LEANING AGAINST the filing cabinets in his New York office, poring through a folio of interviews with a former Lyndon Johnson aide, presidential biographer Robert Caro wistfully recalled a time he could dial up a White House staffer and ask simply: “'When Johnson was talking to George Wallace, was he on the sofa or the rocking chair?' And he'd have an answer.”
The author of a four-, going-on-five-volume LBJ biography and the Pulitzer-Prize-winning opus “The Power Broker,” Mr. Caro, 83, just released “Working,” a memoir of sorts. It details how he reports and writes—and why he thinks minutiae, such as the particular throne on which Johnson sat shed light on the 36th President's state of mind: “I found out he had stuffing removed from the couch's cushions so it sat lower,” helping Johnson tower over visitors from his rocking chair, said Mr. Caro. “If he was angry he might sit behind his desk.”
The tools he surrounds himself with seem just as deliberate. Mr. Caro didn't stock up on enough carbon paper, typewriter ribbon and narrow-lined legal pads to last the rest of his life for kicks. He still writes first drafts longhand, finishing his books on a typewriter “to slow myself down, to make myself think.”
“I'm a very fast writer,” said the author, who has released a grand total of one biography each decade since the 1970s. “No one believes this. But it's the research that takes the time.”
Read Full Article »
