'Ghost notes' for an intellectual icon
James Goodman on annotating Galbraith's letters to Kennedy
Archived article from Oct 30, 1998
By Douglas Frank
James Goodman spent a dozen or so happy afternoons over several years as a "ghost annotator" for a slim volume of John Kenneth Galbraith's letters to John F. Kennedy. "Letters to Kennedy" was published in May by Harvard University Press.
The assignment, spanning 1995-97, was "fascinating and a pleasure," recalls the associate professor of history at Rutgers-Newark. "Galbraith is incredibly learned and distinguished, and fascinating and fun to talk to. He loves to laugh and tell a story."
Now 90, Galbraith, author of the celebrated "The Affluent Society" and Kennedy's ambassador to India from 1961 to 1963, is a professor emeritus of economics at Harvard University, where he had been on the faculty when Kennedy was a student. Goodman was an associate professor of history at Harvard before coming to Rutgers in 1997.
"Letters to Kennedy" is a selection of the letters that Galbraith sent to Kennedy from spring 1959 to just a few weeks before the president was assassinated in November 1963. In recent years, Galbraith decided he wanted to publish the letters, and he gathered them together with the help of the Kennedy Library.
"I was asked by Harvard University Press to work with Galbraith on the notes," Goodman remembers. "Nothing elaborate, but to provide information for the general reader who might not know about various references to people, places or events."
Galbraith and Goodman, with tape recorder and pad, sat together in Galbraith's living room with a pile of letters in front of them, which they went over one by one. "I'd pass him a letter and he would take a look at it and tell me a story. Some details he wouldn't remember, and later I went to standard histories to look them up."
Goodman especially enjoyed the intellectual ambience. "Walking into his house and sitting with him was like walking into history. The walls of his study are lined with photographs of some of the most famous and glamorous people of the last half century. And his bookshelves contain an enormous range of books in all fields."
Goodman's annotating sometimes involved setting the background for a particular reference or providing identities of persons, places or things. For example, a reference to "Soapy" Williams is identified as G. Mennen Williams, former governor of Michigan, in the notes. Similarly, Alma-Ata, located on the Russian-Chinese border, is where Galbraith recalls being "attacked by a fierce dog, which tore a sizable chunk of flesh from the inside of my leg."
Goodman explains the letters were very much welcomed by Kennedy, although he was unable to take the time to respond to them.
Some of the letters are reports from Galbraith as ambassador, while others contain his concerns about the Cuban missile crisis or the threat of Communism in Indochina, where the ambassador predicted disaster and called for an approach more subtle than hard-line Cold Warriorism.
Much of his advice is, as expected, about economics, and Galbraith's was not always the majority opinion.
At the time, according to Goodman, the economy was sluggish and some economists in the administration were calling for a tax cut to stimulate economic growth. Galbraith, however, argued for increased social spending -- bridges, highways, mass transit and social programs -- to pump money into the economy and spread benefits around.
"He was in the distinct minority in thinking the tax cut was the wrong thing to do," says Goodman, "and that the tax cuts would disproportionately benefit the wealthy." Shortly after Kennedy's assassination, a huge tax cut was enacted.
Above all, the letters are good reading. "Even on subjects the reader may not know anything about, one can sense they are written with tremendous wit, grace and style from the beginning to the end," Goodman concludes.
|
