P.S. The Autobiography of Paul Simon - Review

Washington Monthly, April, 1999 by Roger Simon

P.S. The Autobiography of Paul Simon by Paul Simon Bonus Books, $24.95

WHEN PAUL SIMON WAS elected to the Illinois legislature at age 25 (having been a newspaper publisher since age 19), he went to the state historical library in Springfield and asked for a book on Abraham Lincoln's years as an Illinois legislator. Informed that no such book existed, Simon wrote one. P.S. The Autobiography of Paul Simon is his 18th book and, like Simon himself, it is straightforward, plain-spoken and written in an amiable style that can sometimes obscure a more potent message.

After 42 years in public office, including 10 years as a U.S. Representative, 12 as a U.S. Senator and one attempt to become president, Simon retired in 1996 with his reputation remarkably intact for being a liberal on social issues (his continuing stand against the death penalty officially makes him an Old Democrat), a fiscal conservative (he unsuccessfully led the fight for a balanced budget amendment), and a fighter against corruption.

His is a long story to tell and it takes a couple of hundred pages for him to leave the largely chronological recitation of his life and times and start taking Bill Clinton to task ("We are still too close to the Clinton presidency to make an evaluation. I hope it will end on a stronger note as he exits, but I am not optimistic."); the media (they pander to public taste, stress the trivial, are inattentive to international issues and are too cynical) and politicians ("Anyone in a major elected public office who tells you that he or she is not influenced by campaign contributions is either living in a dream world or is lying.").

Though the book begins in 1928 and goes on for seven decades, it does not attempt to offer a sweeping look at those years or make some over-arching point. Instead, Simon (who is no relation to me) offers a series of peeks into his life that are like pearls on a string: His minister father just two months after Pearl Harbor preaches a sermon against the government for imprisoning Japanese-Americans (and 13-year-old Paul is embarrassed by it). As a painfully young newspaper publisher in Troy, Ill., he stands up to a local businessman and hires the first Jew ever to live in the town. He exposes corruption at home and throughout the state. And there is this beautifully understated passage when Simon, representing a racially segregated district in Southern Illinois but working hard for civil rights legislation in the state legislature, is invited by Martin Luther King Jr. to speak on the second anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott:

"I was a month and a half older than he, and the two of us `hit it off' right from the start. At the Atlanta airport this distinguished leader and member of the clergy and I got off the plane and headed for the men's room. Suddenly I saw the signs: white and colored. I hesitated. He laughed, patted me on the back and said, `This is not where we make our fight.' But I still remember the sudden crudeness of it, and I felt dirty after walking out of that men's washroom."

Simon was a peculiar amalgam of reformer and Democratic party regular: He cast votes that Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley did not like, but he never broke with the Daley machine that tightly controlled Democratic state politics. Simon's one political defeat came in 1972 when he lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary largely because citizens, hungry for exactly the kind of reform Simon was capable of delivering, were outraged that Simon had presented himself before Daley for a formal endorsement. (The man who beat Simon and went on to serve as governor later went to federal prison, "a sad ending to the career of a capable man," Simon writes graciously.)

Simon now heads the Public Policy Institute, which he founded at Southern Illinois University. He also teaches, does biweekly commentary on 10 NPR stations in Illinois and writes once a month for the internet magazine Intellectual Capital. To some he has always seemed a somewhat unemotional man, putting all his energies into looking for the next problem to solve or the next windmill to tilt at, which is why I liked a tiny aside in his book in which Barry Goldwater comes up to him in the Senate one day and asks him where Bowen, Ill., is. Simon, who prides himself on knowing every town in the state, had never heard of it. Goldwater said his mother had come from there. With typical resolve, Simon not only located it--near Quincy and with a population of 593--but had the Illinois Highway Department make up a sign that said: "Welcome to Bowen. The Home of Josephine Williams, the Mother of Senator Barry Goldwater." Simon gave the sign to the mayor of Bowen, had a picture taken of it and then presented it to Goldwater. Goldwater burst into tears. "I have to go to Bowen," Goldwater told Simon. They went together. "We drove in a parade, all six blocks of Bowen, and then he spoke to a gathering of about 300 people in the little town square telling them how much Bowen had meant to his mother," Simon writes. Three years later, Goldwater told Simon he wanted to give all his books to the Bowen library. Simon said he wasn't sure the town had one, but happily it turned out that it did and today those books are there.