The national fascination with what goes on in Washington is of long standing and shows no sign of going out of fashion. No longer a sleepy Southern town, the District of Columbia and its surrounding suburbs of necessity entertain and beguile a transient community of politicians, consultants, diplomats, journalists, and hangers-on. These newcomers arrive not quite sure of what to expect; they thrive for a little or for longer as their ambition and skills may decide; and they retire, honored or not, into the background against which new stars will, in their turn, seek to shine.

And in retirement, as often as not, they turn to writing their memoirs. Harry Truman, the first of a number of long-lived ex-presidents, more or less established a new tradition of presidential memoirs, and sales of his volumes were such that publishers have little trouble in attracting new authors once they are safely out of office. And lesser Washington lights, too, even without the prospect of huge advances, eagerly offer up for the benefit of all what insights their careers have brought them. Wordsworthians all, they express in a selection of language really used by men those thoughts and ideas that take their origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.

But Washington is an issues town, too, and the tide of literary creation does not always wait for retirement. The Cold War, and especially the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, proved fertile indeed for the creation of books by those in a position to know. Nor were domestic social issues unproductive, as the record fully shows. Nor indeed was any issue on which might be centered the ebb and flow of the political process, for the national desire to know more fully the truth of one's own assumptions or the folly of the other fellow's operates quite independently of substantive basis. Whatever the result in the political arena, these special pleaders, like Shelley, seek to be the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

There is more to literary Washington, of course, than memoirs and issue books; but these are the meat and potatoes of the local literary cuisine, and it is on these that this exhibit focusses. A stray flower of poetry has been included, as have been some minor presidential writings, regardless of subject, largely for the fact that these have been significantly inscribed by their authors. And from these, and the other inscriptions recorded in the catalog, we learn something about the relative density of the local literary community.

The recipients of 70 of the 78 books in the exhibit can be identified. Of these, 20 qualify as "Washington insiders," and they were given 34 of the titles by their proud authors. Another 29 recipients, not nearly so well connected, were given 36 titles; and, admittedly, some few of these were people with Georgetown connections, and one was this library itself. But these are quibbles. The list of recipients is almost as impressive as the list of authors, including such notables as Francis Biddle, Arthur Burns, Champ Clark, William Colby, Daniel Ellsberg, and Harry Hopkins, not to mention media folk like Bill Downs and Neil MacNeil.

No apology need be made for a list of authors that includes nine presidents: Carter, Coolidge, Eisenhower, Ford, Hoover, Kennedy, both Roosevelts, and Truman, as well as three first ladies: Lady Bird Johnson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Edith Bolling Wilson. Then too, not all of the books were presented by their authors, or solely by their authors, and the list of those who have added their inscriptions to titles written wholly or in large measure by others includes such worthies (besides Eisenhower) as Dean Acheson, Spiro T. Agnew, J. Edgar Hoover, Nelson Rockefeller, and Harry Truman.

The books in this exhibit have, with only a very few exceptions, come to the library since 1970 as gifts, and Georgetown owes a debt of gratitude to all those whose generosity has made the exhibit possible. The careful viewer will find much to delight and to instruct, and hopefully, as Don Whitehead said of Bill and Roz Downs, to provide a solid guarantee against boredom, bombast and bad bourbon.

George M. Barringer
Assistant University Librarian, Special Collections & Archives