The Deep Dive #3: Robert Caro
This edition features Robert Caro, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer known for his detailed studies of two political figures: Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson.
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The Man Who Never Stops (1990)
Stephen Harrigan // Texas Monthly
One of the reasons for Caro’s success is his inspired distaste for deadlines. He works seemingly without regard for the ticking of the clock or the passing of the years, and his relentless research into the life and times of Lyndon Johnson has generated its own legend. Already enshrined in Texas literary folklore is the image of Bob Caro, in his blazer and regimental tie, arriving at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin and gazing upward with epic resolve at a four-story display of red archive boxes containing 34 million documents.
Robert Caro: What I've Learned (2009)
Cal Fussman // Esquire
It's so easy to fool yourself into thinking that you're working hard. It's so easy not to write. So you use any trick you can to make yourself know there's work to be done. That's why I wear a jacket and tie when I sit down to write.
Charles Mcgrath // The New York Times Magazine
Caro has learned about Johnson’s rages, his ruthlessness, his lies, his bribes, his insecurities, his wheedling, his groveling, his bluster, his sycophancy, his charm, his kindness, his streak of compassion, his friends, his enemies, his girlfriends, his gofers and bagmen, his table manners, his drinking habits, even his nickname for his penis: not Johnson, but Jumbo.
Chris Jones // Esquire
Before he writes, however, he sits at his desk, and he looks out his window at the glass building across the street, and he thinks about what each of his books is to become. In those quiet moments, he remembers the words of one of his professors from when Caro was a young man at Princeton, studying literature. The professor was the critic and poet R. P. Blackmur, and Caro, who always wrote his assignments in a hurry, under the pressure of deadline, and who usually received good grades for his rushed work, thought he had fooled him. Blackmur was not fooled: "You're not going to achieve what you want to achieve, Mr. Caro, unless you stop thinking with your fingers," the poet said.
Robert Caro: a life with LBJ and the pursuit of power (2012)
Chris McGreal // The Guardian
Caro at heart sees himself as a reporter, not a historian. For 36 years he has dug deep into Johnson's life in search not of the man for the sake of it, but for an understanding of how he wielded power so effectively. "I don't think of my books as being biographies. I never had any interest in doing a book just to write the life of a great man. I had zero interest in that," he says. "My interest is in power. How power works."
Robert Caro, The Art of Biography No. 5 (2016)
James Santel // The Paris Review
Here was Robert Moses, a guy who was never elected to anything, and he came up to Albany for one day and changed the entire state government around, from the governor to the assembly. How did he have the power to do that? You have no idea and neither does anybody else. I said to myself, If you really want to explain political power, you’re going to have to understand that.
Robert A. Caro on the means and ends of power (2019)
David Marchese // The New York Times Magazine
You read in every textbook that cliché: Power corrupts. In my opinion, I’ve learned that power does not always corrupt. Power can cleanse. When you’re climbing to get power, you have to use whatever methods are necessary, and you have to conceal your aims. Because if people knew your aims, it might make them not want to give you power.
Robert Caro Reflects on Robert Moses, L.B.J., and His Own Career in Nonfiction (2019)
David Remnick // The New Yorker
Robert Moses was in it to build his dreams. You know, as a young man he did wonderful things, and his dreams were incredible. He would tell me these stories about thinking of the West Side Highway and Riverside Drive. And you’d sit there just in rapture—and you saw, this was a guy who had these great dreams, and when he’s young he doesn’t know how to accomplish that, because he’s an idealist. But he learns how to accomplish them by using power. And then he changes.
Robert Caro: ‘The more facts you collect, the closer you come to the truth’ (2019)
Rachel Cooke // The Guardian
“I have a long way to go,” he says. “I can hear the clock ticking, but the important thing to me is to ignore it. If I was to rush, what would be the sense?” The responsibility of his project – a project to which he has devoted almost half his life – never leaves him. “Almost all the people involved are dead now. They’re leaving you to tell the story, so you’d better get it right.”
LBJ biographer Robert Caro reflects on fame, power and the presidency (2023)
Dave Davies // NPR
He used to say, never let a conversation end because there's always something that the man doesn't want to tell you. And the longer the conversation goes on, the easier it is for you to figure out what it is he doesn't want to tell you. He had a unique ability to know what a man really wanted, what a man really was afraid of and of playing on those fears and those desires.