Options Menu   Watch Program   Program Details   Classroom Guide   Search the Video   Print Transcript Video Search:

Mr. ANDREW CARROLL (Author, "Letters of a Nation"): That is the
quill of a pen--of a fountain pen. There's been some confusion about
that, and I've heard churches and liquor bottles and everything. But
it is--it's the very top quill of a pen.

LAMB: And whose idea was it?

Mr. CARROLL: That was the publisher's idea. And I liked it 'cause
it was more abstract kind of idea.

LAMB: But you can see also that, if you get up real close on it,
there are names.

Mr. CARROLL: Of many of the people who are in the book, right.

LAMB: How did you decide what letters to put in here?

Mr. CARROLL: I wanted the letters to be passionate and I wanted them
to be revealing. There are two sections, essentially. There's the
historical part of the book and the more personal part. But there's a
lot of interweaving, and so even the historical letters are very
personal in nature, and the personal letters have s--historical
significance. Malcolm X writing from the Holy Land to his followers
in Harlem and the letters of faith and hope--very powerful letter.

And I was not a history buff going into this book. I really wanted to
celebrate the art of letter-writing. But I knew, of course, that I
would go through history and pick out these extraordinary letters from
Jefferson and Lincoln and Washington. But I tried to be as ruthless
as possible in selecting them so that even someone like me, who's new
to history in many ways, will find them riveting. And I thi--the
letters are p--reprinted in their entirety. Many have never been
published before, as well, and so there was a lot of digging that went
into it.

I wanted to tell stories that hadn't been told before, that we're not
as familiar with. The--one of my favorites is the--the Choctaw
Indians here in America sent money to the Irish in 1847 during the
worst of the potato famine. And it was just an act of generosity on
their part because the Choctaws themselves had just gone through an
intense period of deprivation and starvation. So when they heard what
the Irish were going through, they knew and--and just this
extraordinary act of--of compassion. And I think it's--it's not a
story that we're all familiar with.

So along with the Jeffersons and the Lincolns and the Washingtons are
letters by Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez and Mother Jones. And
I really want to show a--a broad spectrum of American history,
different viewpoints, different focuses and also reprint the letters
not just in their entirety but with the original misspellings and
little quirks of--of penmanship and so forth, and just to show people
the nuances of what the writers were like. And--and you--you gain
that insight from them because of it.

LAMB: How many letters are there?

Mr. CARROLL: Over 200. And again, they're all in their entirety
with a few exceptions, where you just cannot find the entire letter.
But I f--I find it very frustrating to come across that dot, dot, dot
when you're reading a book of letters or speeches or anything like
that and you don't get the whole--the whole thing. And you want to
know, what was left out? Why was it left out?

So the letters are not terribly long. There are a few that are, you
know, maybe 10 pages--Martin Luther King's letter from a Birmingham
jail, which has to be in there. It's one of the most seminal letters
of American history. And I think once you get into it, you
really--you--you get the rhyth--the rhythm of it and the role of it.
And I--I found it very difficult to put down once--the first couple
times I read that letter.

LAMB: I calculated it's 19 pages in your book and it's the longest
letter you have in the book.

Mr. CARROLL: It--it is the l--it's definitely the longest letter in
the book, and it's in the letters of social protest and struggle. And
there are a lot of letters like that on--about how America can improve
itself, but still, I think, adhering to the ideals of America, which
is that--there's--I didn't want the book to be cynical in a way. It's
not a scandal-ridden book in that way. And I think even those letters
of social protest appeal to the best side of American history and--and
America's best nature.

LAMB: As--what was the first month this was in the bookstores?

Mr. CARROLL: December.

LAMB: Last year?

Mr. CARROLL: Last year.

LAMB: And as you've traveled around...

Mr. CARROLL: Hmm.

LAMB: ...and we'll talk about your travels in a--in a...

Mr. CARROLL: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: ...couple minutes--what letter, more often than not, do the
people bring up in bookstores and interviews?

Mr. CARROLL: Elvis Presley to Richard Nixon, without question. It's
the one letter everyone loves to talk about and read. And it's--it's
an extraordinary letter. Elvis is essentially writing to President
Nixon saying that he wants to help fight drug abuse in America. And
there's a wonderful line where he says, `I've done an in-depth study
of drug abuse,' and--and some other things which, of course, he had.
But it's a--it's--it was--it was handwritten on, I think, Delta Air
Lines stationery as he was flying to Washington.

He--he delivered it to the White House and waited in his hotel room
for a response from the president. And this is when Elvis Presley was
Elvis Presley, when he was a very prominent American figure. And
the--they met, all the White House staff, and said, `Should we do
this? Should we not do this?' And they decided that a meeting should
take place. And there's a very famous photograph of the two of them
coming together.

LAMB: And you say here it was a December 21st, 1970, meeting...

Mr. CARROLL: That's right.

LAMB: ...that they eventually had. And Elvis writes things like,
`Sir, I can and will be of any service that I can--that I can to help
the country out. I have no concerns or motives other than helping the
country out.'

Mr. CARROLL: That's right. And he wants a--sort of a badge. Elvis
collected badges, and he wanted to be named some sort of federal agent
at large so he could go around the country with his badge. And he
also gave the president a gift at their meeting, which was a gun.

LAMB: `Sir, I'm--I'm--I'm staying at the Washington Hotel, room 505,
506 and 507.'

Mr. CARROLL: And 507. Right.

LAMB: Did anybody not give you permission to put a letter in here?

Mr. CARROLL: No. Everyone gave permission. All the estates gave
permission. And a lot of the letters were fair use as well.

LAMB: Did you have to spend any money on any of the letters?

Mr. CARROLL: Substantial amount of money, yes, un--unfortunately.
That was--that was the most laborious part of the book, aside from the
research, was going through all the permissions. And I really wanted
to be absolutely certain that I got everyone. I think if I wrote a
letter and someone used it without my permission, I wouldn't be
thrill--because there are letters from people who are still
alive--many letters from people who are still alive today.

LAMB: Did you actually have to pay for the letter to be--put it in
here?

Mr. CARROLL: Most of them, yeah.

LAMB: Really?

Mr. CARROLL: Yeah.

LAMB: And what's the most you had to pay?

Mr. CARROLL: I think actually Edith Wharton's letters were the most
expensive, surprisingly--several hundreds of dollars for a single
letter. But all in all, the--I didn't not put in any letter because
of cost. My decision was to do the book, just assume that every
letter would stay and then calculate, and if it became too unbearable,
then we'd reconsider. But everything stayed.

LAMB: Of over 200 letters that you have in here, how many do you
think you had to pay money for vs. those you didn't?

Mr. CARROLL: I would s--just guessing, off t--80 or so. So...

LAMB: Who spends that money? Is that your money?

Mr. CARROLL: Unfortunately, but it's--it was worth it. It was--the
whole project was worth it. This is a book I've been thinking about
for eight years. And it was actually inspired by a fire. And our
house burned down about two weeks before Christmas.

LAMB: What town in America?

Mr. CARROLL: I--Washington, DC. And I was in school at the time,
and I got this wonderful call from my father, who...

LAMB: What school, by the way?

Mr. CARROLL: Columbia in New York. I was an undergraduate. And
my--my father called up, and we were just going to exams. And he was
very casual, he said, `How are you?' And I said, `Good. A little
stressed out with exams, but still working away.' And he said, `You
have an exam tomorrow?' And I said, `No, not till Monday.' It was--I
think he called on a Friday evening. And he said, `Well, I'm just
calling to let you know that your room is gone.' And he--he has this
Irish sense of humor, so he was sort of pulling me along. No one was
hurt, so that was the main thing.

And I said, `What--can you--can you clarify that?' 'cause I'm thinking
of the house and my room and how it could physically be gone. And
it's like, `Well, I--no--now the whole house is gone.' He was watching
it burn from a gas station, and so he--I was the first person he
called after the fire department. And again, everyone got out OK,
none of the firemen were hurt, and they were extraordinary throughout.
And s--but everything was wiped out, everything gone, and...

LAMB: What part of the city this in?

Mr. CARROLL: This is--this was in Georgetown. And it was--it was a
big deal. It was 19 fire trucks, I'm told, eventually 'cause they
were afraid it was--they were town houses--it was gonna spread from
one house to the next. But they contained it.

LAMB: What started it?

Mr. CARROLL: It was an electrical outlet sparked on the carpet, and
it just smoldered and grew. And I had put all my letters in the
closet, I think as many people do, or an attic and just forgotten
about them. And they were letters I really loved. Fri--a friend of
mine who'd been in Tiananmen Square during the massacre had written
home--he was an exchange student--and let--letters of love and friends
overseas. But losing the letters planted a little seed about how just
irreplaceable they are.

And a few months after that Ken Burns' "Civil War" series came out.
And at the end of the first show they read that just beautiful,
heartfelt letter by Sullivan Ballou to his wife, and he was at the
First Battle of Bull Run and he was saying, `I don't think I'm gonna
die, but if I do, here's what I want you to know, how I feel for you
and that I'll always be with you.' And I was watching it with a friend
of mine, and she was in tears and I was getting choked up. It was an
extraordinarily passionate letter. And just the combination of those
two events is what sparked the book.

LAMB: So whatever happened to your dad's house?

Mr. CARROLL: The--we rebuilt but then moved out eventually. So...

LAMB: So when did you actually start looking for your first letter
for this book? And when did you have a contract with a publisher?

Mr. CARROLL: I looked--I was always clipping out things and saving.
If there's an--an essay on Thomas Jefferson and they excerpted a
letter from his, I would just save that, knowing I'd go and dig for it
later, and that was about a five-year process. And I got the contract
from Kodansha about three years ago and just fell into it headfirst
and was literally seven days a week non-stop. And so that was about a
two-and-a-half-year process, and the book came out. And I'm still
collecting. It's a never-ending process. The book--it's a very
meaningful book to me, and a lot has been invested into it just
emotionally and personally. And it's not something I think I'll ever
be able to let go and--and certainly don't want to.

LAMB: Was there ever any irony about the fact that Kodansha, a
Japanese publisher, is publishing "Letters of a Nation" in America?

Mr. CARROLL: Oh, no, well, they've--what I love about that publisher
is they do a lot of books, like "Having Our Say," which was the two
African-American women in their hundreds talking about their life
history in--in this country. And what I love about what they do is
they sort of--they give voice to the voiceless. And when I approached
Deborah Baker, my editor, who's just been unbelievable throughout this
process, understood the vision of the book from the beginning and
really pushed for that, said, `I want you to make sure'--and this is
what I proposed to them--`that you really reflect America's diversity,
and so we don't just have the Founding Fathers, which, of course, we
want, so this is in many ways the canon of American letters, but the
voices that we don't often hear.'

And there's some riveting letters by slaves writing to their masters,
soldiers, poets, all sorts of people. And you just--I think you have
a--a broad spectrum of voices coming through.

LAMB: I thought it might be interesting--when I read the book and
read your letter on page 169, as I was reading it, I thought that the
audience, you know, depending on where they're coming from
politically...

Mr. CARROLL: Hmm.

LAMB: ...would have some very strong reactions if they heard it now.

Mr. CARROLL: One sixty-nine.

LAMB: One sixty-nine. `Dear...'

Mr. CARROLL: Oh, yes.

LAMB: `Dear Colonel Holmes...'

Mr. CARROLL: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: What is this letter, and why did you pick it?

Mr. CARROLL: This is the famous or infamous letter that President
Clinton wrote as a young man, and it was to the ROTC and it was about
his getting out of the draft. And he's thanking Colonel Holmes for
essentially saving him. I think the line is in here somewhere about,
`I want to just thank you for--for saving me from the draft.' And I
put the letter in not just because it was written by William Jefferson
Clinton but because it's actually a very powerful letter about his
opposition of the war and the feelings of the times by many young
people.

And it's contrasted to Mark Rudd's famous letter from Columbia, which
is a very antagonistic and belligerent letter to the--to the president
of Columbia. And Bill Clinton's letter in contrast--I think he was 21
or 22 at the time that he wrote this--is much more diplomatic in
really going through the arguments of his opposition.

The one thing I'll note about this letter is that in--in any case
where I had a choice between a private letter and a public
letter--perfect example: Ronald Reagan wrote a very poignant letter
about disclosing he had Alzheimer's. That letter's not in the book.
It was to the American people, it was widely disseminated.

The letter I did enclose by him was only declassified about two or
three years ago, and it was a private letter to Leonid Brezhnev. And
Re--Reagan wrote it three weeks after he was shot by John Hinckley.
And he was in the White House solarium, as he tells the story, sitting
in his pajamas, and he was just very contemplative. And he came very
close to dying--I think the bullet missed his heart by about an inch.
And it just spurned a lot of thoughts. And it's a much more pensive
side of the president than I think a lot of people have seen. So that
letter's in there.

Now this letter is a--still a private letter, even though it was
widely published during the election in '92, '91, and it's--it's a
very well-written letter. In fact, Hillary Clinton's response when
she heard it again was, `Oh, Bill, it's so you.' And it really is
because it goes back and forth on all the different things he's
thinking, very carefully thought out. There's passion to it, but at
the same time he also talks about, `I wanted to maintain my political
viability within the system,' so he's--he's calculating, too.

LAMB: This is dated J--December the 3rd, 1969.

Mr. CARROLL: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: Where would he have been then?

Mr. CARROLL: He was in England at the time, and so I think he was
writing back. He had--he had been in the States for a little bit for
probably Christmas break, and then I think he was back in England
or--or about to return.

LAMB: And--and Colonel Holmes is who?

Mr. CARROLL: He--I believe he was head of the ROTC in Arkansas or
around--he was in charge of Clinton's--whether he'd be deferred or
whether he'd be put in the draft.

LAMB: Have you had many questions about this letter as you travel?

Mr. CARROLL: People remember it vaguely from the campaign, but it's
like the `Dear Virginia' letter, the `Yes, there is a Santa Claus.'
People know lines from it, but they haven't read the whole thing. And
I think when they do, they're surprised by it, by the thoughtfulness
to it. And s--and it's--as you say, it's almost a litmus test or a
Ror--Rorschach test, that people who don't like the president find
reasons to dislike him, people who like the president find--confirm
why they do like him.

LAMB: Why don't you take some time...

Mr. CARROLL: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: ...because it's so contemporary, read this, and--and...

Mr. CARROLL: Sure.

LAMB: This was used in the '92 campaign...

Mr. CARROLL: Yes.

LAMB: ...a lot, and it was publicized. But go ahead and read it.

Mr. CARROLL: All right. `Dear Colonel Holmes, I am sorry to be so
long in writing. I know I promised to let you hear from me at least
once a month, and from now on you will. But I've had some time to
think about the first letter. Almost daily since my return to England
I've thought about writing, about what I want to and ought to say.
First, I want to thank you, not just for saving me from the draft, but
for being so kind and decent to me last summer when I was as low as
I've ever been.

`One thing which made the bond we struck in good faith somewhat
palatable to me was my high regard for you personally. In retrospect,
it seems that the--the admiration might not have been mutual had you
known a little bit more about me, about my political beliefs and
activities. At least you might have thought me more fit for the draft
than for the ROTC.' And right there you see him saying about, `I sort
of held back from you a little bit, and now I want to be more candid.'

`Let me try to explain. As you know, I worked for two years in a very
minor position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I did it
for the experience and the salary but also for the opportunity,
however small, of working every day against a war I oppose and despise
with a depth of feeling I'd reserved solely for racism in America
before Vietnam. I did not take the matter lightly but studied it
carefully. And there was a time when not many people had more
information about Vietnam at hand than I did.'

Let me skip abo--there's a--`From my work, I came to believe that the
draft system itself was illegitimate. No government really rooted in
limited parliamentary democracy should have the power to make its
citizens fight and kill and die in a war they may oppose, a war which
may even possibly be wrong, a war which, in any case, does not involve
immediately the peace and freedom of the nation. The draft was
justified in World War II because the life of the people collectively
was at stake. Individuals had to fight if the nation was to survive,
for the lives of their countrymen and their way of life. Vietnam is
no such case.'

Let me see if I can find the passage where he talks specifically
about--here is--this is--this is the single paragraph that gets a lot
of people's attention. `The decision not to be a resister and the
related subsequent decisions were the most difficult of my life. I
decided to accept the draft in spite of my belief for one reason: to
maintain my political viability within the system. For years I've
worked to prepare myself for a political life characterized by both
practical political ability and concern for rapid social progress.
And it is a life I still feel compelled to try and lead.'

Some people--again--and I agree, I think this really characterizes
what a lot have said about President Clinton, of this--there is a
genuine passion for social exchange, but then the--the--the
understanding that it comes with political practicality.

LAMB: Go on in the next page, though...

Mr. CARROLL: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: ...because I--I just want everybody--'cause I know this
is--that--that people watching are gonna have dr--you know, opposite
views on this.

Mr. CARROLL: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: But read a little bit more on the next page about what his
thinking was about the value of ROTC and--and how he was going to deal
with this.

Mr. CARROLL: Sure. `When the draft came, despite political
convictions, I was having a hard time facing the prospect of fighting
a war I'd been fighting against, and that is why I contacted you.
ROTC was the one way left in which I could possibly, but not
positively, avoid both Vietnam and resistance. Going on with my
education, even coming back to England, played no part in my decision
to join ROTC. I am back here and would have been in Arkansas law
school because there is noth--nothing else I can do. In fact, I would
like to have been able to take a year out, perhaps, to teach in a
small college or work on some community action project and, in the
process, decide whether to attend law school or graduate school and
how to begin putting what I've learned to use.

`But the particulars in my personal life are not nearly as important
to me as the principles involved. After I signed the ROTC letter of
intent, I began to wonder whether the compromise I had made with
myself was not more objectionable than the draft would've been because
I had no interest in the ROTC program in itself, and all I seemed to
have done was to protect myself from physical harm. Also, I began to
think I had deceived you, not by lies--there were none--but by failing
to tell you all the things I'm writing now. I doubt that I have had
the mental coherence to articulate them then.

`At that time, after we made our agreement and you had sent my 1-D
deferment to my draft board, the anguish and loss of my self-regard
and self-confidence really set in. I hardly slept for weeks and kept
going by eating compulsively and reading until exhaustion brought
sleep. Finally, on September 12th, I stayed up all night writing a
letter to the chairman of my draft board saying basically what is in
the preceding paragraph, thanking him for trying to help in a case
where he really couldn't and stating that I couldn't do the ROTC after
all and would he please draft me as soon as possible.'

LAMB: What's your reaction when you read it? Where would you have
come down on this whole issue?

Mr. CARROLL: That's a good question. I--I go back and forth on
this. And in many ways, I didn't want this book to reflect a
political side one way or the other. And I think I f--it's had a very
strong response positively from conservatives and a very strong
response from liberals. And that's from the Letters of War chapter.
Throughout that chapter you have very heartfelt and passionate letters
by pacifists like Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect, who wrote a
blistering letter to Lewis Mumford, who was his friend at the time,
and they had a very public feud about World War II. And r--Frank
Lloyd Wright was against our even participating in that. Helen
Keller, same thing, a die-hard pacifist who wrote an extraordinary
letter against her views of--with--against our entry into World War I.

But then there are some letters by soldiers writing from the
battlefield that are so stirring and so patriotic, they're like
nothing I've ever come across. A favorite of mine, a letter that's
never been published before, is by a soldier in the famous 442nd
Regiment, the Japanese-Americans who fought. And he's writing--this
is the situation--he's writing to his father in an internment camp
back in the United States. His brother has just been killed--they
joined together. He's just been shot in battle. And the--the young
man writes to his father that despite everything--and he said, `Dad, I
don't want to preach to you, but despite everything, I've been all
over the world and this is the best damn country on the planet.' And
it just--it--it really knocks you out.

And so those are sorts of letters--I wanted to show both sides so that
people from all--the full political spectrum will find something in it
that they can connect to.

LAMB: How'd the book do?

Mr. CARROLL: It's in its fourth printing. It's really hit
a--it's--it's really struck a chord with people, and I think it's
because there's a nostalgia for letters and that--the--the one mystery
that captivates all of us is human nature. We're always looking for
clues into human nature. Even when we think we're on firm footing,
we--we hear something or see something and the ground sort of shifts.
And I think letters, like diaries, provide us with the most revealing
glimpse into who we are not just as a nation but as individuals.

And that's why I really tried to select letters that showed a more
revealing side not just of famous people but just people from all
walks of life. Along with the Bill Clinton letter, the Ronald Reagan
letter, there's a very sad letter by Mark Twain after his daughter
died, and it's a side of Twain we don't often see. But the letter's
almost poetic in its beauty. And similarly, there's a letter by
Abraham Lincoln when he's a young man talking about this just
humiliating courtship he's been involved with, and he's very funny and
just very self-deprecating throughout. And Eisenhower, in that same
Letters of War chapter, wrote, again, a very poetic letter on what
it's like tallying up the dead at the end of the day and writing to
his wife about how difficult that was.

And I think all these things give us a greater sense of who they were
as people. So when--again, whenever there's a choice between a public
letter and a private letter, I really strove to select the private
letter and find it in its entirety.

LAMB: Now what does it say--I went back and counted top, you know,
letters that you have people sending letters. And it's Abe Lincoln,
Ben Franklin, John Adams--each had four letters...

Mr. CARROLL: Uh-huh.

LAMB: ...and Mark Twain had three.

Mr. CARROLL: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: And they kind of led the rest of them. Most of them are only,
you know, one or two letters.

Mr. CARROLL: One or two, right.

LAMB: What does it say about John Adams, Ben Franklin, George
Washington, Abraham--no, I mean, Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain?

Mr. CARROLL: Well, one of the most terrifying things about working
on this book is you go into the library or into an archive, and they
have these huge computer databases and you type in--'cause there have
to be letters by Mark Twain and by Abraham Lincoln. You type in
`Abraham Lincoln correspondences' and it comes up 50 volumes. And you
think, `Oh, good heavens,' and I have to go through all these. But it
was worth it.

These--those four or five individuals you mentioned could write on and
did write on everything. They touched on love, hope, faith, religion,
all--all these different issues. And s--choosing letters out of those
tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands that they wrote was very
difficult. But I hope in some ways it reflects what they believed and
also fills in parts of the book that I think were important to--to
address. So they--again, those letterwriters wrote on everything, and
they could--they could address them all as beautifully as someone
who'd be considered a so-called expert on them.

LAMB: A letter from Abigail Adams to her husband...

Mr. CARROLL: Remember--remember the ladies, right.

LAMB: ...`Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the
husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could.'

Mr. CARROLL: Yeah.

LAMB: `If particular care'--and she writes it `perticular care'--`and
attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a
rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we
have no voice or representation.'

Mr. CARROLL: John and Abigail Adams wrote the most stirring letters
to one another during the American Revolution, that whole period, and
that brings up--what I wanted to do in the historical chapters--the
book is broken up. First five chapters are letters of the American
Revolution, letters of the Civil War, letters of social protest. The
second part are letters of love, letters of hope, letters of
friendship, that sort of thing.

In the historical che--sections I wanted the chapters to tell a story,
and so the headnotes, I think, are very succinct but hopefully
comprehensive so that you really get pulled into what's going on at
this time. And if you take Letters of a New Nation, which is
essentially the American Revolution and the Constitution--the creation
of the Constitution, I try and focus on all the major dominos that
were falling, what led up to the American Revolution, the different
viewpoints, so you not just have the revolutionists but you have the
loyalists who are saying that what they're doing are acts of--they're
traitors. And you have all these different viewpoints.

And my favorite letter in that chapter is the last one, writ--written
by Benjamin Rush. And he's looking back 25 years after the signing of
the Declaration, and he's appalled that they're already being
forgotten. And he loathed George Washington--Washington was not
unanimously loved throughout his time--and, in fact, he couldn't even
mention him by name. And he was saying, `He gets all the honors, and
we were the ones who on, you know, July Fourth in 1776, were the ones
who put our lives at stake.' And they honestly thought they were
signing their death warrants, because victory over the British was by
no means assured.

And he has this wonderful scene where he recollects in a letter--he
said, `Do you remember, as we signed this, that Colonel Harrison of
Virginia said to Mr. Gerry, "Mr. Gerry, I will have a great
advantage over you when we are all hung for this 'cause I'm a heavy,
large man and I'm gonna go like that, and you're a lighter man and
you're gonna dance on the air for an hour or two."' And he said it was
the one moment of sort of jocularity, though a morbid sense of humor.
But--but the letter brings you to that moment of what it was like to
be in that room when the document was signed, and that's what I wanted
the book to do, was to show those--those moments of what it was like
to be there. There are so many extraordinary moments in history.

And I remember in high school and college that history seemed to me
just this onslaught of dates and figures, and it--I couldn't pull it
all together. But working on a book like this where you read the
intimate accounts, you really understand what was at stake.

LAMB: Now at Columbia...

Mr. CARROLL: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: ...what did you study?

Mr. CARROLL: I was an English major by default. Couldn't do math,
couldn't do science, anything like that, so I thought, well, English
is the one thing you can always sort of fudge. And--and once I got
into it, I came to love it. But at the time, it was more that I--I
couldn't do anything else. So...

LAMB: Did you stop with the undergraduate degree?

Mr. CARROLL: Yes.

LAMB: And then when did--what did you do right after college?

Mr. CARROLL: Started doing research on that, but I actually worked
on a book on volunteerism, on how to get involved in your community
and that sort of thing, and then worked on the poetry project with
Joseph Brodsky. They were all happening simultaneously.

LAMB: Where'd you get your interest in all those?

Mr. CARROLL: I don't know. My parents have been always very good
about getting me to read, and even when--even when I was a
young--young lad, and they--they just--they created--and they still
do--just this sense of support where I had a feeling I could do
whatever I wanted to and that they would support it in some way.
And--and when you have that kind of foundation, it--it enables you to
do these sorts of projects.

LAMB: And then they have the tour.

Mr. CARROLL: The b--yes.

LAMB: Got some of the press, and here's one from the San Francisco
Chronicle that's got a picture of you. And--and a--where--where is
this picture?

Mr. CARROLL: That was in a supermarket in San Francisco. Not that's
a dif--that's not about the "Letters" book.

LAMB: No.

Mr. CARROLL: Seven years ago I met up with the Nobel laureate Joseph
Brodsky, and he and I created this project where we gave out free
poetry books around the country in public places. And we give them
out on Amtrak trains, in subways, in schools, jury waiting rooms. And
we've given out--the first five years we gave out about 100,000 books.
And this April was National Poetry Month, established by the Academy
of American Poets, and the idea was to drive cross-country in a Ryder
truck filled with 100,000 books and give them out along the way at
truck stops, diners, all sorts of public places--excuse me. And
that--so Ryder gave me a truck. The Growers of Washington Apples paid
for the books. All sorts of other sponsors kicked in. Doubletree put
me up along the way. They were the first hotel to let us put books in
their rooms. And this was all Joseph Brodsky's idea, and he passed
away two years ago.

LAMB: At a young age.

Mr. CARROLL: Fifty-five, very young. And it was a real tragedy, and
he's--he's certainly missed dearly.

LAMB: Here's the book that you gave out.

Mr. CARROLL: That's the main book we gave out, "101 Great American
Poems," and it's sort of all the classics. It's the Robert Frost,
Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, the poems I think people have some
familiarity with but may have--you know, may not read on a day-to-day
basis.

LAMB: What does it--what did it cost you to--to buy these? Do you...

Mr. CARROLL: We get those at a discount for about 40, 50 cents
apiece.

LAMB: So you had to raise $50,000 to do this?

Mr. CARROLL: Exactly. And a lot of books were donated to us.
W--that wasn't the only book we did, that was the main book. We did a
book of African-American poetry. Book of the Month Club generously
gave us this wonderful new, huge anthology called "World Poetry," and
it's a $50 book and they gave us 1,000 copies of those to give out to
schools and to libraries in particular. = LAMB: Who--who paid for
your books?

Mr. CARROLL: The Growers of Washington Apples. It was--they were
doing the whole Johnny Appleseed theme, so...

LAMB: And this keeps you going? You make enough money to live on all
this?

Mr. CARROLL: Well, it's not so much that. It's--it's--we were all
volunteer up until about a year ago. And then I got a--a--a--a
fellowship to continue it more on a full-time basis. But
it--it--the--the goal--I--you know, I was never big into poetry.
That's new to me as well. And--especially when Joseph passed away,
the onus was on me to learn more about it and to talk about it.

And what I've discovered is that, you know, it's not a luxury in life,
it's not something on the periphery, but it's essential to who we are.
And that's our goal, is to show that, and also to promote literacy and
to get books out in an age of technology and just this wonderful,
tangible product that you can hold onto and--and read and make
comments and then read to your children and share and that sort of
thing.

LAMB: And I've got this book here that you also prepared called
"Appleseed Giveaway" and it's--it's a...

Mr. CARROLL: That's--that's actually something we just printed out.
That was--the...

LAMB: It's from your Web site.

Mr. CARROLL: There are about three of those, right.

LAMB: And--and what--what did you do with the Web site?

Mr. CARROLL: Every day I wrote in a journal about--as I dro--I drove
6,500 miles across the country, and so every day I'd report in what
I'd done, what I had seen, that sort of thing. And the Academy of
American Poets set up this Web site, www.poets.org, and I would send
it in to the--Bruno, our Web master, and he would put it up there,
along with photos. And it was just a day-to-day account of what I was
experiencing. And it's somewhat stream-of-conscious because I would
come in at 1:00 in the morning to the hotel after driving five, 10
hours. And I was just completely exhausted from lugging books around,
that sort of thing, and then just type in and say, `Here's what I
did,' and--and just the experiences I'd have along the way.

LAMB: Now this www.poets.org--was it hard to get that address?

Mr. CARROLL: Well, I didn't--they got it, so that was the wonderful
thing.

LAMB: Who's they?

Mr. CARROLL: The Academy of Americans Poets. It's their Web site.

LAMB: And what do you do now? If we were to follow you around every
day...

Mr. CARROLL: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: ...what's your life like?

Mr. CARROLL: Now it's--now I'm back home in the office. And that
was actually the whole point of this. For five years I'd been working
out of an office, and we would send books to a jury waiting room or a
supermarket and I had a sense that they--that the response was good.
But I wanted to know for certain, so that--the only way to know how
poetry is perceived across the country is to get in a truck, to give
out the books in farm communities, inner cities, rural areas, all
different communities throughout the country.

LAMB: Is there a...

Mr. CARROLL: And there were some--sorry?

LAMB: ...another book there?

Mr. CARROLL: I--not certain. Maybe, maybe. I--it's more--it wasn't
to do a book out of it. It was really to gauge the response. And the
trip was overwhelming for me on a personal level. One of the places I
stopped in was the Louisiana State Penitentiary. This is a
maximum-security prison outside of New Orleans in Angola. And I was
expecting to stay there for a hour just to really drop off books and
sort of make a ceremonial presentation. I ended up spending about six
hours. The warden, Burl Cain, was i--extremely gracious, and Kathy
Jett, who runs their literacy program, took me all over--it's an
18,000-acre area, and it's just sort of out in the middle of nowhere.
A--in fact, when people escape, they just sort of wait for them to
come back 'cause there's nowhere to go. And, I mean, they don't--I
mean, they obviously go after them, but it's just a huge, desolate
area. And she took me all around to the different places.

And it's an extraordinary experience to be walking through this
prison. And even though, obviously, the place is--you know, there are
bars throughout, once you're inside in certain common areas, there's
nothing between you and the inmates. And to go up to people and to
hand them a book of poetry and to talk to them about why poetry is
essential to them and have them recite Maya Angelou or to talk about
the on--the poems that they write--and these are big guys. I mean,
these--I mean, there's a cologne commercial that came out a couple of
years ago I thought was fascinating. It was like, `What
ty--what--what's a real man?' And one of the lines was, `He'll pass on
poetry.' And I thought about that as I was going through and talking
to these guys that--if whoever wrote that ad ever wants to take a trip
down to Angola and, you know, see if real men write poetry. And
these--this is how they express themselves.

LAMB: Did you ever have a moment on your trip where no one cared?

Mr. CARROLL: No. I would have people who would say, `No, thank
you,' if we were in a huge, you know, a su--in a supermarket, and--and
one of the reasons we choose supermarkets is 'cause you've got people
from all walks of life. It's very democratic. But no one--people
would say, `No, thank you,' but something--not a whole group of
people. It would be the occasional passerby who was running from one
stop to the other. And frankly, three years ago I probably would've
said the same thing. Poetry was not why I got involved with this
project. It was the issue of literacy and books that really appealed
to me, and Brodsky took care of the poetry part.

LAMB: How many different places would you try to hit a day?

Mr. CARROLL: I had anywhere from four to 10 events a day. So it
was--it was non-stop. And--for...

LAMB: How did the press treat you?

Mr. CARROLL: Very kindly, actually, very well. And I think
it's--it's certainly w--and--no other organization does what we do, so
there's the unusualness, the uniqueness factor. But I think a lot of
reporters would say that they were skeptical at first, but they'd come
along to the giveaways and they'd see how enthusiastically people
received the books. And I think all reporters and journalists are
poets at heart. They love words, they love language and they want to
see it flourish, too, in an age that we're increasingly becoming more
visual and more technological.

And--and that's why I think there's such a nostalgia for letters and
for poems, not just that they give us insight but they're about craft.
And I think we're losing that, that oftentimes things are become more
formulaic, that we're seeing this in movies, where it's essentially
people running and things blowing up. And there's only so much of
that we can take. And poems and letters are about investing time and
effort and almost humanity into something.

Thomas Paine has a wonderful quote from "The American Crisis," which
followed up his--the first book that they gave out, where he says, `It
will--what we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly.' And I think
there's a reason why handwritten letters are making a comeback and
poetry is making a comeback, because they take time, and we realize
that when we pour ourself into something, we get much more out of it
as well.

LAMB: Which, of all the letters in this book...

Mr. CARROLL: Mm.

LAMB: ...or more than we've talked about so far, are your favorites,
that you think are well-written?

Mr. CARROLL: I go back and forth on them all. The--two in the Civil
War chapter really blew my mind. One was by Sherman writing to the
city of Atlanta--it was actually to the mayor, but it was really to
all the citizens, and it is the most riveting and passionate letter
I've ever come across. And they had written to him saying, `Please
don't destroy the city because we have elderly people, we have
pregnant women, and this will bring all sorts of calamity.' And he
said, `You brought war unto this country, and it's my job to finish
it.'

And he goes beyond that to say, `But look, when this is over, I will
be your protector and you can count on me for, you know, my last
cracker, my last biscuit,' whatever the phrase that he uses. And so
what I--I'm not saying I agree either way with what he's saying, but
just the sense of passion in it is absolutely enthralling.

The other letter, which is very similar in a way--and it was more the
story of finding this letter and the progression of it. David Hunter
was a Union general, and he learned that the Confederate president,
Jefferson Davis, had issued an executive order that black soldiers
were not to be taken prisoner, they were to be shot and executed or
returned into slavery. When Hunter heard about this he went
ballistic, and he wrote a letter to Jefferson Davis--and it was
unprecedented for Union generals to be writing to the Confederate
president--saying that, `If--if this is true--if what you're saying is
true, I'm gonna personally take out Southern soldiers from my prisons
and execute them.'

And he was really--this is--he felt very intensely about this, about
blacks were fighting for their freedom and that Davis was incurring
all sorts of extra hostilities on them. And so I wanted to see what
was--what was Davis' response to this? Well, he chose to ignore it.
But in looking through a biography on Jefferson Davis, it turns out
the two of them were friends as young men and that, in some ways,
Hunter had almost saved Davis' life because he was going on a raft
through the riv--river there and Davis and his men were starving to
death--this was when they were very young. And Hunter essentially
saved them. And they kept in touch throughout the years and, of
course, when the war came, they split into opposing camps.

But then about a year after finding that letter and the story with it,
I was reading through an anthology of letters by Southern women, and
one of them was to a general who had just--to a--yeah, a general who
had just burned her house down for no reason. Really, there was no
reason to it. It wasn't in the way. He was--she wasn't harboring
soldiers, nothing like that. And it turns out it was to David Hunter.
And so she was accusing him of all the barbarity that he was accusing
Jefferson Davis of and just--and so the--both letters are in there,
see the interplay of the two ideas.

My favorite story in the book, along with the Choctaw Indians, is the
story of the Navajo code talkers and that--someone of my generation, I
don't think, is familiar with that story. But our military code in
the South Pacific during World War II was the Navajo language, and
it's just a fascinating story that we recruited Navajos, who
volunteered, too, to create a code based on the Navajo language that
would be used, and it was a brilliant move because it's not
mathematical. Unless you know the language, you can't--it's--it's
impenetrable.

So I--that letter I searched for for years. It's never been published
before. And I found a widow who agreed to give me her husband's
letters. They were not--the soldiers were not allowed to tell
anybody, including their family, for 24 years after the war what they
did, it was so top secret. And so to find the letter written at that
period, during the war, where--and it's a very poignant letter. He's
saying that, `I wish I could tell you what we're doing and I can't.'
And the strain is so much that he tells her, you know, `Just leave me.
It's not worth it. Just find someone else who you can be more open
with.' And not only has that letter never been published, no letter by
a code talker written during the war has ever been published before,
and so that was a real find.

LAMB: Now was there any particular place that you found more letters
than others, I--I mean, physical place?

Mr. CARROLL: Well, the Library of Congress was certainly a font of,
you know, letters and going through, scrolling through just thousands
of letters.

LAMB: And you mentioned earlier that there are letters here that have
never been published before. How many, would you say?

Mr. CARROLL: I never did a final count on that, but it's--it's a--a
large part of the book. Actually, the letter that gives me chills
every time I re-read it but which has never been published before was
written from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. And I found that
at the Holocaust Museum here in Washington, DC. It was not on their
computer because they've pretty much cataloged--and I think it was a
newer letter. And I was--I sort of cheated a bit because I was going
through the file box looking for other letters that I had requested
and I saw this one mentioned, just from the tab, and so I started
reading it. And it's essentially--it's an American soldier who's part
of the liberation, and he's writing home to his parents as to what
he's seen, having just walked through the Bergen-Belsen camp.

LAMB: Do you remember--I--I wrote it down, but I can't find the...

Mr. CARROLL: Yeah, I'll find it as we talk. It's...

LAMB: Yeah.

Mr. CARROLL: And this was the same camp where Anne Frank died. And
it's just--he--he begins it by saying--I think I can find it fairly
quickly--that, `What I'm about to describe to you'--here, he says,
`Dear folks, I am writing this from deep inside Germany. You are
probably familiar with the story behind that. At any rate, censorship
apparently still denies an explanation. In the following pages I
shall attempt to record a sight that is well beyond the pale of verbal
and a written description, a sight that will sear my memory for all
time to come. I cannot expect you to believe it. Indeed, I who have
seen it cannot.'

And then he goes on for several pages, just going through item by item
and weaving through more philosophical--or the musings on how one
group of individuals could do this to another. And it's--to--to hold
this letter, it's the only letter in the collection that I actually
held in my hands the original copy. The other ones were either
transcripts or people would send me a copy 'cause they didn't want to
lose the original. And that's where, I think, something like e-mail
fails us. E-mail has a lot of advantages. It's wonderful for
business, it's great for overseas communication. But to see the
nuances of the handwriting, the little splotches of mud, the
imperfections, the nuances is what brings a letter alive.

And that goes back to, I think, what we were saying--what I was saying
about we're becoming more formulaic and we're losing that sense of
craft. And we're becoming almost sanitized, where with computers
and--all these things are wonderful advances, but we just saw not long
ago just the--when the G4 satellite went out and millions of Americans
were stranded with their cell phones and their beepers. And when we
become so dependent on technology like that, the ramifications can be
very serious.

LAMB: Where did you find--or what--what was a surprise, where
you--you weren't expecting to find something and you found it?

Mr. CARROLL: Serendipity played a huge degree in this book, which,
again, is one of those terrifying bodies 'cause you think--you're
happy with all the letters you've found, but you wonder how many more
you missed because they're just out there hovering. And one
example--I'm--I'm adopted and my birth mother established contact with
me several years ago, and we decided to correspond, in the beginning,
to get to know one another.

I really wanted a letter in the book, in the Letters of Family
section, that reflected adoption. And, of course, I wasn't going to
put one of my own letters in there for--just 'cause the--the quality
wasn't high enough and it would--I think it'd be a little too
self-indulgent. So I--I went after a--a--I approached adoption
organizations across the country saying, `Is there one letter that
you've--you've come across that just--you feel really expresses what
it's like to be adopted and--and the positive or maybe even negative
aspects to it?' Couldn't find a thing. We couldn't come up with
anything.

And it just dawned on me, `Why not call the intermediary in my own
adoption and ask her?' So I called Pam and I said, `Pam, have you come
across something like this?' And she said, `You know what? I have.'
Never been published before. It's in the book. It's by Michelle
Song. And it's a beautiful letter, where she's writing to her birth
mother, whom she hasn't met and doesn't even know is still alive. But
they've put it in the file in case her mother did appear.

And she talks about--it's one of the last letters in Letters of
Family. And she talks about, `I have this wonderful life.' She's a
grown woman, with an extraordinary husband and all these things, but,
`There's this hole where I'm missing something, and I'm just curious
on who you are and what happened and whether I was wanted or not.' And
it turns out that her mother was alive and that they es--they
eventually did establish contact.

LAMB: It's page 355. I found it.

Mr. CARROLL: Three fifty-five, yes.

LAMB: Did--who--in your family, how many kids?

Mr. CARROLL: Two.

LAMB: Other adopted?

Mr. CARROLL: No, no. I'm the--I'm the--I'm the one.

LAMB: What--what do your parents do?

Mr. CARROLL: My father is a publisher. He runs Carroll Publishing,
and they do government directories, which is sort of Who's Who in
government. It's not for the government. He takes information and
creates these directories that are used and defense charts, that sort
of thing. And my mom is a Realtor.

LAMB: And how did you come to find your real mom?

Mr. CARROLL: She found me through the agency--that they called--I
was actually walking out the door one evening--it was a few summers
ago--about to have dinner with some friends. And a woman called and
said, `Is this Andrew Carroll?' I said, `Yes, it is.' And she said,
`Do you know you're adopted?' I said, `Yes, I do.' And she said, `Your
birth mother would like to establish contact with you. Now you don't
have to if you don't want to, but if you would like to, I can help you
do that.'

And I always wonder if they ever got the wrong Andrew Carroll, if, you
know, there was some other Andrew Carroll in Washington who picked up
the phone and wasn't adopted and was struck to learn that he was
or--such as the case may be. But it's--it's--it's been a very
emotional experience. And I think it was--to start off by writing
letters to one another was--it turned out, I think, to be the best way
to go because we could sort of gradually get into it. It wasn't an
overwhelming meeting face-to-face. It took us almost a year before we
met.

But I'm very close with my adoptive parents, and my mom and I write
all the time and my dad was great. Before I went off to college, he
would write, you know, fatherly letters of advice. And that's
something I'd love to see be renewed. And that's why there was a very
specific intent in doing the Letters of Family chapter because those
are those letters from uncles and mothers and fathers to their
children and--and children to their parents, where, you know, we sort
of communicate throughout the generations and--and exchange wisdom and
what I've learned and what he's learned.

LAMB: Was it difficult with your adoptive parents--I don't know--I
don't know the right terminology...

Mr. CARROLL: That's OK.

LAMB: ...when they've--knew that you were having contact with your
birth mother?

Mr. CARROLL: No, I think--they were very open to it. And
it's--my--my a--my birth mother and I do not spend a lot of time
together. We've most--we've most--mostly just correspond, and she's
an extraordinary person and we get along very well. But both my
par--there's an interesting sort of age difference because my parents
are almost in their 70s and my birth mom is in her 40s. She was very
young at the time. And I--I--for some reason, I sort of have an
affinity for the older generation. I like that. And I guess everyone
talks about the 20-somethings and our love for the retro and Frank
Sinatra passing away and that sort of thing. And I--I have a little
bit of that, too, so I'm very close with my parents.

LAMB: Why didn't you put a letter in that you'd written?

Mr. CARROLL: Oh, I just--again, the quality wasn't nearly high
enough and, you know, I just didn't want, really, to impose myself on
the book.

LAMB: How long are your letters when you write to people?

Mr. CARROLL: I've started handwriting letters and I have horrible
handwriting, so it takes me a little longer to write them, but they're
generally about two pages or three pages when I sit down to do it.
And I'll--I'll whip out an e-mail every once in a while. I--I do it
instead of making a phone call. So I think of--instead of silence, I
will try and send something through the electronic ethers.

LAMB: As you were looking through letters, who had the best
handwriting you saw anywhere?

Mr. CARROLL: I did see a lot of typed letters and a lot of
transcripts and a lot of facsimiles. Ronald Reagan's handwriting was
actually very interesting. It was a very neat sort of s--I don't want
to say scrawl 'cause it's mutually exclusive, but it's--it was--it was
actually very good. But certainly, handwriting was better in the
olden days than it is now because we can type things, so we're not
used to--to doing that.

LAMB: What about the--in the early days...

Mr. CARROLL: Mm.

LAMB: ...the--when they would sign off `Your Most Obedient Servant.'

Mr. CARROLL: Mm.

LAMB: Even when they hated each other, they'd sign off that way.

Mr. CARROLL: Yeah, they...

LAMB: They--they were on different sides of the war.

Mr. CARROLL: That's gradually gone away. One of my favorite stories
from that, which is not in the book because I think it was actually a
British general writing to one of his colleagues, ended a letter--he
hated the man. He ha--and he ended, you know, with that, oh, `Most
Obedient Servant.' And he put in parenthesis, `which you know damn
well I'm not,' you know. And it--it didn't make it into the book
'cause it wasn't an American letter, but I just love that because you
read these letters from slaves to their masters or just total enemies,
and they end with that 'cause it's the formality. And you know that
they don't mean it, but--and finally, someone put the little
parenthetical comment, which--which I enjoyed.

LAMB: As we talked earlier, the letter from the Birmingham jail...

Mr. CARROLL: Yes.

LAMB: ...over at the Newseum here in town--I don't know if you've
ever seen this...

Mr. CARROLL: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

LAMB: ...they have the actual cement block that--the sides of the
Birmingham jail...

Mr. CARROLL: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: ...and the gate--I mean, the--on the--on--on the door itself.
What's the story about it? And--and were you able to look beyond just
the letter?

Mr. CARROLL: Yes. And--and I put that in the book in the headnotes,
again, try and give people a little glimpses about what was the story
behind the writing of these letters. Martin Luther King wrote--began
that letter on the margins of a newspaper he had and would sort of
scrawl it along the corners. Then finally, his attorney smuggled in
some actual paper so that he could--but that was a handwritten letter
which then his secretary eventually typed up. But he had a lot of
time to think about it 'cause he was confined in there. And this is
just what came out. And it's just--it's a very powerful letter.

LAMB: Do--do you know if the original copy is anywhere in any
archive?

Mr. CARROLL: I don't know if it's at the Newseum or if it's--I was
just at the National Civil Rights Museum at the--the--formerly the
Rain--Lorraine Motel, where he was shot, and they have a whole
exhibition set up about that. And we gave out some books of
African-American poetry that they had re--that they had requested.
And then I went over to Graceland after because the National Civil
Rights Museum is in Memphis. Almost got arrested at Graceland,
actually.

LAMB: For wh--what reason?

Mr. CARROLL: You're not allowed to distribute things, I found out,
in front of the house. That's illegal. And I asked--I said, `Well,
what the penalty?' It's, `We'll have you arrested like that. So you
don't want to hand out another book.'

LAMB: What's the reason for that?

Mr. CARROLL: Don't know. He didn't tell me. He just said, `This is
Elvis Presley Enterprises and you just don't do it.' So I thought it
would be un-American to be arrested by Elvis Presley Enterprises.

LAMB: Where's this all going for you? Where are you going to end up?

Mr. CARROLL: Well, in many ways, what I'd love to do is be a high
school English teacher. I think about the teachers who inspired me
along the way. And Yeats has a wonderful quote, where he says that,
`Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.'
And I think about the teachers who lit that fire in me, a love of
language and of words. And--but I'd love to do more creative writing.
I'm doing a lot of writing now. And if I can balance that with
teaching, I think that would be ideal.

LAMB: Who, in your life, taught you in a classroom that had an impact
on you that might have some--that results in this book?

Mr. CARROLL: Many teachers. Neal Tonkin, my high school English
teacher...

LAMB: Where?

Mr. CARROLL: ...who--Sidwell Friends, Quaker school, and he had been
an attorney before that, and he would pace around the class. And we
were almost like a jury. But he--he used the Socratic method, so he
brought us into the experience and he would ask us questions and he
would throw chalk at us if we didn't get the right answers. But he
was--he was a very tough teacher, but there was a lot of love behind
it. And I still keep in touch with him to this day. And I think, in
many ways, he inspired that book with other--John Alco, an acting
teacher of mine, and Michael Kelly, back in sixth grade--all of these
teachers who really had such a part in--in sharing their passion and
their energy for--for words and for language and literature.

Actually, another professor of--Columbia, Kenneth Koch, who's a poet,
and also Andrew Delbanco, who has a wonderful book out called
"Required Reading." And the first line of that book is--he says that,
`This book is about the idea that individual human beings can break
free from the structures of thought into which they are born and, by
reimagining the world, can change it.' And I love that idea of
literature changing the world and changing how we think and how we
view it.

As I drove cross-country I met a lot of people who love poetry. And I
just found that they almost have a--a greater sense of the meaning of
life and a passion for living. And it just seems to grow in me every
year as it goes on, and it's thanks to all these people.

LAMB: Your tour went for how many miles again?

Mr. CARROLL: Six thousand five hundred. It should've been a lot
less, but I got lost repeatedly, day after day after day. So...

LAMB: Did you go by yourself?

Mr. CARROLL: Yes, went solo.

LAMB: And it was all paid for by the Ryder Truck people, the...

Mr. CARROLL: Ryder Truck gave me the truck and then the Wash--and
the Growers of Washington Apples and the Academy of American Poets,
Doubletree Hotels. It was a real group effort, and that was what was
so inspiring about it. So many people pitched in to make it happen.
And...

LAMB: So what do you conclude about this country after driving the
6,500 miles?

Mr. CARROLL: I was very optimistic about this country before I left.
I am almost in a state of bliss about it now. Obviously, there's a
lot wrong with it and a lot of problems that I would see along the
way. But the people across the country were so incredibly gracious
and hospitable everywhere I went--everywhere, in cities, in inner--in
rural areas. It didn't matter. And I--you know, I would be c--I was
going from Cleveland to Toledo, which is a straight shot. And if you
put a monkey in a truck and lock the steering wheel, he would make it,
and I ended up in Michigan somehow.

And as I was driving through rural Michigan, I stopped at a farmhouse
'cause I was just horribly lost. And this very gracious woman said,
`Come on in. You know, I'll give you some coffee and some pie and
make a phone call, and we'll get you back on the road.' And I found
that wherever I went.

And we also have a wonderful sense of whimsy, Americans. And I don't
think we have a mo--a monopoly on this. But wherever I would go, a
sense of just quirky little things you see, you know, across the way,
and poetry's everywhere. I saw it in Las Vegas and in, you know,
signs on the road, and--and I really like that about this country.

LAMB: So was there a question that you were asked so often that you
said to yourself, `If they ask it one more time, I'm going to scream'?

Mr. CARROLL: No. Everyone had different questions. The great thing
was--I love giving books to kids, and so Harcourt Brace gave us 5,000
hardcover children's books, give those out at Head Start centers and
schools and that sort of thing. And the kids had the best questions.
You know, `Do you have a girlfriend? How much do you make? How can I
get my poetry published?' These were first graders. And, `Can you
count to 100?' all these wonderful--just out of the blue. And--but
mostly they--they wanted more poetry books. And they love words, they
love language, and that's the kind of thing that we want to keep
encouraging them to have a love for 'cause I think they'll--they'll
have it for the rest of their life if we can really make it strong.

LAMB: What did you find that the media found interesting? I mean,
what kind of photographs did they want to take of you and what--you
know, what kind of venue?

Mr. CARROLL: Well, they definitely were surprised that the books
were being responded to the way they were, that there was an
enthusiasm for them, not just, `Oh, 'cause it's free,' but because it
was a book of poetry. And we gave out books at the Pentagon, and it
was fascinating to have these men and women with more bars and stripes
than you can imagine, and come up and say, `Do you have that Robert
Frost poem in there? I really love that.' Or there's a poem by Emily
Dickinson--I was giving out books in front of the White House and
there were these big, burly wrestling guys who were on a school field
trip, and I was handing out books and they came over and asked for
books. And I said, `Do you g--this is--these are poetry books.' And
they said, `Yeah, we know. We wa--we want 'em,' you know. And--and I
think that surprised the media a lot and surprised me to some degree
as well.

LAMB: There--there's a--there's a letter that--I--I guess it kind of
surprises me it was in there, and I wanted to ask you about it...

Mr. CARROLL: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: ...from William Lederer. Who is he?

Mr. CARROLL: William Lederer is the author of the "Ugly American,"
and he talked about, in that book, sort of the boorish attitude of
Americans overseas. I read that letter...

LAMB: Where'd you find it?

Mr. CARROLL: Where did I find that? I think it was in a collection
of his writings. And I--I tried to read that letter once, and I
couldn't get through it, I started choking up. And it's a story that
he tells, a true story. It was Christmastime, he was in France with
his family. He was having the most miserable Christmas he could ever
imagine. The restaurant was in...

LAMB: But you gotta explain what was going on among his own family.

Mr. CARROLL: Oh, that's--yeah. They were all fighting. The car had
broken down, I think. It had been raining outside. And his wife, who
barely spoke French, was trying to order and she got the wrong thing,
and so he yelled at her and the kids were, you know, all restless, and
the whole...

LAMB: `I was tired and miserable to leave. I noticed that the other
customers were eating in stoney silence. The only person who seemed
happy was an American sailor.'

Mr. CARROLL: An American sailor who was writing a love letter. And
a flower woman came in all wet from being outside in the cold rain and
she went up to the piano player--it's almost like a little Hemingway
short story, but it's all true--and said, `Oh, it's been a miserable
night. I haven't made a single franc.' And he sort of showed his
empty tipping plate and they hadn't made any money, and everyone was
miserable.

A German couple was fighting, a French couple was, again, sitting in
stoney silence. And this American soldier went over to the flower
woman, just as he was sealing up his letter, and said, `Can I buy
two--two flowers from you?' And she said, `Of course.' He gave her, I
think, the equivalent of $20 or something for the two flowers. And
she's like, `Well, let me get you some change.' He said, `Don't worry
about it. It's my Christmas gift to you.' So she split the money with
the piano player.

The sailor put one of the flowers in the envelope, sealed it, went
over to William Lederer's wife and said, `I want to give this as a
Christmas gi--present to your lovely daughter,' which was a wonderful
compliment. And Lederer writes that Chris--and he was writing this to
the admiral of the Navy, saying, `I want you to know what one of your
sailors did.' And he said, `Christmas exploded throughout the
restaurant,' and that the piano player started pounding out "Good King
Wencelas," and the flower woman was sort of waving her flowers and the
Germans started singing and the French started singing.

And these 18 people, who had been having the most miserable Christmas,
suddenly were singing in unison and having the--and he said, `It was
the best Christmas we ever had.' And what I love about that letter is
it just shows how one person can walk into a room and just electrify
it in that kind of passion and that sense of--of inspiration. I
just--I love that letter.

LAMB: Now have you s--felt it yourself, walking into a room and...

Mr. CARROLL: I've pr--I've experienced it from people who've come
in--I was on a train coming back from New York to Washington, and we
were all crammed together. It was at Christmastime. I had a very
similar experience, actually. And the heat was out and we were all
hungry and tired and no one was talking, and this elderly man burrowed
his way to the food car and came back with beers and chips and stuff
and started--and--and soda pops and just started handing them out to
people. And by the time we rolled into Union Station, we were singing
Christmas carols together. It was extraordinary. So I've been the
recipient of that, but I just--I love that letter. And that's the
last chapter of the book, is Letters of Faith and Hope. And I wanted
to end it on a very positive note.

LAMB: Well, what about your own experience where you were the light
in the room?

Mr. CARROLL: Mm-hmm. Well, I--I think it's--the focus was the
poetry--were the poetry books. I mean, that's what people wanted.
And it's--to give out something you love is an extraordinary
experience. So do I have time for one quick story?

LAMB: One minute.

Mr. CARROLL: One minute. We're putting poetry in the Yellow Pages,
and the first phone book company that did this was in New York. Ed
Bradley read a poem called "The Day Lady Died." It's by Frank O'Hara,
and it's essentially the day that Ella Fitzgerald--that he found out
Ella Fitzgerald passed away. And it's Frank O'Hara walking through
the streets of New York, and he comes across the New York Post photo
with her face on it. She's just passed away. And he immediately
go--goes back into a reverie of hearing her.

Last four lines of the poem--he's reading this in front of 400 people,
this is Ed Bradley--says, `And I'm sweating a lot by now and I'm
thinking about leaning on the john door in the five spot while she
whispered a song along the keyboard to Mal Waldron,' and everyone and
I stopped breathing. When he read that, 400 people gasped at once,
and it was the best theory on why poetry's important and letters and
all those things and words and the magic they have. And it
just--I--I'll never forget that experience.

LAMB: As Andrew Carroll told us earlier in the program, this is the
symbol of the tip of a pen...

Mr. CARROLL: Yes.

LAMB: ...on the cover of his book, "Letters of a Nation." And we
thank you very much for joining us.

Mr. CARROLL: Thank you very much.

return to the top of the document

Copyright © National Cable Satellite Corporation 1998.
Personal, non-commercial use of this transcript is permitted. No commercial, political or other use may be made of this transcript without the express written permission of National Cable Satellite Corporation.

Letters of a Nation: A Collection of Extraordinary American Letters