Doris Kearns Goodwin Interview (page: 9 / 9) Pulitzer Prize for History	Print Interview

What do you consider your greatest achievement in your writing, up to this point?

Doris Kearns Goodwin: I think, in terms of writing, I feel best about the book on Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, particularly the fact that people who lived through that era, who are now seeing their 70s or 80s, have written to me by the thousands and said that somehow it made them understand the era through which they lived. Even when you've lived through an era, you're only seeing a part of it, understandably. It's been a wonderful feeling to hear from them that I've given them an understanding of what was happening in the home front as a whole, so that they feel their sense of their own life has been enriched. That means even more than the next generations who never experienced it, because that I've been used to. That's what you do when you write history. Mostly it is for people who didn't live through it. This has been a special thing that I've never experienced before.

When you speak to someone, as you mentioned earlier, who says, "I was at that meeting with FDR," or "I was there when Kennedy said this and that," is that exciting for you, to actually be speaking to someone who lived part of the history which you feel so strongly about?

Doris Kearns Goodwin: Oh absolutely. One of the pleasures in doing the Roosevelt books was that I got to meet two of the Roosevelt children before they died. There were five Roosevelt children; Jimmy and Elliot, two of the older boys, did die in the middle of my writing the book, but I met them at the beginning. And then, I've met the whole generation of their children -- there are like 40 young Roosevelts -- at a picnic, where they had me come and speak to them. You know that they have all these memories; that they knew their father, their grandfather.

Even now, when I go places sometimes, some woman will come up to me and say, "I saw Eleanor Roosevelt." I never saw Eleanor Roosevelt, so there's that great feeling of, "Oh, you're so lucky. Tell me everything about it." You want to hear everything about it, because they can teach you even more. Sometimes you'll say, "Oh, I wish I knew that before." Somebody will tell you a great story that -- if you could have included it -- but again, the book has to end at some point. If you want to absorb everything like a vacuum you'll never finish these things. So I've learned to not say, "Oh, this is horrible that I didn't know this before," But just say, "Oh, this is great; I know it now."

What do you think was your most valuable educational experience?

Doris Kearns Goodwin: I think interviewing the people who either knew one of the characters, or knew somebody who knew them, is probably one of the great sources. You learn so much from interviewing other people. It also makes the process of writing much less lonely than it would otherwise be, because I had to go out a lot during the period of writing and meet with these people. If you interview five people about the same incident, and you see five different points of view, it makes you know what makes history so complicated. Something doesn't just occur. It's not like a scientific event. It's a human event. So the dimensions of it will be seen differently by different people. So the value that I found in interviewing was for an educational experience, just to know that history itself is subjective, that you can't say, "It happened." Do the best you can with what you think happened, but a lot of other people are going to see it happening differently.

What do you say to young people who want to follow in your footsteps?

Doris Kearns Goodwin: The most important thing, the greatest reward I feel, is that I love getting up in the morning, going into my study and knowing that this profession that I've chosen is one that is open-ended, that I can keep learning. I keep thinking, I can still do it when I'm 90 years old. Unless some mental infirmity comes about, even if I can't walk anymore, I could still sit there reading.

There are a lot of other things I might have done and enjoyed. I might have liked to be a lawyer, I might have liked to be a public servant. So it's not as if there's only one thing meant for each person. Once you've gone down a path and you've gotten a certain confidence in it, and a certain love in it, the love really deepens over time. I love being in a story now even more than I did 20 years ago. So I think the most important advice is, a person doesn't have to find out right away. It's not like their first attempt at finding a profession is the only one they're going to find. I might well have gone down other paths, and it still might have been okay. But if you find something that you love, and if it keeps deepening with each new experience, then just stay with it.

If I could produce another three or four books on presidents before I die, that's all I'd ask, maybe even two. It doesn't have to be 25 books, because they take me five or ten years. There's no way that I'd be able to do that. But it isn't even the book in the end. It's knowing that every day I like what I'm doing, and I feel like I'm learning something new. I can talk about it to people and enjoy it. It's knowing I can share it, both in lectures and in the books themselves, that makes it so worthwhile.

What is the place of integrity in your line of work, as you see it?

Doris Kearns Goodwin: When I look at what a writer owes to the reader, it's critical to know that everything you're writing about is not made up in your head.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. You don't sort of imagine what somebody might have thought at a certain moment. Some writers feel like it's okay to just sort of go in the heads of their subjects and make it up. I feel that unless you can document and be certain about what it is that you're writing about, the reader is going to lose faith in your own integrity. So I try to make it come alive as much as possible by endless research, so I know what the room looked like when the person was in there. If somebody interviewed a person, or a diary entry said what they said at a meeting, I can record that. I think my integrity depends upon not stretching over that line that separates non-fiction from fiction, as too many non-fiction writers are doing nowadays. They make it seem like a novel, rather than actual non-fiction.

[ Key to Success ] Integrity

Any other final thoughts?

I think you've done it.

Thank you. We appreciate it very much.

You're very welcome.

Doris Kearns Goodwin Interview, Page: 1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9