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We're talking about American Journey of the times of Robert Kennedy a very powerful book which consists of taped interviews with a bunch of people who knew him and many who never saw him the book is put together by Jean Stein she did the interviews and edited by George Plimpton published by Harcourt out of it and with the back of Mr. Plimpton in just a moment. This is book B. Each week introducing you to leading authors and critics this program is made possible in part by the National Book Committee and the American Booksellers Association. Your host is Robert Crumb a daily columnist for The Chicago Tribune and a contributing editor of book world the Sunday Literary Supplement of the Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post. George I think this is a marvelous idea because. I think I have a better idea now of what Bobby Kennedy was like than I ever did before and I've read several books about him. Whose idea was this to present him in this fashion. Well Jean Stein who did the interviews I think

was perhaps the first sets the funeral train was this remarkable focal point where all the people that were associated with Robert Kennedy with the train trip from New York to Washington and they were quite a collection of people these extraordinary people in government in the arts that he surrounded himself with and that perhaps this could be the sort of background for trying to find out something about the senator. And I think she had the idea of having some sort of an interview book really right there on the train. Very emotional very moving train ride. And she came to me about six or seven months later to see if I would do the editing. The idea was originally I think to do more of a book of eulogies perhaps but we saw as we went on that we had an extraordinary chance. To really do a type of definitive study and

perhaps go perhaps to talk to some of the senator's enemies as well as his friends. But to use the train as sort of a focal point. And I think and answer your question that's what I think you said. I think almost everybody that was on that train trip thought my Lord what an emotional focal point this would be for a book. Well each chapter of course starts out with brief excerpts from. Statement by somebody who was on the train. Yes the idea the idea really was to put together two journeys the journey of the funeral train from New York to Washington which would as you say start every chapter and then the second Ginnie the journey of Robert Kennedy's life so that the book starts with the train trip three four pages of that and then there's a cut in the action and you go back to Bobby Kennedy's very early days. That concludes the chapter in the next chapter starts again with a different moment chronologically on the train journey and then

shifts to a chronological moment in his and his life and then finally at the end of course these two journeys juxtaposed in the in Washington where the two journeys both meet at the graveyard it all into was a very effective way of doing it. And I must say I disagree with my good friend Herb gang who I believe said that there was too much trivia and I don't think there is I think the trivia adds immeasurably to the total effect. Well of course there are problems with doing oral history now actually it's really the same even though it's edited it is the raw material with which. Which historians used to represent their histories and I think what disturbed him was that there was no historian so to speak distilling all this material. It's difficult to read sometimes because it's kaleidoscopic you get voice A which is immediately followed by voice B Boise voice D and all of that talking about the same thing. And perhaps the same moment in history chronologically their

voices are different. And it is a sort of a kaleidoscopic technique it's like the flick a technique in films and it may have been that Mr. gang couldn't get a sense of flow through all of this. And then of course when you do use a technique like this you're going to put things in. That may be trivial to him but give us certain them. I remember one thing that he picked out as being an example of trivia. During the funeral preparations Mrs. Wm. Paley arrived at the headquarters everybody was working on the funeral arrangements and she had with her a hamper full of very complicated maze of sandwiches. I remember that and there was one campaign worker who bit into one of the sandwiches and said This is the best live it wist I have tasted. Well it is trivia in a way. And Mr getting mentioned it as an example of the sort of thing where he felt the book had gone off

the railroad tracks why concentrate on little things of this sort to give you the idea of who was working on it. Well I agree with her. I really also gives you some idea of the vast spectrum someone that would bring pâté de foie gras sandwiches and someone who would mistake them for a liver whist. When I tell people what we were thinking I tell you what I thought of the little Mexican boy and this again is complete trivia but I remember it very clearly out of the whole book I remember this very good. He ran along and jumped up and caught the window of the bus and lifted his head up and said My name is Enrico Suarez or something that remember me to the senator remember it now that's it's nothing and yet it's very important. Yes when a senator said to him don't ever run for president. Yeah I know it's a matter of choice and it's difficult. I was looking at the book yesterday for the. And I read something that I completely forgotten which struck me again as it is a question of trivia in the hospital after the shooting. The phones kept ringing and this was I was there in this hospital corridor and it turned out that people were

calling in with remedies with remedies and the strangeness of these remedies and that sort of lunatic California herbs in various positions that people should be in the room and incantations all being offered the sort of desperate thing. And it's the sort of thing that I think the historian leaves out because he has a general pattern to follow in his inspection of a character. But in something like this you put it in you leave it in. But it is difficult I think sometimes to read because so much of this is perhaps it traffics up the route a little bit and that may be the sort of thing that Mr. McCann is referring to. You know something funny is the sort of thing the historian leaves out at the time and fifty or a hundred years later discovers and is delighted to find he will write a special special piece about this curious little sidebar. You know a hundred years from now. But he left a lot of the time when you course you have some some extremely important people and some big names who also do the talking. George McGovern Galbraith

Jimmy Breslin you yourself were in that Rosy Greer. Salinger I guess and sorry for a lot of you know one interesting thing is that the people who are best in the book I think are not the great names. Jean Stein and I we did some of the interviews together we kept We kept thinking that as we went along that if you go and see a government figure or man like he would Humphrey they have been asked so many questions in their time that they've learned how to be guarded without appearing to be so they don't quite say what's on their mind they have to be guarded because they are these public figures and have to be careful. And there's a sort of a patina over their words that when you look at them on the printed page they they sound modest because of course they delivered in the you know with all this elocution and all that voice training in the rest of it but when you look at them on the printed page there's a sort of

blandness to them. And it does not translate very well and we found that although we would do 50 or 60 pages with a man of enormous political distinction that really the only thing that was with me for the book was really very little because of this patina that seems to be over it whereas if you go to somebody that has never talked even into a tape machine particularly women the women I thought were the by far the best the campaign workers the people that knew Robert Kennedy went with him on cruises and Kay Evans for example Rowan Evans your wife and who called Art Buchwald's wife a woman called Helen Keyes the one who did the piece about the funny little impromptu party that Kennedy was just sorry he missed Sylvia Wright. Yes yes she was a whole whole group of them somehow seem to have a freshness and a type of originality and also a type of honesty in doesn't that what they say is unfiltered. It just comes comes out and it translates in many cases marvelously on to the printed page.

The cameraman some of the cameramen are some of the newspaper reporters of whom people have never heard made some marvelous remarks about Kennedy. Incidently do you. I don't think you do but do you subscribe to the theory that Kennedy was ruthless. Oh I know what it was Sidney very determined I think. One description of him in there which I think is an accurate one is that he he he was a tarea of a man and when he felt there was iniquity he went after him but that's not ruthlessness. Ruthlessness is when you run over people who don't care. Well Also one must remember who the sort of people he was running over or trying to run over. I mean Jimmy Hoffa was no patsy and he felt that man was a disgrace to the society may have been seen to be ruthless he would also have had to run over Jimmy Hoffa's grandmother and all his family and that cared and I don't think he would have done this. No I don't I think the root of all you have to see him with his children are seen with friends who see him and ruthless is a phony as someone put someone said he was full of Rue but he was not in the

country it wasn't Ruth lest she was full of Ruth and I think that that is a canard which is was put on him because of the days of the McClellan committee and it also has this bill doggedness this tarea attitude. We did funny warm things today for instance you mention that when Martin Luther King Dr. Martin Luther King was thrown in jail. And they were having trouble getting him out. Some of the campaign workers persuaded I think. The president to do something and and Bobby thought this was a great mistake. I guess it was not what the president was one was JFK was running for president and Bobby thought was great was a city cost of three states and the next thing you knew he had called a judge. He had thought of himself. That's the that's the way I think the phrase he thought it over. I think the remarkable thing about him and I think the book suggest is that he quite unlike many political figures was a man who was in mid-flight could somehow

change. I think he saw things in a rather different way than most politicians viscerally perhaps. I went with him once for example to do some Indian reservations Navajo Indian reservations and he was very tough about seeing the worst thing you could possibly see there and also had then it seemed to have a very profound effect on him and when you think of the great changes in his time. They where when he went to Mississippi on the into the hunger areas when his friend John Seigenthaler was hit over the head by the people in Mississippi by the police during a freedom ride during the Freedom Rides when the bus was overturned it Aniston's if there were a whole series of moments like that which had a profound effect on him and changed him and I think as you were suggesting his attitude about Martin Luther King's imprisonment was was that they let him out or if they looked at the problem it was going to hit his brothers run for the candidacy.

But when he thought about it viscerally when he thought about it emotionally he said well there was only one thing to do and that was to get him out of there get King out. Even though it might hit the campaign his brother I think was that type of emotion called the judge and said What kind of an American are you will get that man was that type of emotional response that when he responded emotionally to Cesar Chavez to exactly another man that he had this emotional reaction to when out and try to help the grape growers over against the advice of his some of his aides. So he did change himself remarkably in a period of say six or seven years. I always felt so and I think the book makes it I think very obvious that he did. Which is a rare thing in a politician I know many privately where you have a funny thing in that book or somebody has a funny thing they say that he changed in size. Sometimes he looked large and muscular sometimes he looked very frail and forewarn. And this man said I think it was the light. Remember that little piece that said to McGovern and what an interesting thing that is. It's true. Senator McGovern during the last days of the

campaign he came out to the Dakotas and McGovern describes him walking off to get into a little plane to fly back to Oregon or to California to continue the campaign. And you mention is this how at some times he seemed very he seemed very large confident he was deeply standing on a platform speaking and so forth but in this particular case he seemed he seemed very small. I never thought of this before. You've made me think of something of the last time I was so I was not very comfortable for me to say. But the last time I saw him was when he was in the hospital and he was dying and and some of us were taken in to I guess relieved to say goodbye in some some way. And he was lying on a. It was sort of set up like this. And he looked enormous He looked and I suppose it was because of the smallness of the room and perhaps the height at which this

hospital bed was and perhaps the fact that it was tilted and also that his head was in bandages. But I remember that there was something of the catafalque business of a tomb with the King lying on top and that he was his presence and his size at that point seemed absolutely enormous. As I said we shouted out you know this but you asked about size and that was my last view him and he at this point it was an enormous impact. Well he had a great a great ability somehow to inspire extreme loyalty and devotion to me among the people who work for him. Oh absolutely yes the. And that was one of the Course tragedies of that train trip was to see how this how how many people how close people we're to and what effect it had on you know when he when he first decided to run of course was after New Hampshire and after McGovern himself was pretty upset about the decision was made

about the decision of the right decision to get into it and he was upset that he had done it and yet he wanted to do it and couldn't figure out how to do it gracefully. Well I think he had great loyalty to the party and he felt that if he did run it would split the party and cause a lot of damage to the Democrats and it certainly it turned around and around in his mind and I think it was McCarthy's victory that finally the damage was already done that he should get into the race and he had vast suspicion of McCarthy and felt that he was a stronger and more important candidate in terms of what that wing of the Democratic Party wished. Well McCarthy made some curious mistakes during the campaigning too. Somebody mentions one case in which you talk to some college students and said that you realize of course that polls have shown that the more intelligent people vote for me and the less intelligent vote for Kennedy and I think the Kennedy people took out a newspaper it was theirs or something. It was a curious campaign McCarthy ran.

Yeah well there's the course the portraits there not only portraits of Robert Kennedy in this book but there are these superb portraits of some of the other. Candidates is one portrait of McCarthy standing in algae being that he never really got into it he always seemed to be removed from the from the struggle of politics and there was one rather lovely portrait him as a bit like a man standing on the edge of a swimming pool and and he's sort of shaking up his muscles and doing all that sort of preliminary business but he never really gets in and gets into the water with his own campaign manager I think who says that when the employees are so they try to keep Robert Lowell away from him because he always got him in this mood the poet. That's right turned him into the poet rather than the political man. You know he had a great sense of humor. I knew he had a sense of humor but it was a sense of humor rather like Jack. JFK wasn't it. Why he had his wit was turned on and rather nice ways I think I wouldn't of. I never heard him tell many jokes and no I was very shy.

Really I mean his instinct of for a for a funny line or for a funny situation when he asked people to walk the dog. Remember in the elevator he had to have his age with him he said well one of you walk the dog in the manse of the Mastership to Rome and he said yes and then later this man had done something and Kennedy said yesterday Rome tomorrow Luxembourg that's where he was demoting him. Oh yes I said Freckles I think that was very quiet rather nice. Whitney said he loved good times and be surrounded by his favorite people. People like Will and so forth were always how I would on this one. Colorado river trip with him and I've never heard such laughter. I mean there was every evening the tickly with that extraordinary Ethel the life was always full of jokes and skits and platelets and laughing he had the worst voice that he never had sounded more like a coyote than it did a human voice but he enjoyed all of that joy is

that great brood of children. But yet I was sensed a type of sadness in a type of shyness with him. So that one would never really think it was being. Funny and that in that sentence he was very contained. It was a stand up comedian you know. And he also managed somehow to make a great impression on the blacks. I guess his sincerity came through he was very sincerely immersed in the problems of the blacks the Mexican-Americans the Indians. And then I seem to have come through to them Medgar Evers Charles Evers Medgar Evers brother. It was a very close friend wasn't a very well I think the key there was that the you remember the the big word in that campaign was of course divisive elements of the country and so forth and he was a man that obviously was terribly concerned about the plights and the difficulties of the blacks but his his affect I think that what they realized was that he had the same effect on people who would be very

worried about the emerging blacks for example the lower middle class or the poor. Steel worker Gary Indiana for example who might be feel very concerned about their own security being threatened. But I think they felt in Kennedy that already was telling them something they didn't really want to hear very much and he was suggesting suggesting actions they didn't really really want to become involved in very much but they trusted him in some way that it was right for the right for the country which is the true mark of a leader who can tell you to do something that you don't that you don't isn't you know he's going to feather your own nest so to speak but you realize that morally and socially you've got to do it. And I think that was the effect that he had in the blacks knew that so they were willing to trust him and the steelworker so to speak the hardhats knew that as well and they were willing to trust him. Well that was a funny funny point you make or the book makes that after he has killed

many of his hardhat that type supporter switched over to Wallace. You know he couldn't have been more different from journalists than anybody. Exactly. Well there's also and I still think he telephoned Charles Evers in Mississippi and asked him to come out and help in the campaign and ever said you need your own people and he said You are my people. And obviously very sincerely you know. Do you think that he would have made a good president. I think so for the reasons that I think it's awfully hard to speculate about what happens when events begin to move in a man. Whether we can keep to his convictions but I think that he was a tough enough man and. And also we talked about his sense of change. I think he would have been I think first of all I think the other thing about him is that he was would have surrounded himself with absolutely first rate people someone says in the book he had very good taste in men which is rather a nice phrase. And by that

I meant simply that his advisors although they scared him because he was nervous around them very often. He trusted I think whether remarkable people. And I think that. This combination would have made it made it made an excellent present I don't see how could it fail but. Well I would like to have seen it come about it would have certainly been something interesting to watch the funeral train portion of the book is to me a little astonishing because you would have thought there would be more sorrow on the train. I know there was a deep underlying sorrow but it was almost like a moving Irish wake wasn't it in stages a journey at least was quite a discussion about whether it was awake or not I think someone points out that there was sort of three reactions on the train. There was the the catholic of the Catholics where behaving as if it

were a waking of course to them or to many of them at any rate that the believers I guess in the tradition of the Wake Finnegan's Wake. The deceased is in heaven it's a time for rejoicing. Then there were the Protestants who whose grief was very much more pronounced sort of solemn withdrawn staring out the window is and I think the third category this mention is the was even more emotional one of the of the of the Jews of the Shiva the rending of the garments practically I remember one of them I think it is but shul Beggs wife was it was on the train said that seeing the difference and in these in the reactions of these three groups that for the first time she sincerely wished that she was Catholic. Yes you saw what tremendous strength that particular religion gives you in the face of grief and adversity in Buchwald's wife became

annoyed with the lady across from her said you are You seem very withdrawn and silent. Yes as always there was this sort of reaction and then also the tremendous contrast I mean to see this funeral train going down there people drinking bourbon and sodas and so forth and the Wake aspects of it. People talking politics. And also I think there is something of the great good nature of so many people that surrounded the made impossible for them to keep to keep grieving. And the contrast between that when you look out the window of the train and you see the extraordinary Tablo. Policeman saluting a policeman standing the middle of nowhere saluting me didn't have to be there were a little group of nuns of the roads bridesmaids from my wedding all standing there I mean some of the members seeing a girl on a horse way off in the distance. And then there was I remember there was one little family that passed they were holding a sign up and it said the good hearts are sad you know. And it was that it was too much.

So in contrast between that and somebody said to me at least the majority of the people on the tracks were black and that said his people lived along the tracks. And I remember the same some great phrases in this book by the way some marvelous phrases are the same thing happen. That same mood on the airplane flight back from Los Angeles where after this terrible experience and of course everybody. Pitched in gloom. This great Air Force One carrying the Senate as a body took off and we all sat there. The plane was full and then Ethel came through and the mood changed completely. She came around she tried to make people feel better. And finally the thing did take on an aspect of people being able to talk once again and carry on that sort of. And also there was a sense of being isolated way up in the sky. And of course it was a mood that went all the way across the country until finally we began to come down again and you saw the airport and you sort of the great crowds

out there and the waiting cars and then the mood changed back to exactly what it was the future had been sort of postponed for a while when you could get out of it and then there was the commitment again and then we came back. George what reaction have you had from from people who read it I mean people who were inside and have read it. Well of course I'm terribly prejudiced and what I would say about the reaction and I think the most extraordinary things have been the letters that have that have come in some from people I have really don't know at all just saying that they felt that this rather controversial. Characters come to light in front of their eyes may be unable to define it to divine something about him. It is a difficult person he was shy and he was a poor public speaker. He was always in the in the shadow really of his of his brother. He didn't he didn't have the glamour. He was obviously always trying to improve himself trying very hard. And as such he was a much more a person I was much more hidden. And I think through this book that personality suddenly emerges being really one that was tremendously

important in the history of this country and also it it illuminates the horror of his and his death. And so the letters are really coming in saying in a sense thank you for presenting us this extraordinary figure and yet the book is not a series of eulogies. It would be a mistake to think that there is something some hostile things as some hostile things and then I think there are some things that describe the toughness of innocent things which talk about is his friendship with Joe McCarthy and with the McClellan committee and so forth. Well the whole business of ruthlessness is explore the whole business of the danger of the charm of the Kennedys is look that a great many of these of these xpect aspects are talked about as indeed they should be because the idea in a book like that was all these mob logs. I'll have to cut it here we just just got to the end zone talking with George Plimpton who edited American Journey The Times of Robert Kennedy a beautiful book about the late senator and Bob called me from the Tribune thank you very much. Book B has been made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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