Kennedy Author Speaks Out on Goodwin

Seattle Post-Intelligencer ^ | Saturday, March 23, 2002 | JILL LAWLESS

[nickcarraway]

Kennedy Author Speaks Out on Goodwin

Saturday, March 23, 2002

Last updated at 9:57:16 AM PT

By JILL LAWLESS

ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

LONDON -- An American author claims that historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who has acknowledged inadvertently copying material from other works, actually took the "heart and guts" from her book about Kathleen Kennedy.

In her strongest statement about the dispute, Lynne McTaggart said thousands of words from her 1983 biography "Kathleen Kennedy: Her Life and Times" were copied in Goodwin's 1987 book "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys." McTaggart said passages from 91 of the 248 pages in her book appear in the Goodwin work.

Goodwin, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for history, has denied deliberate plagiarism, and her attorney said Friday that McTaggart's allegations were "preposterous."

In January, the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, reported that Goodwin had borrowed phrases from McTaggart's book and two other works for her volume on the Kennedys.

Goodwin told The Boston Globe that she had taken notes for the 900-page book and done the writing in longhand. She said she had copied from her notes rather than going back to the sources, sometimes losing track of which passages were hers and which were written by others.

It was "absolutely not" plagiarism, she said.

McTaggart and Goodwin reached a confidential settlement over the material in 1989, in which Goodwin agreed to add new footnotes and credit McTaggart more fully in new editions of the book. She also agreed to a financial settlement. McTaggart would not disclose the amount, but said it was a "substantial sum."

McTaggart said in an interview with The Associated Press last week that she was "horrified" when the story resurfaced recently. But she said she wanted to give her side because Goodwin has discussed the copying - and, McTaggart said, downplayed its extent.

In January, Goodwin told The Boston Globe that McTaggart had "sent me a letter saying not all the passages that relied on her work had been as fully footnoted as she would have liked."

"It has been suggested that it was just a lack of a few footnotes," McTaggart told AP. "It's not just a few footnotes. If it had been just a few footnotes, I wouldn't have bothered.

"They have copied passages appearing on 91 of the 248 pages of my book," she said, "and at least 45 of 94 pages of Goodwin's book that discuss Kathleen Kennedy contain my material."

Goodwin's lawyer, Michael Nussbaum, denied the allegations.

"It is preposterous for McTaggart to say that Goodwin copied 'thousands of words' from McTaggart or that Goodwin ... took the 'heart and guts' from McTaggart's work," Nussbaum said Friday.

He added that the 1989 settlement between the two authors had not been "an admission or evidence of liability or wrongdoing" on Goodwin's part.

A comparison of the two books reveals more than 140 examples of passages - ranging from phrases to paragraphs - that bear a striking similarity to each other.

For example, McTaggart writes: "At country house weekends the imminence of war was discussed with a certain detachment, as though it were merely a topic of intellectual interest."

The original edition of Goodwin's book reads: "During weekends at country houses, the imminence of war was discussed with a certain detachment, as though it were merely a topic of intellectual interest."

The two books share dozens of descriptions and turns of phrase. McTaggart describes one figure as "outspoken, responsive and effervescent." Goodwin says she is "outspoken, warm and effervescent." In both books, Kathleen is "blindly, recklessly in love."

"The modus operandi seemed to be using a lot of the same words but just shuffling them around a little bit," McTaggart said. "It's just cut and paste."

McTaggart, who runs a London-based publishing company specializing in medical issues, said Goodwin's lawyers settled "within days" after receiving her complaint of copyright infringement in 1989.

"If somebody takes a third of somebody's book, which is what happened to me, they are lifting out the heart and guts of somebody else's individual expression," said McTaggart, who says she interviewed more than 100 people for her Kennedy book.

Last month Goodwin admitted that what she called her accidental borrowing was far more extensive than she had indicated, and said her researchers had found scores of additional quotations and paraphrases in the Kennedy book that came from other authors. She also announced that publisher Simon & Schuster planned to destroy remaining paperback copies of the book and reissue a corrected version.

Goodwin, 59, has seen her career suffer since the disclosures. She has taken indefinite leave from her job as a pundit on PBS's "Newshour with Jim Lehrer," withdrawn from this year's Pulitzer Prize judging panel and seen some speaking engagements canceled.

McTaggart said she had no plans to take further action and only wanted to set the record straight.

She said it was "right and proper to pulp the book," but she also said Goodwin did extensive research and uncovered much new material for her book on the Kennedys.

"People are entitled to make a mistake and learn from it," McTaggart said. "She has been so publicly humiliated by this I think it's time people put this behind them and forgave her.

"It doesn't diminish the good aspects of the book," she added. "(Goodwin's) work is an important contribution to the Kennedy literature."

[SMEDLEYBUTLER]

Maybe Doris can get a job writing for Joe Biden.

[gusopol3]

but she can't appear at the university in his state--one of the cancelled speaking engagements was the commencement at the University of Delaware

[gatex]

"It was 'absolutely not' plagiarism, she said."

Tim Russert says he wants to have Goodwin and Bill Clinton on his program to discuss the definitions of words.