Kennedy history for sale
THE NEWS that the elder Kennedys are commissioning a new biography of their revered father, Joseph P. Kennedy, is astonishing enough. However, Senator Edward Kennedy's claim that there has never been a full biography of the family patriarch is even more stunning. Was Richard Whalen's ``The Founding Father" in 1964 not a full biography? Or David Koskoff's ``Joseph P. Kennedy" in 1974? Or Ron Kessler's ``The Sins of the Father: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded," in 1996? And what about the many Kennedy family biographies, from Joe McCarthy's ``The Remarkable Kennedys" in 1960 to Doris Kearns Goodwin's ``The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys" in 1986, and Larry Leamer's ``The Kennedy Men" in 2001?
Are the Kennedys now suffering collective amnesia? After having sponsored Joseph Kennedy's granddaughter Amanda Smith, in 1991, to compile a 764-page selected edition of Joseph P. Kennedy's letters, they now want another full-scale biography of the scoundrel ``in the totality of his life experiences"? Is this not the buying of votes any more, but of history?
I am an unabashed admirer of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. I admire the elder living Kennedys. But I am not an admirer of Joseph P. Kennedy, for a variety of reasons, ranging from his blackmail of President Roosevelt to his anti-Semitism, his appeasement of Adolf Hitler, and his cowardice during the Blitz in London, when he left his staff to face the danger of German bombings but hid out nightly away from the city. I cannot imagine why the elders of the Kennedy family want to dredge all that up again in another ``full-blown" biography. If the appointed author, David Nasaw, whitewashes the story, the American historical community will be outraged; if he tells the truth, it can only embarrass family members not only of Senator Edward M. Kennedy's generation, but their children and grandchildren.
What, then, is the point of pressing for such a work, when the dust has settled on all that -- and the public would be far more interested in autobiographical works by the elders of the family, recording their own extremely distinguished lives?
Sadly for historians, such a story of paid encomia is far from unique. Nor is it new. My namesake Ian Hamilton once wrote a brilliant account of family myopia, ``Keepers of the Flame," published in 1992. Poor Hamilton (no relation) had been daft enough to think he could write a favorable but unauthorized biography of J.D. Salinger, who had become a supposed recluse after publication of ``Catcher in the Rye." Big mistake. Salinger took Hamilton to court, and won. ``Keepers of the Flame" -- chronicling whitewashing, secretion, and destruction of documents by family descendants from John Donne to Sylvia Plath -- was Hamilton's indirect revenge.
The truth is, the law of international copyright, which was passed into statute at Berne in the 1880s to protect the descendants of creative artists, unintendedly gave the descendants of anybody the legal means to stop historians from telling uncomfortable or inconvenient truths -- forbidding them on pain of copyright infringement from quoting more than a handful of words in their works without their express permission.
In the case of literary giants such as James Joyce -- whose grandson is halting even public readings of ``Ulysses," according to his whim -- this is a nightmare. In the case of non-creative personalities who, nevertheless, have had a prominent role in history (good or bad), it produces an educational disgrace. For 70 years after a person's death, every word he or she uttered will be literally owned by his surviving family -- who can then either impose silence on historians, or give access and copyright permission to those who can be counted upon to cast their ancestor in a good light.
The news from Hyannis and Columbia Point is therefore not good. As taxpayers, we are forced to pay the JFK Presidential Library to house, file, and preserve the papers of Joseph P. Kennedy -- but we may not see them, let alone use them, as historians.
I have no illusion that international copyright law will be rewritten anytime soon, despite this tragic misuse of the Berne Convention. The relative legal freedom of the Internet has, fortunately, allowed many to discuss issues and quote from documents without much regard to copyright, since the Internet currently slips under the legal radar. This ``black market" in historical truth is a sad reflection, though, on our supposedly democratic society -- pointing up the lack of freedom to publish such work in scholarly books, articles, or in conventional didactic ways, from lecture hall to classrooms. That an influential family can continue to ``buy" history by denying access, at our taxpayers' expense, to historical materials except by family fiat, is a sham and a shame. I can only comfort myself with the thought that history will have the last word -- even if only in 2039.
Nigel Hamilton is a fellow of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies, UMass-Boston. His new book ``Biography: A Brief History" will be published next year.
(Clarification: Nigel Hamilton's column on Tuesday about a new biography of Joseph P. Kennedy gave the impression that the author, David Nasaw, will be paid by the Kennedy family. Proceeds will come only from the publisher, Penguin Press. Nasaw has also been promised unfettered access to the Kennedy patriarch's papers)
