Nicholas Johnson Memoirs
This page has links to three incomplete memoir manuscripts written by Nicholas Johnson.
“Catfish Solution Memoir” is both the most recent and the oldest. It consists of four chapters from his book, Catfish Solution. How can it be both the newest and the oldest memoir? Because these chapters were originally written in 1974, the year following his seven-year term as a Federal Communications Commission commissioner, only modestly altered in 2018 (neither revised or updated) and published as part of Catfish Solution in 2018.
The oldest current effort is titled “Steps Along the Way,” written in 2014.
The most current effort is titled “You Can Go Home Again.” The title is both a play on Thomas Wolfe’s book title, You Can’t Go Home Again, and Johnson’s return in 1989 to the same Iowa City house in which he grew up and from which he left for the University of Texas in 1952. It contains a collection of chapters written and revised between 2012 and 2018.
There are reasons why these three documents have not been combined, revised and updated into a single volume.
(a) The primary purpose of this Web site, and Nicholas Johnson’s Archives in the University of Iowa Library Special Collections, is to focus on and make available a portion of Nicholas Johnson’s “work” — his writing, along with audio and video material — as distinguished from his “life.”
(b) There is little expectation that many, if any, visitors to his Web site will find their way to this page. In benefit-cost jargon, the “cost” (in time) of combining the three documents into one volume, expanded with material from the last 30 years, would far exceed the sum total “benefit” to all likely readers.
(c) Each is a work in itself, such as the Catfish Solution chapters’ focus on the evolution of his professional career.
(d) Any duplication of text in the three (and there is some) can be quickly scanned by any readers wishing to examine all three documents.
(e) And different descriptions of the same events may provide additional insights.
There is no known “biography” of Nicholas Johnson at this time (2019). However, there is more material available for this purpose than any biographer would want or could find time to use after combining the entirety of the hundreds of boxes of material in the Nicholas Johnson Archives with all the pages and posts on this Web site.
To give but two examples from the dozens of potentially useful locations on this Web site: (1) the “Biographical” page, https://www.nicholasjohnson.org/about-nick/, with its links to “Bio (long form),” https://www.nicholasjohnson.org/about/njbio04.html, “Sources of Nicholas Johnson Material,” https://www.nicholasjohnson.org/njmaterial-source/, the 18 examples of “Others’ Writing About Johnson,” https://www.nicholasjohnson.org/about/about410.html, and more. (2) The “Nicholas Johnson Bibliography Main Page, 1952-1995,” https://www.nicholasjohnson.org/biblio/, which prints out to over 300 pages, and contains, for example, in “Appendix VI: New York Times Stories,” 58 pages listing New York Times‘ stories involving Nicholas Johnson between 1964 and 1986, http://myweb.uiowa.edu/johnson/biblio/biblio11.html.
“The Catfish Memoir”
The four chapters of memoir excerpts from Catfish Solution are available for reading as a PDF file that was assembled and most recently revised on December 12, 2019. [View/Download]
AUDIO. The selections are also available as audio readings:
“Stops Along the Way”
The current memoir from November 22, 2014, has ten chapters in 63 pages and includes some suggestions for possible additional chapters. It is available in PDF format. [View/Download]
AUDIO. This memoir is also available as audio readings:
- Introduction
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Proposed future chapters and content
“You Can Go Home Again”
The most current memoir is titled “You Can Go Home Again.” The title is both a play on Thomas Wolfe’s book title, You Can’t Go Home Again, and Johnson’s return in 1989 to the same Iowa City house in which he grew up and from which he left for the University of Texas in 1952. It contains a collection of chapters written and revised between 2012 and 2018. [View/Download]
AUDIO. This memoir is also available as audio readings:
PAGE INFORMATION
This page is currently password protected. Audio files of the text have been created using a computerized text to voice service. If you have a request for another voice for these readings, visit the Natural Readers website and its list of available voices, https://www.naturalreaders.com/, and let us know your preference. [Contact]