November 16, 2013
Five things about End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy by James L. Swanson
1. As I writer I do not know how I would feel about someone saying this about me, but Swanson is the master of the assassination book. Given that I am somehow drawn to read about both Lincoln and Kennedy's assassinations I would think I would take it as a complement as a writer. I read Swanson's book on the Lincoln assassination a few years ago. Actually I read it when my wife and I were on our honeymoon. At the same time that I was reading about the Lincoln assassination she was reading The Devil Wears Prada. No doubt psychologists would have something insightful to say about our marriage based our honeymoon reading choices.
2. I really appreciated the lack of mythologizing in the book. Kennedy's life and death have been so overly dramatized at this point, due in large part to the efforts of Jackie Kennedy, that it was good to read a well-written book that focused more on the actually story than the mythical implications of the story.
3. It is always interesting to think about what a book makes me Google. End of Days had me researching the name Inga Arvad. JFK's propensity for illicit affairs is well-known. I did not know one of them during WW2 included a woman who might have been a Nazi spy.
4. As I mentioned earlier my views on the perpetrators of the Kennedy assassination have shifted as I have grown older. I loved the fact that Swanson decided to tell a story without trying to throw up a yield sign every time it was possible that something could have pointed to a conspiracy. As I read the book I was struck by how much incompetence (Secret Service, Dallas Police Department) can look like a conspiracy. Here is Swanson's own summary of his beliefs about a conspiracy from the book's epilogue:
Some of the theories rely on falsified evidence. Others are based on lies. Some theorists believe the same master conspiracy behind the Kennedy assassination controls other important and nefarious events in American life, including other subsequent assassinations. But all of the theories have one thing in common. They reject the proven role that chance, luck, randomness, coincidence, or mistake have played in human history for thousands of years. To them, there are no accidents in life. Everything that happens can be explained by conspiracy. Just as the conspiracy theorists have questioned everything about the assassination, so must a reader question their writings with equal skepticism. Today we know much more about the assassination of President Kennedy than the members of the Warren Commission did. More information and sophisticated advances in science and technology have illuminated the crime and its evidence in new ways. No one, after all these years, has yet disproved the key conclusion of the Warren Commission: Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin and he acted alone. Indeed, in the future —fifty or one hundred years from now— it is more likely that the discovery of any new evidence, along with further scientific advances, will only strengthen the case against Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gunman.*
5. There was one particular place in the book that was a bit of a tearjerker, and it is probably a good place to end. It is easy to think about someone like Kennedy and to remember everything but that he was a father to young children. Robert McNamara was the Secretary of Defense under JFK. After the assassination Jackie Kennedy and her children moved out of the White House. McNamara and his wife had been close to the Kennedy family which led to this story from the book:
On December 11, 1963, the McNamaras sent over a gift to Jackie at the Harriman house. It was an oil painting of the president by the artist Charles Fox. When Jackie unwrapped it, she was shocked. She did not want it. It was not an issue of whether or not she liked it. She could not bear to look at it. It was too painful. She sent a handwritten note asking forgiveness for declining a gift “from the man in his cabinet who gave the most (as much as Jack’s own brother Bobby gave)” to JFK. Jackie explained : “I am in a strange locking of horns where I am sure the Secretary of Defense and his wife can outwit me. PLEASE I don’t want you to give anything more for Jack— you gave him all— and my consolation is that he will be remembered as great— because of Bob McNamara.” Jackie confided that she could not even bear to display photographs of her husband. “The only photograph I have here of Jack is where his back is turned.” She did not hang the oil painting. The picture was on the floor, “propped up against the wall at the little study outside my bedroom. Tonight John came out of my bedroom with a lollipop in his mouth. The picture I love was right in his way— and he took the lollipop out and kissed the picture and said Goodnight Daddy.” That broke her heart. Jackie warned the secretary of defense, “Mr. Fox may find sugary imprints he never painted in, on that picture, but you see why we could never bear to have it near us— it brings to the surface too many things.” Jackie suggested that the McNamaras take back the painting and donate it to the Kennedy Library several years down the road, after the institution was built. “So if you wish to give it to the Library and keep it till then, it would be such an honor— but what I would love most of all— is if both of you who have given so much would give nothing more— except your friendship always.”**
*Swanson, James L. (2013-11-12). End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy (pp. 296-297). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
**Swanson, James L. (2013-11-12). End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy (pp. 274-275). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
1. As I writer I do not know how I would feel about someone saying this about me, but Swanson is the master of the assassination book. Given that I am somehow drawn to read about both Lincoln and Kennedy's assassinations I would think I would take it as a complement as a writer. I read Swanson's book on the Lincoln assassination a few years ago. Actually I read it when my wife and I were on our honeymoon. At the same time that I was reading about the Lincoln assassination she was reading The Devil Wears Prada. No doubt psychologists would have something insightful to say about our marriage based our honeymoon reading choices.
2. I really appreciated the lack of mythologizing in the book. Kennedy's life and death have been so overly dramatized at this point, due in large part to the efforts of Jackie Kennedy, that it was good to read a well-written book that focused more on the actually story than the mythical implications of the story.
3. It is always interesting to think about what a book makes me Google. End of Days had me researching the name Inga Arvad. JFK's propensity for illicit affairs is well-known. I did not know one of them during WW2 included a woman who might have been a Nazi spy.
4. As I mentioned earlier my views on the perpetrators of the Kennedy assassination have shifted as I have grown older. I loved the fact that Swanson decided to tell a story without trying to throw up a yield sign every time it was possible that something could have pointed to a conspiracy. As I read the book I was struck by how much incompetence (Secret Service, Dallas Police Department) can look like a conspiracy. Here is Swanson's own summary of his beliefs about a conspiracy from the book's epilogue:
Some of the theories rely on falsified evidence. Others are based on lies. Some theorists believe the same master conspiracy behind the Kennedy assassination controls other important and nefarious events in American life, including other subsequent assassinations. But all of the theories have one thing in common. They reject the proven role that chance, luck, randomness, coincidence, or mistake have played in human history for thousands of years. To them, there are no accidents in life. Everything that happens can be explained by conspiracy. Just as the conspiracy theorists have questioned everything about the assassination, so must a reader question their writings with equal skepticism. Today we know much more about the assassination of President Kennedy than the members of the Warren Commission did. More information and sophisticated advances in science and technology have illuminated the crime and its evidence in new ways. No one, after all these years, has yet disproved the key conclusion of the Warren Commission: Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin and he acted alone. Indeed, in the future —fifty or one hundred years from now— it is more likely that the discovery of any new evidence, along with further scientific advances, will only strengthen the case against Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gunman.*
5. There was one particular place in the book that was a bit of a tearjerker, and it is probably a good place to end. It is easy to think about someone like Kennedy and to remember everything but that he was a father to young children. Robert McNamara was the Secretary of Defense under JFK. After the assassination Jackie Kennedy and her children moved out of the White House. McNamara and his wife had been close to the Kennedy family which led to this story from the book:
On December 11, 1963, the McNamaras sent over a gift to Jackie at the Harriman house. It was an oil painting of the president by the artist Charles Fox. When Jackie unwrapped it, she was shocked. She did not want it. It was not an issue of whether or not she liked it. She could not bear to look at it. It was too painful. She sent a handwritten note asking forgiveness for declining a gift “from the man in his cabinet who gave the most (as much as Jack’s own brother Bobby gave)” to JFK. Jackie explained : “I am in a strange locking of horns where I am sure the Secretary of Defense and his wife can outwit me. PLEASE I don’t want you to give anything more for Jack— you gave him all— and my consolation is that he will be remembered as great— because of Bob McNamara.” Jackie confided that she could not even bear to display photographs of her husband. “The only photograph I have here of Jack is where his back is turned.” She did not hang the oil painting. The picture was on the floor, “propped up against the wall at the little study outside my bedroom. Tonight John came out of my bedroom with a lollipop in his mouth. The picture I love was right in his way— and he took the lollipop out and kissed the picture and said Goodnight Daddy.” That broke her heart. Jackie warned the secretary of defense, “Mr. Fox may find sugary imprints he never painted in, on that picture, but you see why we could never bear to have it near us— it brings to the surface too many things.” Jackie suggested that the McNamaras take back the painting and donate it to the Kennedy Library several years down the road, after the institution was built. “So if you wish to give it to the Library and keep it till then, it would be such an honor— but what I would love most of all— is if both of you who have given so much would give nothing more— except your friendship always.”**
*Swanson, James L. (2013-11-12). End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy (pp. 296-297). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
**Swanson, James L. (2013-11-12). End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy (pp. 274-275). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.