A Follower's Tribute

KENNEDY by Theodore C. Sorensen. 783 pages. Harper & Row. $10.

This is no mere memoir. It is a monument--but like a monument, it has a ponderous, granitic quality. What makes this all the more disappointing is the fact that it comes from the hand of the same Ted Sorensen who, as John F. Kennedy's chief speechwriter, was partly responsible for the contrapuntal elegance and consistent eloquence of the late President's addresses.

Parts of this book have been serialized in 37 newspapers and magazines, and much has already been written about its accounts of such controversial episodes as Kennedy's choice of a Vice President and his blunder at the Bay of Pigs. Even so, those willing to hack through the whole thing, with its forbidding thicket of words (more than 350,000), should find the effort worthwhile. Despite the foliage. Kennedy comes through as an immensely appealing man, one who ''followed Franklin's advice of 'early to bed, early to rise' only when he could not otherwise arrange his schedule," who "took his problems seriously, but never himself."

"In life he did not want his counsel to be a courtier, and in death he would not want his biography confined to eulogies," writes Sorensen. For all that, he candidly admits that his book "is not even a neutral account," but a loyal follower's tribute.

To Sorensen, nothing is more unfair than the judgment--most often passed by "professional liberals"--that Kennedy was basically shallow, aloof and uncommitted. "Some mistook his humor, gaiety and gentle urbanity for a lack of depth, and some mistook his cool calculation of the reasonable for a lack of commitment," writes Sorensen. "But his wit was merely an ornament to the earnest expressions that followed, and his reason reinforced his deep convictions and ideals."

The book is studded with examples ot both. Among them is one of Kennedy's favorite descriptions of the U.S. presidency, from Shakespeare's Henry IV:

Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can

any man;

But will they come?

Another is a story of how Frances Marshal Lyautey, anxious to plant a tree, was told by his gardener that there was no hurry--it would not flower for 100 years. "In that case," said the marshal, "plant it this afternoon." Kennedy, concludes Sorensen, "believed in planting trees this afternoon."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.