Doris Kearns Goodwin - plagiarizer or smear victim?
The smearing of Goodwin
By Thomas Oliphant, Globe Staff, 3/3/2002
WASHINGTON
ENOUGH ALREADY.
Off the facts, Doris Kearns Goodwin plagiarized nothing 15 years ago in her
massive and definitive work, ''The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys.''
With context and perspective thrown in, as they should be, you could go back and
underline the preceding sentence a hundred times.
So what's going on?
It's less complicated than all the details would suggest. In essence, a major screwup
that was acknowledged by the author the instant it was disclosed and led to a
thorough reexamination of material by the author herself, has been given a fresh
push in the press by a scandal-monger who has sought to take advantage of her
diligence.
This rascal, a writer and semi-pro scold named Philip Nobile, offers the following
example of ''yet another'' Goodwin crime - supposedly the fleecing of some of
William Shirer's ''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'':
From Shirer about Hitler: ''Shouting and shrieking in the worst paroxysm I had ever
seen him in, he ... declared ... that in any case he would have the Sudetenland by
Oct. 1.''
And now, the alleged smoking gun from Goodwin: ''Shouting and shrieking in the
worst state of excitement correspondent Shirer had ever seen him in, he stated he
would have his Sudetenland by Oct. 1.''
Let's see. Goodwin directly attributes the description to Shirer and shows her
concern for the reader by changing paroxysm to excitement. Not noted on the
''history'' Web site where this Nobile character spread his junk is the fact that
Goodwin also footnoted the Shirer passage, one of 942 such notes in my
well-worn edition of her book.
Until a week ago, Goodwin's acknowledgement of her huge goof in handling one
secondary source for her work had pretty much been accepted because it fit the
facts and the context. The mess involved a 1983 biography of JFK sister Kathleen
by Lynne McTaggart. Goodwin listed the work, but a large number of phrases
went into her book without proper attribution, For this, she paid in a private
settlement at the time and in embarrassment when the incident was disclosed last
month.
In context, Goodwin's work is massive (1,094 pages in my edition). It is also
almost entirely based on original sources never before disclosed - including a vast
treasure of family documents and correspondence to which she alone gained
access. That point also applies, it is clear from text and footnotes alike, to her
presentation on Kathleen Kennedy's complex life and tragic death. That doesn't
diminish the seriousness of what actually happened, but it puts it in perspective and
should have put it to rest.
Last week, however, The New York Times gave the matter a push by painting a
much darker-seeming picture of ''borrowings'' that were ''far more extensive.''
Most ominous, the Times said Goodwin herself was saying she had ''failed to
acknowledge scores of quotations or close paraphrases from other authors,''
though none was cited.
That description, as I believe her own reexamination will shortly make clear, is
exaggerated in the extreme.
The article made no mention of Philip Nobile, but he is all over the blast-fax,
Internet world claiming credit, backed up by citations of similar quality to the one
above.
Here's another, also from Shirer: ''Jan Masaryk, the Czech minister, the son of the
founding father of the Czechoslovak Republic, looked on from the diplomatic
gallery, unable to believe his eyes.''
And here's Nobile's version of Goodwin's version: ''... and from his seat in the
diplomatic gallery Jan Mazaryk, the Czech Minister, the son of the founding father
of the Czechoslovak republic ... could scarcely believe what he was seeing.'' Again,
he fails to mention the footnote of attribution.
This is called collapsing a quote in my business, and in this case it is missing a bunch
of Goodwin's own words that lead to a direct, attributed quote.
The Times article also includes the strange, gratuitous observation, ''No one has
publicly accused Ms. Goodwin of copying passages in her other books, including
''No Ordinary Time.''
Apart from wondering how one ''privately'' accuses anyone, it is a fact that Nobile
has been agitating all over about this magnificent portrait of Franklin and Eleanor
Roosevelt. This has not been made ''public'' because editors have declined to
publish Nobile's flimsy and false citations.
In today's media culture, though, accusation is everything, and repetition is
confused with validity.
My dissent stems neither from friendship, nor from the fact Goodwin is an
occasional guest like me on broadcast programs, nor from our shared adoration of
the Brooklyn Dodgers. My real bias is that like millions of her admirers, I am in
awe of her ability to combine encyclopedic, documented research with profound,
readable insight.
Asserting a negative in this matter is far more a leap of knowledge and gratitude
than a leap of faith.
Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com.
This story ran on page D7 of the Boston Globe on 3/3/2002.
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