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#1 2007-10-09 19:34:16
- tom222222
- Member
- Posts: 277
Averell Harriman & Arthur Schlesinger
From the astonishing recently published journals of Arthur Schlesinger:
November 30, 1983: "At 3:15 I went off to Kitty Hart's to meet the Harrimans. Bill Walton (the painter and great friend of JFK) had given us a rather depressing account of Averell in advanced dilapidation, but this turned out to be an exaggeration. Soon after I arrived I heard him call "Arthur" from an inner room. This recalled at once a spring afternoon in 1948 when I was sitting in Joe Alsop's garden, and Averell was coming by. I can still remember his call in advance of his appearance. It was then he asked me to go to Paris with him and work on the Marshall Plan. He is increasingly blind, but not too blind not to notice and admire the red striped Hilditch & Key shirt I was wearing."
Clothes don't make the man, but they added a bit to the decor of men who are now legends.
My book club thread was a flop but I will keep putting this stuff up.
Last edited by tom222222 (2007-10-09 19:44:05)
#2 2007-10-09 20:10:16
- Horace
- Member
- Posts: 6433
Re: Averell Harriman & Arthur Schlesinger
I read the review in the Times and the Post. I'm going to get his 2nd vol. of memoirs ed. by his sons. I'm also encouraged by the Times review to get a good biography of Adlai Stevenson, if anyone has any recommendations.
""This is probably the last Deb season...because of the stock market, the economy, Everything..." - W. Stillman.
#3 2007-10-09 20:39:20
- tom222222
- Member
- Posts: 277
Re: Averell Harriman & Arthur Schlesinger
Schlesinger mentions favorably John Martin Barlow's 2 volume bio of Stevenson.
#4 2007-10-10 06:23:49
- Horace
- Member
- Posts: 6433
Re: Averell Harriman & Arthur Schlesinger
Thanks. I'm ordering it now.
edit: I'm also very curious to cull all of his comments on FDR. I take it he has some extended treatment of FDR?
Last edited by Horace (2007-10-10 06:24:24)
""This is probably the last Deb season...because of the stock market, the economy, Everything..." - W. Stillman.
#5 2007-10-10 19:28:55
- tom222222
- Member
- Posts: 277
Re: Averell Harriman & Arthur Schlesinger
Not so much. he spends a lot of time in the 1970s and 80s talking about writing the followup volume to the Age of Roosevelt trilogy he published in the 1940s and 50s. But he never wrote it. Most of the book is a day to day commentary on political events, social events etc. The funniest stuff is about Nixon (the worst shit of the 20th century, and now that I give it some thought, I can't think of anyone in the 19th century as bad). Of course who becomes his directly across the backyard neighbor to his NYC townhouse? Tricky Dick himself. It is the social/political history of my life.