With a knack for storytelling and a passion for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Doris Kearns Goodwin became an award-winning author and historian after working under Lyndon Johnson during his presidency, but has been overshadowed by criticism of poor attribution in one of her best-selling books.
Goodwin brought her enthusiasm for the Dodgers and her strength in storytelling, which she accredits to her late mother, to Fairfield’s Open Visions Forum in the Quick Center Sunday.
Goodwin won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for her book “No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt,” but has received much criticism for one of her best-sellers, “The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys.” In this book, she poorly attributed her source on several occasions, a mistake that Goodwin greatly regrets.
“I acknowledge the mistake. I’m sorry I made it,” Goodwin said during the question-and-answer portion of the forum. “It was over a 10-year period of notes and I didn’t give her proper attribution. It’s nothing I intended to do. I just didn’t put in proper quotes in certain excerpts. Saying you’re sorry is sometimes the best someone can do in life.”
According to Goodwin, her sloppy note-taking over those 10 years was the major reason behind the mistake, but says the use of computers now will keep this mistake from happening again.
Goodwin briefly alluded to the fact that she and the English woman she miss-credited settled the case financially and a new edition of the book with the proper corrections will be available soon.
Prior to the question-and-answer session, in front of a sold-out crowd of mostly elderly area residents, Goodwin spoke for approximately 45 minutes about previous moments in U.S. history, some of which she encountered first hand, that equal or are greater than the turmoil the country is facing today.
“I thought Doris Goodwin’s examples of history, like World War II and the gender and race movements, were especially interesting parallels to what the country is going through right now,” said Lindsay Pease ’06.
According to Alan Neigher, a good friend of Goodwin’s who spoke prior to her introduction, says Goodwin was a revolutionary writer for her time.
“For her time, she had given us something no one else had,” Neigher said. “You hear things brought to life.”
Other students felt that her use of anecdotes and humor contributed to her speech well.
“I thought she was funny at times,” said Liz Avery ’04. “The jokes and stories that she told really kept everyone in the audience interested.”
Goodwin ended her speech by setting yet another parallel from a past historical event to the country’s current condition.
“We were challenged before … Now we fight the war of terror,” Goodwin said. “Reporters and media now have to rise above petty political issues to things that matter.”
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