kid--my dad and I--because we had to read the papers. There was
an--an a--an announcement in the Marion Star, Mullins Enterprise, a
Senator Strom Thurmond was speaking at the Drydock Seafood Hut, which
was in my hometown. And so I showed it to my dad. I said, `Dad,
Senator Thurmond is--is right up the street.' It was about 10 miles
away. I said, `We've got to--we've go to go. We've got to go.' So my
daddy took off. He said, `Well, get dressed. I'll drive you.' It's
the kind of father I had.
So we went to the Drydock Seafood Hut, and by the time we had arrived,
the speech was over and the senator was coming out. And I saw him and
I just--because my daddy taught us to be proud, and I walked up to him
and I said, `Senator Thurmond, my name is Armstrong Williams and I
hear that you are a racist.' Oh, God, I thought my father was going to
bop me in the mouth. Really, I did, because he had this look. And
then the senator laughed and we talked and he chuckled there for a few
moments. He said, `Well, you seem like a bright young man. Why don't
you just send me your resume when you graduate from high school and
then you make a determination of whether I'm a racist or not.'
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from July 1997)
Mr. FRANK McCOURT ("Angela's Ashes"): First of all, I always wanted
to be a writer, but I didn't know that I wanted to write about
this--this lane in Limerick, this slum, because anybody who comes from
those circumstances doesn't want to write about it. You're ashamed of
it. You--you don't have any self-esteem. So I--it wasn't until I--I
somehow began to gain some approval or acceptance from my students in
New York or from friends of mine. In social circles, I started
talking about growing up in Limerick, and I suppose some of the stuff
I told was amusing and they'd laugh and--because the whole--poverty is
so absurd. Some of the stories I told them were so absurd, they'd
laugh and they'd say, `You should write this. When are you going to
write it?' Well, I'd been hearing this for years, `When are you going
to write a book? When are you going to write a book?' A--but no more
insistent than the little voice in my head, `Write the damn book.'
(End of excerpt)
LAMB: Frank McCourt, for a lot of reasons, just brings a smile to a
lot of people's faces, in spite of the fact that the story is very
depressing.
(Excerpt from July 1997)
LAMB: How does it feel to be so public with your life?
Mr. McCOURT: I haven't had time to reflect on it since last
September, how to be--because I've seen--I kno--I know people who are
public because they used to hang around the Lion's Head Bar in New
York and I knew Pete Hamill and people like that who had been public
for years and years and years. And I'd see them come and go and
I--and I'd--I'd be on the periphery of that crowd. And I--the--I was
as--what they call in America only a teacher, only a teacher. They're
journalists and writers and poets. I'm only a teacher. And I was
re--I--I ca--I was always on the periphery. In a sense, I was like my
father, an outsider. Now people look at me, `Oh.' They look at me.
It's like Ralph Ellison's book, "Invisible Man." Pe--the people don't
see you until you--I wrote a book. I taught for 27 years and nobody
paid me a scrap of attention. Then I write a book about slum life,
and I'm an expert on everything.
(End of excerpt)
LAMB: He touches a nerve of people that are from Ireland, but a lot
of other people, obviously. You don't stay on The New York Times Best
Sellers List for 116 weeks, or whatever, if you're not getting a lot
of people's attention.
(Graphic on screen)
10th Anniversary
BOOKNOTES
SWAIN: C-SPAN is here because we want people to be a part of the
national dialogue on public policy issues. For us, books is another
avenue to do that.
LAMB: Books--this network is dedicated to. That's why there are now
48 hours of books on the weekend called "Book TV." And we want to
institutionalize a lot of this so that people learn to expect it out
of this network.
(Excerpt from 1996)
LAMB: Here's what the book looks like. It's called "It Takes A
Village," and the author is Hillary Rodham Clinton, and we thank you
for joining us.
Mrs. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: Thank you, Brian.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from 1997)
LAMB: "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" is the name of the
book. Our guest has been John Berendt, over 160 weeks on the
best-seller list. Thank you very much.
Mr. JOHN BERENDT ("Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"): Thank
you.
(End of excerpt)
(Excerpt from 1995)
LAMB: Here's what the book looks like. It's called "Nixon Off The
Record," and our guest has been its author Monica Crowley. Thank you
very much.
Ms. MONICA CROWLEY ("Nixon Off The Record"): Thank you very much.
(End of excerpt)
SWAIN: There is a vein that has been tapped and hasn't yet been
replicated on the Internet or on other television channels, and as
long as we are able to deliver something to our audience that fills
their interest in--in books of this nature, we ought to keep doing it.
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