Booknotes

DORIE MCCULLOUGH LAWSON, AUTHOR, "POSTERITY: LETTERS OF GREAT AMERICANS TO THEIR CHILDREN": "Posterity" is a collection of letters from great Americans to their children. And the letters go from 1664 all the way up to 1998.

LAWSON: I did it because I am a reader of biography, and I -- whenever I`m reading biography, I love the parts about family and I love the letters. And I had read a collection of N.C. Wyeth's letters and Theodore Roosevelt`s letters. And when I had my own children, it was a book that I wanted to read. Thought, Oh, I wonder what other great Americans have written to their children, and I wanted to read those letters and I couldn`t find it.

And at first, I wanted my father to do the book. My father is the historian David McCullough. And I thought that it was a good book for him to do because I wanted to read it. And he loved the idea. But I realized after a while -- he thought it was a terrific idea, but he wasn`t going to do it. So I went to work on it myself.

LAWSON: I first began by compiling a big list of great Americans, hundreds of people. And it`s amazing that -- then I started to look to see who had children and who didn`t. And it`s amazing to see how many great Americans didn`t have children, and that cut the list down very quickly. Then I began looking at those who did have children, whether there were collections of letters that were available, and just kind of cut the list down and down and down until I had approximately 3,000 letters that I read. And then I chose my favorites.

LAWSON: It took me three-and-a-half years.

LAWSON: Well, there is something -- a reference book -- a series of reference books called "The Dictionary of American Biography," and all notable Americans through history, many notable Americans through history are in that reference book. And at the end of each entry, it tells you where the collection of their papers is held. So it was a question of tracking them down at libraries and archives and universities. Then I also had contacts with some of the families directly. Sometimes letters were sent to me. People heard about the project and people would send me some pieces. And that`s how I did it.

LAWSON: Yes. Mike Hill is a researcher, and I hired Mike to help me. He did a lot of the roadwork. He was out, going around making copies of letters. And he would send me enormous binders, Here are all of the letters of John Dewey to his children. Here are all the Laura Ingalls Wilder Letters. And he did most of the travel.

LAWSON: They are 7, 4 and 9 months.

LAWSON: That`s why I didn`t travel. (LAUGHTER)

LAWSON: Roughly 100.

LAWSON: The one letter? All right...

LAWSON: Wow. Well, I think that each child is different, so it may be a different letter for each child. For my daughter, I think the W.E.B. Dubois letter to his daughter is one of the most poignant pieces in the book.

LAWSON: Yes. No, that`s Frederick Douglass. This...

LAWSON: This is to Yolande.

LAWSON: And it`s a letter telling her what he expects out of her, and also to have faith in herself, and that he expects her to be a wonderful woman. It`s a terrific letter.

LAWSON: She was 14 years old, and she had just gone to England to go to a boarding school. It was a privilege for her to attend.

LAWSON: Because of her -- her family and that she was able to -- he was able to provide her with this opportunity. But he does -- he goes on to tell her what he expects her to do, to take herself in hand and do hard things while she`s there, read for discipline, work hard, enjoy it. And he says, too, that it`s the you beneath the skin that matters.

LAWSON: Right. Exactly.

LAWSON: She`s 7. Have you read her this? Have you read her any of these, by the way?

LAWSON: Yes, I have. I`ve read them quite a few of the letters. They love Alexander Graham Bell`s letter to his daughters. Alexander Graham Bell wrote a letter to his daughters about a trip he was on, and he sends -- he had seen a stingray, and he sends his daughters the lips of the stingray and the tail. And he sends them through the mail. And he was a wonderful educator of children and an educator of the deaf. But in teaching children, he felt strongly that they should learn by doing. And here`s this example of him -- he wants his children to see what a stingray looks like, and he puts it in the mail to them.

LAWSON: Yes.

LAWSON: No. What page?

LAWSON: Oh, the corny jokes?

LAWSON: Yes. What was the point of the jokes?

LAWSON: He was very busy crunching numbers, so to speak, working on data that had to do with genetics and the deaf. I think that it really was a break from his work. And he loved corny jokes, and he sat down and took a break from his work and sent her these jokes. And I included it in the book because they are so corny, and to see this incredible scientist and inventor, that he would spend the time to send this to his daughter I thought was hysterical.

LAWSON: Yes.

LAWSON: His -- I don`t -- his hearing, I`m not sure. But she was completely deaf, and he was an educator of the deaf. And his father was, as well.

LAWSON: Yes. Yes.

LAWSON: "The Queen of Holland`s latest remark to her husband -- `Is my crown on straight?` "

LAWSON: "Why is a pretty girl like a mirror? Because she is a good looking lass."

LAWSON: "Why is a stick of candy like a horse? The more you lick it, the faster it goes."

LAWSON: Corny. Corny, corny.

LAWSON: Yes, he`s telling stories and about things that he`s read. And it really seems to be sort of a release for him to sit down and write to her.

LAWSON: Who wrote the most?

LAWSON: Theodore Roosevelt wrote all the time to his children. Ansel Adams writes a lot to his children. Frederick Law Olmsted, over his entire life, writes to his children in such a wide range. I mean, there`s some very funny letters that he writes, and then also some of, I think, the most touching letters in the book, toward the end of his life.

LAWSON: Some are very mean. Jack London`s letters are shocking. They`re just so, so cruel.

LAWSON: OK.

LAWSON: Jack London was a writer. His most famous short story was "Call of the Wild." It`s the short story that sold the most of any short story. What was the page?

LAWSON: Oh, 181.

LAWSON: Really?

LAWSON: I don`t know why it would be for him, but it`s -- his work is very adventurous and manly and carries you right through. He`s -- but to his daughters, he`s just so cruel. And I think that these letters are an example, also -- often, a parent, when they`re -- in writing to their child, is writing to themselves, I think. And in these letters, I think that he really -- he`s addressed the letter to his daughter and he`s sending it to his 12-year-old daughter, but he`s really aiming the letters at his ex-wife, who he`s not -- whom he`s not too fond of.

LAWSON: OK.

LAWSON: Yes.

LAWSON: I`ll put them on.

LAWSON: Here we go. Thank you. "Glen Ellen, August 24, 1913. Dear Joan, I feel too miserable to write this at my desk. I`m sitting up in bed to write it. First, please remember that I am your father. I have fed you, clothed you and housed you and loved you since the moment you first drew breath. I have all of a father`s heart of love for you.

"And now we come to brass tacks. What have you done for me in all of the days of your life? What do you feel for me? Am I merely your meal ticket? Do you look upon me merely as a creature of whim or fancy or fantasy that compels him to care for you and take care of you? Because he is a fool who gives much and receives -- well, receives nothing.

"Please answer the forgoing questions. I want to know how I stand with you. You have your dreams of education. I try to give you the best of my wisdom. You write me about the demands of the U.C. in relation to selection of high school courses, I reply, one by telegram, two, by letter, and I received no word from you. Am I dirt under your feet? Am I beneath your contempt in every way, save as a meal ticket? Do you love me at all? What do I mean to you?"

LAWSON: I would have to find out as much as I could about what was happening, and I often would do that through -- in this case, I would do that through biographies and other collections of letters. Jack London`s letters have been edited very well, with notes telling you about what was happening to his life -- in his life at that time. But each one did require quite a bit of digging, some more than others, to find out what the story was.

LAWSON: My mother. She did.

LAWSON: Yes, I`ve kept them. We now all talk on the phone all the time, so I don`t have many recent letters from her. But no letters from my father. People ask me that all the time, but there really aren`t any.

LAWSON: She would write just kind of regular letters about what was going on day to day.

LAWSON: I would in college or -- probably through college, and then it stopped because we had talked -- had started talking on the telephone more. Long distance became much less expensive, so...

LAWSON: I went to Middlebury College.

LAWSON: Vermont.

LAWSON: Yes.

LAWSON: Oh, my whole life. My father started writing history before I was born. His first book came out the year before I was born. So history was just a part of life for us. And I`m the youngest of five children. And at the dinner table every night we would talk about our days, and then we would hear what was going on in the building of the Brooklyn Bridge or what was going on in the Panama Canal that day in Dad`s work. So I really have had it with me all my life.

LAWSON: My sister, Melissa, is the oldest. She`s a mother of three children. By brother, David, is a teacher. He teaches English. And my brother, Billy, who`s a carpenter. And my brother, Geoff, is a lawyer.

LAWSON: For 12 years.

LAWSON: I`m a lecture agent. And I started when Dad`s book "Truman" came out. I was headed to medical school. And the book came out, and he`d been working on it for 10 years, and it was kind of a dream for all of us to have it hit the way that it did. And I decided I would defer from medical school for a year and help with what needed to be done. And during the course of that year, I realized that there was a business there, being a lecture agent. And so I didn`t go to medical school and started a lecture agency. And that`s what I do.

LAWSON: I live in Rockport, Maine.

LAWSON: I represent about eight people.

LAWSON: All writers and all terrific speakers.

LAWSON: Sure. Sure. I can. I represent Michael Beschloss and Frank McCourt, Nathaniel Philbrick, Evan Thomas, David Shribman and Richard Norton Smith.

LAWSON: I do everything from finding places for speakers to speak, to negotiating the fees, to determining what kinds of topics they`ll talk about in their speech. And then we do all the nitty-gritty logistics minute by minute. This is who`s picking you up. This is where you`re staying. And then the follow-up.

LAWSON: Yes.

LAWSON: Oh, I think it`s increased, and it`s because there are many, many more agencies like mine because the demand is much more. People love to hear the real person. They love to see them. They love to shake their hand. There`s nothing like it. So I think that it`s increased tremendously.

LAWSON: There really -- there isn`t an average. I mean, sometimes an event will be as small as 20 people. This weekend, we just -- we`re working on an event where there were 24,000. It goes all over. But maybe the average would probably be somewhere in the 500-to-2,500 range, I would guess.

LAWSON: It entirely depends on the person.

LAWSON: The most of the people I have represented would be 70 speeches a year.

LAWSON: Oh, a quarter, maybe. There are corporate audiences, college audiences, celebrity speaker series, subscriber-based series. And then sometimes there`ll be an unusual event, like a real estate developer that`s built a new building, and they want to get prominent people into the building just to see what it looks like, so they have a speaker come and have a lunch, and everyone thinks they`re coming to see the speaker, which they are, but they`re also seeing this terrific, beautiful new building that`s been built.

LAWSON: Oh, speakers I represent -- and these are my speakers -- we all know that the fees get astronomical -- would be, oh, between $5,000 and $50,000.

LAWSON: Well, I haven`t studied the speaking industry`s history. But I do know in the book -- one of my favorite letters in the book is Elizabeth Cady Stanton writing to her daughter. And she`s on the road, giving speeches. She gives two a day. And it`s a terrific description of what her life on the road was like.

And it`s not that different, I don`t think, than life on the road for speakers now. The hard part is the travel. It`s the getting there. And it`s the receptions and the dinners around the -- that surround the speech. That`s the part that tires people out and drains them. And in the book, Elizabeth Cady Stanton`s letter describing her trip, although much more arduous, is the same feeling that she has.

LAWSON: I did notice that. And it just seems to be -- it was not my intention -- I wasn`t looking for that, but it was a big part of the lives of people. And there are quite a few.

LAWSON: Yes.

LAWSON: He was a naval historian, and he was the first person who really brought to the attention of the country that in order for us to be powerful, we really had to command the seas.

LAWSON: Oh, thank you

LAWSON: I don`t.

LAWSON: Well, she was having trouble attaching to people. And he -- it was a sentiment that he had felt in himself, that he often felt detached from other people. And it`s a case of, "Do as I say, not as I do." He`s telling her she can do better than he has and that she really -- that indifference is something that she should shy away from as much as possible. She needs to feel and she needs to be attached. And sometimes people find -- they act like that detachment is a strength. And he`s telling her, No, it`s really a weakness, and you`ve got to work on it.

LAWSON: Yes. I think I have known some people indifferent to others.

LAWSON: Well, you can just see that their -- their level of emotion, their reaction to events in their lives, whether they`re terrific or terrible, all sort of stay at about the same level, same pace.

LAWSON: Yes.

LAWSON: He was a playwright. He won the Pulitzer Prize four times, the Nobel Prize.

LAWSON: We have a number of letters from him in the book. And I think -- I think they`re terrific. I love to see the writers, particularly, writing off-stage, to see -- where they`re not doing something for publication, and to see how they write to their children.

LAWSON: Right.

LAWSON: Because I thought it was such an unusual piece of advice. You often have parents who want their child to bring them in on their love affairs. If this is serious, let me meet this person, let this person become a part of our lives. And here, Eugene O`Neill, who really has not -- did not have much success with marriage and love is telling his son, If you want this to work with this woman, forget it. Don`t bring her near us, or you`ll have trouble with your love or with your family or both.

And he also is concerned that if the son brings the girlfriend to visit, that he and the son might have some troubles, and he doesn`t want to risk that. They have -- it`s been a distant relationship, but it`s been working very well for some years, and it seems that Eugene O`Neill, the father, isn`t willing to risk that by having the girlfriend come visit.

LAWSON: OK. "Keep your love affairs free from all relatives and their homes if you want to avoid complications with your love or with your relatives or both. Why run the risk with your love of forcing it into human interrelationships where you never can foretell what the answer may be? For example, how do you know Betty would like me or Carlotta, or that we would like her? You may say you know, but that is only because you feel affection for all concerned. And if one dislike crept into this combination, then all the slumbering prejudices would awake and the complications would start and spread."

LAWSON: Right. And I think that they`re just showing the confidentiality of the letter and this is really coming from them. They`re not writing on behalf of somebody else`s wishes.

This letter is interesting, too, because Eugene O`Neill -- his first wife, this boy`s mother -- he felt -- and it really was true -- that the two of them were together and they were torn apart by their two families. They may or may not have lasted, but he had experienced that firsthand with the boy`s mother.

LAWSON: Oh, I kept them away until I got a really good one. I really -- I did keep them away. And my brothers would -- were older and very, very protective, and would answer the phone, and if ever it was a boy, they would say, Are you an upstanding young man? And no one would want to come around my house. I kept them away.

LAWSON: I met my husband on a blind date in Wyoming.

LAWSON: Eleven.

LAWSON: Well, that was a kind of an old-fashioned and unusual thing. I was on a blind date, and my parents happened to be there, too. We all met at the same time. So I didn`t have to go through it, and I could see they liked him. And I liked him, and it worked out.

LAWSON: He`s not. He`s a painter.

LAWSON: I don`t.

LAWSON: I don`t. I`m a product of...

LAWSON: I`m a product of this time. I write some letters, but I`m not -- I think we all write letters, but some people are letter writers. I`m not a letter writer.

LAWSON: Yes.

LAWSON: I did. Because I think that it`s different. It`s -- we all kind of sit and type e-mails. I don`t think it`s as thoughtful as letter writing. And I just think they`re two different mediums, two different things. I really wanted this to be a book of letters.

LAWSON: Yes. He does. But I think -- at first -- when I first read that letter, that was what jumped out at me. And at the beginning of each letter, I pull -- at the beginning of each entry in the book, I pull a quote that I feel is the most important piece in that letter, that I want to highlight. And at first, the line that you mention about tough and strong like me, was the line that I pulled because that`s what jumped out at me. And I thought, Wow, this is something.

But then as I got to know the letter more, I realized that he does wish that the son is tough and strong like him, yet he`s so tolerant of the way that the son is. They`re different people, and he respects that the son is different. And he suggests that the -- that his son -- he says, "I can work all the time, but you`ll probably only be able to work five hours a day, just because of the way you`re made up. But you might have a much better life than I do." And then he says, "If you feel the blues coming on, get a book and a glass of wine."

And I thought that it was really a very understanding and encouraging letter, after all, when, at first, it jumped out at me as an egotistical slam.

LAWSON: Yes.

LAWSON: Yes.

LAWSON: Sherwood Anderson was a writer, and his most well-known book that we all know is "Winesburg, Ohio." And I mention -- Dad mentions him in his foreword because he particularly liked what he said about painting and about work. Sherwood Anderson writes to his son, who`s studying painting, and gives him -- and Sherwood Anderson also painted, too, so he knew about painting. But he`s giving his son ideas about the way that one should paint and that it should really come from your heart. You shouldn`t be doing it to -- you shouldn`t be painting for the end result. And you should -- he says, "Be humble. Smartness kills everything."

He`s telling his son how to paint, but really, it`s about how to live. That`s the letter that Dad chooses. The line that I pulled out, that I think is something -- that -- really, what the whole book is about, is Sherwood Anderson has a line in his letter, and it`s in the middle of a lot of things. It`s just one little phrase, but it jumped off the page at me. He says, "My heart is set on you." And I think that that`s the essence of what this is. No matter what your relationship is with your parents or with your child, if you`re a good mother or father or a wonderful -- or a terrible mother or father, or a child that`s troubled or a successful child, your heart is set on that person in a way that it isn`t on anybody else. And when he says, "My heart is set on you," I think that that`s -- that`s what it is.

LAWSON: Well, he`s getting that if you are a business person just aiming at getting money, it doesn`t mean much. You`re not going to have the fulfillment that you will if you love your work and are working from the heart.

LAWSON: Yes.

LAWSON: I did want to be a doctor, but I didn`t have -- and I wanted to be a doctor enough to get to that point that I was headed that way and going to be in medical school. But I wasn`t -- I didn`t feel it in my gut that that`s the only thing I wanted to do, that I knew that that`s what I wanted to do. And I had a lot of things I wanted to do, and I felt that it might not be the right thing for me to do, but it seemed -- it seemed pretty safe in a way -- an easier thing for me to do, because there was a track. I knew how to do it. And I think at that age, at 20, 21, that track looked pretty appealing instead of just, what am I going to do.

LAWSON: Maybe. I`m still very interested in it. I may. I doubt it. But I have illusions that I may.

LAWSON: Oh, the toughest thing is -- there really isn`t that much that`s tough because I love the people that I work with. So there`s very little that`s tough. The toughest thing, probably, is middle of the winter, a snowstorm comes, somebody is supposed to be on a flight, may or may not make it, and you get the phone call at five in the morning, how are we going to rearrange all this? But that`s not very tough.

LAWSON: Probably one of the -- the hard things that happens, which is just a matter of logistics, is if ever somebody is not in the place they say they are going to be and someone arrives and there is time lost, because usually it`s quite orchestrated and tight. So that logistical kinds of things, because these people who are going to speak, they`re professional, they know what they`re doing, but they get butterflies and nerves, and all of the in and outs of cars and when is my flight, all of that needs to be seamless so that they can concentrate on what they need to do.

LAWSON: Some of them have a written text, but they have it as I think something just to have, but they really go up, most of them just speak.

LAWSON: No, I won`t. They have to be a terrific speaker. and I have to respect their work very, very much. And that -- that`s really, that`s it.

LAWSON: I`m glad you`re going to ...

LAWSON: OK.

LAWSON: He took him into the backyard, and he wanted to be sure -- "This Land is Your Land" had become popular, but he wanted to be sure that his son knew what the original intent of the song was and knew the full verses, because he realized that his time of being coherent was limited, and he wanted -- the lines that he wanted to be sure that Arlo Guthrie knew were, "One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple by the relief office I saw my people. As they stood there hungry, I stood there wondering if this land was made for you and me."

LAWSON: Huntington`s chorea, which is a horrific disease of the nervous system, hereditary.

LAWSON: He -- this is a letter that I wish that everyone could see. It`s written ...

LAWSON: Oh!

LAWSON: It`s a -- I will read it. It`s a difficult letter to read because there`s no punctuation and it`s almost -- as I read it, I see it almost as a -- like a song. I mean, it`s a strange letter. But he is telling his son that -- not to complain, because human frailty is our condition. And don`t complain about any troubles you have. Everybody -- everybody has problems.

"Deary Arlo Davy.

Of course now concerning you and that weakerly nearly blinded eye of yours all that I or all that anybody could tell you is for you just to pray your very head off for god your heavenly father your maker and your creator to heal you to heal you the same as I do pray every minute here for god to heal me of all my bad wrongs I`ve done in my lifetime for god to heal me of all my sicknesses I have here just as bad as you have there god hits us all god makes us all every living man and woman among us all just every bit as baddy sick as you are, with your weakedy blinded eye you`re not the only one god has knocked down sick with your weaky eye all of us when you come right down to it all of us are just every bit as weakened here in some way or the other maybe lots lots blindeyer sicker weaklyer than you no living person is ever perfect we are as weakledy sickedy as you are so don`t feel like you`re the only sicky one here on god`s earth Don`t whine to god Don`t even complain one little bitsy word back to god Be silent Be quiet Be thankyful Be faithyful Be grateful Be gaylyful Be joydyful."

LAWSON: It`s the way that most of his letters are like this. And I -- apparently, and it seems as his disease got worse, they became more like this. And you do see the handwriting that`s jerky and jagged. But it`s also the way that he was. I mean, it`s more of a -- of a -- it became almost a caricature as this became more and more with this faithyful, gratyful, joydyful.

LAWSON: Yes.

LAWSON: I didn`t. No.

LAWSON: Because I`d had -- the problem was, there was so much material, so it was really a question always of limiting what the book was going to be. There was so, so much. So if I got into that, it would be a different book. So I just -- I had certain rules from the beginning, and I stuck to them.

LAWSON: Oh, sure, but also much even more so, their letters are just amazing. And I wanted -- some of my goals in the book were that I wanted to see what these parents told their children, how they told them, and also what the letters told -- tell us about the times in which they lived. So the Adams` letters cover a lot of those sides. But the rules that you asked about, the rules that I had, they`re really very simple. I had two rules. The person who had written the letter had to make a substantial and worthwhile contribution to our country. And then the letter itself had to reveal something of value.

LAWSON: Yes.

LAWSON: They are -- the Theodore Roosevelt Association has many of them, the Library of Congress has many of them. They have been edited, so, they are -- I mean, they`re accessible. That`s amazing. And his letters to his children are just -- the letters while he`s in the White House and his children are young are just incredible, to see this man who is the president of the United States writing very funny letters to little children. And then as his children get older, they become much more serious.

And there`s a letter in the book to his son Quentin, where he says -- Quentin is in the First World War, and his father, Theodore Roosevelt, feels that he`s not writing enough letters to his girlfriend. So he sends Quentin a letter, in which he says, write all the time, write if you`re smashed up in the hospital, write when your work is most disheartening and irksome, write all the time, write enough to allow half being lost. And I just -- I think that that`s just terrific. They all wrote, and it was part of -- part of life. It was a way of life, and a way of working your thoughts out on paper.

LAWSON: Well, I found that many of these great Americans were names that I knew, and people that I knew I should know much more about than I did. And what surprised me was how through the letters to the children, some aspects of their personality or the time in which they lived or their experience became immediately accessible. Something about the unedited words, their candor made them so accessible.

I think something else that I learned was the importance of work and loving your work and doing your work for the right reasons. Again and again, they say that to their children. Your work is who you are. Your work is part of you. Don`t work for the end result. It`s the process. And you see that coming from writers and artists and soldiers; and all across the board that theme comes up again and again.

LAWSON: From my parents, I guess.

LAWSON: I do.

LAWSON: I don`t -- there are a lot of things I don`t do. I really do three things, I have my family, my business and while I was working on the book, I worked on the book. And I don`t do much else. We ate a lot of spaghetti and butter, and I didn`t go to too many parties.

LAWSON: Well, I`d spend -- it depended on -- during the course of the work that changed a little bit, but for the first two years I would work in my office a full week. And then I`d work on the book after the children went to bed, for two and a half to three hours and then I`d work on the book on Saturdays. And then, for the last year, I was able to take a couple of hours a day during the regular office time and also work on the book. And -- but I kept up with the evenings and weekends, too.

LAWSON: Not for me. There`s another book for someone else. I started out -- because another person would pick, I think, very different letters. There`s so many and so many wonderful letters that a different person would find a different point in seeing different letters. But I started out thinking that I would have a pile of letters that were the first cut and a pile of letters that were the second cut, and then at the end I`d probably go back to the second cut and include those -- some of those in the book, but none of them, I didn`t need to. There were plenty all from the first cut.

LAWSON: Jonathan Edwards was a theologian and one of our prominent thinkers in New England, and he`s writing to his daughter, who is far away from home. And this is -- this letter I chose for the book more to give a sense of time and time and place. And he`s telling his daughter that her faith is the most important thing that there is.

LAWSON: I did.

LAWSON: Well, he`s part of the great awakening and his belief and his faith is the most important thing to him, and his daughter is far away from him and he wants to be sure she doesn`t forget her religious grounding while she`s gone.

LAWSON: Yeah.

LAWSON: She is.

LAWSON: Yes.

LAWSON: The point of that letter is to tell Wylie O`Hara that her childhood has ended, she`s now going forward as an adult. She`s reached the time of her life that she`s been looking forward to all along growing up, and that she has to do things -- he tells her life is tough and you need a little bit of toughening. And in order to become tougher, you have to do it yourself. You have to do things you don`t want to do. You have to make yourself be with other people. Both he and she are shy people. So he tells her that he is making himself go out and be with other people, and she needs to do the same, because the only real discipline is self-discipline.

LAWSON: I have. I found -- with my kids, I guess that I would be -- I hope to be very clear with them. There`s so many letters here where parents set forth exactly what their expectations are, and they let them know clearly what they want. I think that that`s something that I will do differently.

There are many -- many times where the parent will say, take yourself in hand, rule yourself with an iron fist. Or John O`Hara, make yourself do things you don`t want to do. And I do live in the woods in Maine, and one thing that I didn`t really want to do was -- come -- for me, to come out with this book when it came out. So, when the time came for me that go on the road and do some of the promoting of the book and talking about the book, I went back to some of those letters and read them and it said, do things you don`t want to do, do the right thing. Make yourself ...

LAWSON: I just didn`t. I`m not really a public person. I never have been. It wasn`t -- a lot of times I think people are so excited for the book to come out that they can go out and talk about it. And I was thrilled that the book was out, but I wasn`t on the promoting side of it.

LAWSON: I don`t know. I had to do some. I didn`t get to that point. I just took myself in hand and said, OK, you`re going to do it.

LAWSON: I`ve done a few weeks. Probably three weeks or so, different places. Not a lot. And I`ve enjoyed it. That was -- I thought that I would once I made myself do it, that I would probably enjoy talking about the book, and I do.

LAWSON: Oh, a downside -- I suppose the only downside is that sometimes when I`m working with other groups if they find out that I`m his daughter, they don`t realize that I have a bigger business and that they think that I`m just working with him. That`s really the only downside. As a daughter working with a father, it`s terrific. I love it. And I can tell him much more than I can my other clients, OK, this is what you need to do, or make decisions, this is what time he`ll leave, this is -- he`ll do this or he won`t. And that saves a lot of time.

LAWSON: He likes to do everything. That`s the problem. He likes to do -- he really -- he`ll do -- he loves to do everything, and then he gets tired out from it, or it takes too long and he`s frustrated afterwards. But when he`s out, he likes to do everything. So it`s really limiting -- trying to limit what he`ll do before he gets there.

LAWSON: Yes.

LAWSON: I would. And I really -- I was not interested -- people asked me often if I always wanted to be a writer, because my father was a writer and I work with writers, and no, I hadn`t. I didn`t want to be a writer. It always seemed so hard to me. And dad would talk about how he would pay to do what he does. And I would think, oh, that can`t really be true. But I now see why. I mean -- I would do -- I hope to do another book, and it was really one of the most enjoyable things I`ve done.

LAWSON: I don`t know. I`m fishing around for ideas at the moment, and I have a few, but I`m not ready to say yet.

LAWSON: No. Never. He helped me with -- when I was compiling the initial list, he helped me -- often we`d talk on the phone and I keep saying, OK, try to give me more and more, people I wouldn`t think of. And I spoke with a number of people that way. And he helped me with the list of names. But other than that, he really wasn`t involved much. He gave me confidence in one telephone conversation -- he gave me confidence to know that if I didn`t think a letter was terrific, don`t include it. Don`t include someone because you think they should be included. But if the letter isn`t up to standards, your standards, don`t do it. And that was really probably one of the best pieces of advice that gave me the confidence to just keep going with my instinct.

LAWSON: It probably is.

LAWSON: He did.

LAWSON: It`s a letter about aging, and what drew me to the letter was how candid he is. I think it`s a person I had not seen before in George Bush. It`s very long, and that was one of the -- one of my decisions too is, that I wouldn`t cut any of the letters. I wanted people to see exactly how they were written and intended, and sometimes the parents will repeat themselves or they`ll -- they`ll hammer on a point too many times or they`ll go on too long. And I think the George Bush letter -- he goes on, and on, and on. I don`t think that he went back and edited much of that at all. And I like that. I think you see him. You see who he is.

LAWSON: All right. I mean -- just see here. "What happens this year unlike last is I just tune out more: because I do not want to know when they are thinking of going to the movies and I don`t want to sign off on having to take them all the way to Portland. So, on purpose, I either look confused or simply proceed on my way pretending to have heard nary a sound. It works."

Then he goes on and he says, "Last year there was only a tiny sense of time left -- of sand running through the glass. This year, I must confess, I am more aware of that. No fear, no apprehension, just a feeling like `let`s go -- there is so much to do and there might not be a lot of time left.` Your kids keep me young even if I don`t bend as easily or run as fast or hear as well."

That -- I love that too -- that he`s acknowledging that he`s aging, he`s acknowledging that he can`t do things as well as he could. But he`s so optimistic and eager to keep living and keep going, and not in a phony way.

LAWSON: He`s a -- he`s having fun writing this letter, too. He`s really enjoying himself. And that is something that there are many letters in the book where you can see the fun side of people, and that they`re having a ball writing a letter.

LAWSON: Yes, it is.

LAWSON: He was a doctor in Philadelphia and he is a signer of the Declaration of Independence and served in the Revolutionary War. His son was studying to be a doctor, and it was during that time of his life that this letter was written.

The son later becomes insane after he is in a duel with a friend and he kills the friend, and he`s institutionalized.

But this letter is written before there were any signs of the trouble ahead. And I like this letter because they -- it`s from the two parents, from Benjamin and Julia Rush to his son before he goes off on his apprenticeship in India. And I like how they just lay it out -- here is what you need to be worried about, here`s what you need to do. And I love the line -- "Be sober and vigilant. Remember at all times that while you are seeing the world, the world will see you. Whenever you are tempted to do an improper thing, fancy that you see your father and mother kneeling before you and imploring you with tears in their eyes to refrain from yielding to the temptation." What a scene to imagine! This young kid ...

LAWSON: To Mort Janklow, who is my father`s agent. And when I had the idea for the book, I asked dad -- and decided that I was going to do it -- I asked dad what I -- what should I do next? He said, well, I should take you in to meet Mort and talk to my agent about your idea.

So we went to New York and went in to see Mort, and there was talk that Mort`s son might be in on the meeting, too. And I`m sure he had the same feeling, but I had a little bit of, oh, brother, the son and the daughter, and this is too much, and expecting, no, I`m not going to like this guy.

And he came in and immediately we just hit it off. And he`s terrific, and I`m thrilled he`s my agent, and it was one of those wonderful moments of the two fathers and the two -- the daughter and son all together.

LAWSON: We`re about the same age. And I think our fathers are about the same age.

LAWSON: Thank you.