What Jencks does not say, in his altogether too polite book, is that this balancing act is extremely rare—for every successful icon there are scores of failures. In 1963, Congress mandated that the future national center for the performing arts in Washington, D.C., should honor the slain John F. Kennedy. It was a compelling idea: to commemorate the youthful president not with a shrine or a monument but with a "living memorial." Unfortunately, Edward Durrell Stone's design (which was already under way at the time of the mandate) undermined this worthy intention. Stone modeled the overall form—a box surrounded by columns—on the nearby Lincoln Memorial, and to accentuate the parallel, clad it entirely in white marble. Thus, instead of multiple, enigmatic meanings, there was only one: a temple. A very big temple.