Volume 12, Number 7 · April 10, 1969
At King Lyndon's Court
By Murray Kempton
The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson
by Eric F. Goldman
Knopf, 531 pp., $8.95
Eric Goldman's account of his service as President Johnson's intellectual on per diem is dignified and manly on the whole, even though the chill has stayed in his bones and he moves still stiffly through its pages. He works hard and succeeds in convincing us that the character of the servant was better than that of the master. Yet, finally, that difference matters less to us than he could have conceived it would; the memoirs of a failed courtier must exert their claim not because of his character but because of his understanding. Saint-Simon, after all, continues to hold us not just for what was ridiculous yet not altogether ignoble in him nor even for his access to a king and his intimacy with a regent, but especially because he was shrewd as well as foolish.
Review, 4010 words
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