[HN Gopher] A civil war over semicolons: Robert Caro and his editor
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A civil war over semicolons: Robert Caro and his editor
Author : samclemens
Score : 45 points
Date : 2023-01-07 22:42 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| Pigalowda wrote:
| I kinda wish I had a best frenemy. Maybe that's part of their
| longevity. Sure, you need a friend, but maybe to live a long time
| what you really need is an enemy.
| Wistar wrote:
| This past week, NPR's _Fresh Air_ ran a quite good interview with
| Caro's editor, Robert Gottlieb. At 91, he seems incredibly sharp.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2023/01/03/1146641641/robert-gottlieb-ca...
| hypersoar wrote:
| I hope so! The two of them have an enormous book to finish.
| BuckyBeaver wrote:
| Paywalled.
| BuckyBeaver wrote:
| Yes, down-mod a FACT.
| BuckyBeaver wrote:
| Keep lashing out at facts. What's the matter?
| robocat wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| BuckyBeaver wrote:
| I know, right? You'd think there'd be something about
| posting meaningful headlines instead of being
| intentionally obscure.
| tuatoru wrote:
| There is nothing better than semicolons as a _casus belli_.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| How about semicolons as a _casus amoris_?
|
| I like dem clauses; I cannot lie.
| thfuran wrote:
| But clauses, best joined with commas, rarely need semicolons.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Unfortunately _metrique oblige_ , and "independent clauses"
| had three syllables too many :-( My
| anaconda don't want none Unless your verb's done,
| hon. -- Sir Puncts-A-Lot (on the pluperfect?)
| oxfeed65261 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/l8f6p
| tasseff wrote:
| I recently started reading the _The Years of Lyndon Johnson_ and
| desperately want to see the documentary mentioned in the article,
| _Turn Every Page_. Alas, it doesn 't seem to be playing anywhere
| near me [1]. Maybe other people reading will have a chance.
|
| [1]
| https://dx35vtwkllhj9.cloudfront.net/sonypicturesclassics/tu...
| misiti3780 wrote:
| I read it last year, I started in September 1st and didnt
| finish the "last" page until mid January, reading multiple
| hours a day.
|
| I read a lot of historical biographies, I have never read
| anything as good about a president most people dont care about.
|
| I thought book 3 was the best, everyone should read the first
| 300 pages just to understand how and why congress works the way
| it does today.
| ghaff wrote:
| LBJ's accomplishments were mostly in Congress like the
| passing of the Civil Rights Act. As a president, today he's
| mostly remembered as the president who succeeded JFK and got
| further wrapped up in the Vietnam War.
| Aloha wrote:
| Indeed, we're still living in the society he tried to
| create. I wish he'd been more successful.
| yuppie_scum wrote:
| "The Power Broker" by Caro is a must-read.
| tasseff wrote:
| Interestingly, no Kindle version of _The Power Broker_ is
| available, although there were reports in 2021 that one was
| purchasable on Amazon for a very short time [1]. I _really_
| dislike handling large books, especially if I 'm reading in a
| casual setting. Because of this, I decided to start reading
| _The Years of Lyndon Johnson_ series instead, which do have
| Kindle versions.
|
| [1] https://www.curbed.com/2021/07/power-broker-caro-ebook-
| knopf...
| RoboTeddy wrote:
| One strategy I've seen employee is to tear the book into
| three parts.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| If you like audio books, I'd definitely recommend listening
| to his books. I find these epic length books much easier to
| get through in audio form.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| I have an epub if you want it.
| voisin wrote:
| It is an excellent book but I think it could have an abridged
| version for the vast majority of people who don't need the
| crazy amount of minutiae in it. I found sections riveting, but
| in between I struggled with boredom - not every single meeting
| and letter and interaction is important!
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| I disagree. All the details matter. The book is an epic story
| closer to a Tolstoy novel than a mere biography. It's about a
| city and a man's impact on the city. It's about all of the
| people whose lives he benefited and whose lives he ruined.
| Without that sense of scale, the ending doesn't work. You
| don't have time to build sympathy for Moses and to slowly
| lose that sympathy. And to finally finish with that
| conflicted love, hate, pity, and awe that I left the book
| with.
| voisin wrote:
| > The book is an epic story closer to a Tolstoy novel than
| a mere biography. It's about a city and a man's impact on
| the city. It's about all of the people whose lives he
| benefited and whose lives he ruined. Without that sense of
| scale, the ending doesn't work. You don't have time to
| build sympathy for Moses and to slowly lose that sympathy.
| And to finally finish with that conflicted love, hate,
| pity, and awe that I left the book with.
|
| I don't disagree with any of this.
|
| > All the details matter.
|
| This is where we disagree. I think 30-50% of the book could
| be cut and you'd still be able to accomplish everything in
| the first quote above.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| Okay I will concede that Caro loves his grand sweeping
| intro in which he explains that this chapter will outline
| how Moses evolved in the 30's, then explain in very close
| detail how this change happens, then have a grand
| sweeping recap about how these changes happened and what
| it meant. It is a lot, but I kind of love this baroque,
| over the top style.
| pessimizer wrote:
| What's the necessity of making biographies read like
| fiction?
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| They're really really fun to read? Real life can be
| dramatic too.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _It is an excellent book but I think it could have an
| abridged version for the vast majority of people who don't
| need the crazy amount of minutiae in it._
|
| From the article:
|
| > _There would be other battles, like the one over a long
| section on the history of grass in Texas Hill Country, in the
| first volume of the Johnson biography, that Gottlieb wanted
| to cut--"a tremendous battle, an angry, angry battle" is how
| Caro, who ended up on the losing side, describes it._
| kingkawn wrote:
| It's too bad, because the nature of that grass created the
| economic conditions of Johnson's early life
| kingkawn wrote:
| The details of building and wielding power is the point of
| the series.
| no_wizard wrote:
| For a moment I thought this was the no-semi movement (standard
| JS) in the JS community at it again. Then realized _The Atlantic_
| probably isn't covering the code style debate
| [deleted]
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| Okay I get that Gottlieb and Caro were probably right to edit
| down the Power Broker or remove an expansive passage on grass,
| but dammit I would totally read an unedited version of The Power
| Broker. Caro's writing is brilliant, powerful work and I can't
| get enough of it. He just needs to finish. Please Bob. Finish the
| damn series.
| hypersoar wrote:
| Caro tragically had to cut a chapter about Moses's fight with
| Jane Jacobs from the book. His initial manuscript was a
| million(!) words. He managed to cut it down to a trim 700,000.
| For comparison, the longest Song of Ice and Fire novel is
| 500,000.
|
| Fortunately, he's handing all of his papers over to the New
| York Historical Society. I can only imagine how many books
| worth of gold is there to mined by future authors. The NYT had
| a great article about it a couple years ago (to the day, as it
| happens):
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/nyregion/robert-caro-arch...
| blueridge wrote:
| Also read: https://archive.ph/JzSiI
|
| Robert Gottlieb: Avid Reader, Reluctant Writer
|
| Mr. Gottlieb has been the editorial midwife to works by writers
| like Toni Morrison, Joseph Heller and Robert Caro. In his new
| memoir, he writes about the editing life.
| RoboTeddy wrote:
| Caro understands his subjects so so well that you feel you are
| inside their heads.
|
| Caro's works have spoiled me -- other biographies feel out-of-
| focus and surface-level and speculative.
|
| (And all this despite the fact that Caro isn't even really
| focusing directly on his subjects, because actually his books are
| about power and its dynamics.)
| misiti3780 wrote:
| I agree, I remember in the LBJ books he spent hundreds of pages
| talking about Richard Russell, Coke Stevenson, and Sam Rayburn
| -- As I was reading, I was thinking "Why is he writing a
| biography within a biography on these people?". Once you get to
| the end, it all makes sense.
|
| I really hope we get that 5th book.
| mynameishere wrote:
| Just as a side note, I remember an interview with Caro in
| which he discusses Dick Russell with a very obvious hatred
| that does not come across in the book. I don't know if it
| developed over time or if the book is disingenuously "even-
| handed" or what.
| superposeur wrote:
| Completely agree, there is a "texture" to Caro missing from all
| other biographies I've read (indeed, almost all other books).
| At once more vivid, detailed, complex, and rich, with first-
| hand access to new sources and interviews (something a
| biographer of a long-dead figure could never achieve). You feel
| as though you are getting the real scoop even for subjects you
| thought you understood.
|
| After reading Caro, I'm left with the sad impression that there
| is probably a more vivid layer to most historical events at
| odds with the "cartoon" layer that has been passed down, but
| which we will never know because the singular figure of Caro
| was not there to chronicle it.
| woodruffw wrote:
| If you like Caro's approach to biography, I suggest Carl
| Sandburg's biography of Abraham Lincoln.
|
| Sandburg is much better known for his poetry, but I found his
| style and attention to detail engrossing in the same way that
| Caro usually is.
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