The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 98, July 1994 - April, 1995 Page: 300
682 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
of their own self-images. Yet few writers have overlooked the force of
Johnson's personality and his insistence on dealing with people in per-
sonal terms. (Equating political persuasion with sex is about as personal
as you can get.) For all their criticisms of Lyndon Johnson, three of his
biographers, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Robert Caro, and Ronnie Dugger,
seem to have fallen under his spell. They all relate to Johnson in starkly
personal ways that reveal as much about themselves as they do about
Lyndon Johnson.
The most personal account of Lyndon Johnson's life comes from
Doris Kearns Goodwin. The foundation of her study is a series of exten-
sive interviews that she conducted with Johnson after he stepped down
from the presidency in early 1969. As Kearns Goodwin explains in the
foreword of her book, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, she had
worked as a member of the White House staff in the closing months of
the Johnson administration despite her opposition to the war in Viet-
nam. She then helped Johnson prepare his presidential memoir, but
Johnson's most revealing ruminations about his life came only after he
had completed that project. Suffering from continual chest pains and
anticipating his own death at any time, Johnson arranged a "curious ritu-
al" with Kearns Goodwin on the LBJ Ranch, which she describes in the
following way:
I would awaken at five and get dressed. Half an hour later Johnson would knock
on my door, dressed in his robe and pajamas. As I sat in a chair by the window,
he climbed into bed, pulling the sheets up to his neck, looking like a cold and
frightened child.
In those dawn talks, I saw him as perhaps few others, except his wife and close
friends, had seen him: crumpled, ragged, and defenseless. He spoke of begin-
nings and ends of things, of dreams and fantasies. His words seemed to flow
from some deep well of sadness, nostalgia, and longing.'
A few pages later Kearns Goodwin dismisses newspaper stories that
"more was going on than the writing of the President's memoirs," and
she cites Lady Bird Johnson's expression of support: "Don't worry about
those silly newspaper reports. You give comfort to my husband and that
is all that matters."6
With this peculiar combination of suggestiveness and denial, the au-
thor has managed to assume the roles of mother-figure and pseudo-mis-
tress, as well as collaborator with the former President's wife. If Kearns
Goodwin has to struggle to separate Johnson's memories from his fan-
tasies, the reader of her book faces the equally daunting challenge of de-
Ibid., xvii.
' Ibid., xx.October
300
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 98, July 1994 - April, 1995, periodical, 1995; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101216/m1/338/: accessed April 30, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.