[HN Gopher] An Interview with Robert Caro and Kurt Vonnegut (1999)
___________________________________________________________________
An Interview with Robert Caro and Kurt Vonnegut (1999)
Author : cocacola1
Score : 94 points
Date : 2024-07-27 18:10 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.robertcaro.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.robertcaro.org)
| baxtr wrote:
| I highly recommend "Working" by Robert Caro, his latest book.
|
| It's an excellent book to start with if you want to get an
| exposure to his way of working and his thinking.
| cocacola1 wrote:
| I second the recommendation. Can easily be read in a single
| sitting.
| pjmorris wrote:
| Agreed. It's a short read that demonstrates his writing skill,
| his methods, and his goal of explaining how political power is
| acquired and used. It inspired me to start on the LBJ
| biography.
| 39896880 wrote:
| Be careful with the LBJ series. It will absolutely ruin all
| other biographies for you. You will become intolerant to
| other authors' lack of detail.
| MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
| Not to mention (though I am), awaiting the last
| installment!
| misiti3780 wrote:
| Me too, Robert Gottlieb died in 2022, hopefully the last
| book gets finished and is as good.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| It's incredible how good those books are, and I genuinely
| feel sorry for anyone who hasn't experienced them. I read
| them over two years ago and still remember many details as
| if I read them yesterday. This is quite rare for me, given
| how much I read. Strangely, I didn't have the same
| experience with "The Power Broker."
|
| Ever since finishing them, I have been on the hunt for
| historical biographies of similar quality. While I haven't
| found any that match up completely, here are a few that
| come close in my opinion:
|
| * Truman by David McCullough
|
| * Grant by Ron Chernow
|
| * American Caesar by William Manchester
|
| I've also read the three-part Churchill series by
| Manchester, but it didn't quite measure up to the LBJ
| series for me.
|
| If you have any other suggestions, please share them!
|
| My brother in law loves Vonnegut, I read all of his books
| also. Personally, I don't understand the appeal
| pjmorris wrote:
| I loved the Manchester series on Churchill. The others
| you mention are all on the 'to read' list for me already.
|
| My favorite recent biography was on both JCR Licklider
| and the world he helped create; 'The Dream Machine',
| Waldrop.
|
| Even more abstract, 'The Prize', Yergin, might be called
| a biography of the oil industry and 'The Making of the
| Atomic Bomb' is a biograpy of that dread beast. Those
| were my favorite books before starting Caro.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| The documentary "Turn every page" was great also. Sad to see
| his editor died last year.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Power doesn't corrupt, it reveals -Robert Caro
|
| One of my favorite insights, ever.
|
| I also like the line in there or Vonnegut and Caro agree that 4
| to 5 hours a day is the max you can truly focus.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| More amazing is how Caro paints the picture that really proves
| the point.
|
| LBJ was a despicable human being in many ways. But, he truly
| believed in civil rights and making life better for ordinary
| people. Caro captures the toil of the hill country farm wife
| and the oppression of Mexican-Texans -- and what Johnson did
| for them -- vividly.
|
| Moses was almost the opposite. He built an idealist vision in
| the 1920s... and never evolved. As his power peaked, he did not
| understand why people were against him after what he had done
| for "the people".
| cmiles74 wrote:
| Vonnegut said a couple of things struck a chord with me:
|
| "Novelists are famous as being lousy mates, whether males or
| females, and one reason is that they have to concentrate all
| the time or they'll lose the thread of the novel. It's all in
| the head, and they have information pouring in from the outside
| they're going to lose and so they will pretend to hear you, but
| they're really some- where else."
|
| Later on he says...
|
| "It's nowhere else and so they don't want to lose it and if you
| interrupt a novelist it's a disaster for him."
|
| Maybe software developers and novelists have some inner
| workings in common!
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| Two of Caro's books remain in my favorites today: The Power
| Broker; and Master of the Senate. The concept of political power,
| mentioned in the conversation, is fully limned out in both of
| them. Worth reading by anyone with an interest in how the real
| world works. Unfortunately, Vonnegut, I never quite got. YMMV.
| slothtrop wrote:
| I'm a fan of both Caro and Vonnegut, prefer some of his novels
| over others. Cat's Cradle is my favorite.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Player Piano and Sirens of Titan were the options when I was
| in high school. I can't remember which I read first but I
| liked it so much I begged to borrow a copy and read the
| other. I've never agreed with a lot of his viewpoints, and
| Vonnegut was (like all of us) a flawed human being, but his
| writing transcended a lot of that, which is somewhat odd
| because it's so incredibly personal. That contradiction
| probably says more about me than him.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| t'other way about for me. I love Vonnegut loads so I read it,
| but discovered an American writer/reporter that I never heard
| of. Most interesting. Particularly that theme where idealists
| seek power to achieve objectives independently of functional
| democracy; it seems human, vital, problematic and American -
| all in a wholly positive way - but clearly different cultures
| have different takes on power and where the limits of
| 'visionaries' ought to be.
| fredgrott wrote:
| Vonnegut was that soldier described in some of his
| stories...WII prisoner during Dresden Germany fire
| bombing....his painting art is treasure as well.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| (Meaning 2 of "limn" is "to outline in clear sharp detail", but
| as it is not Meaning 1,this is fine.)
| whyenot wrote:
| The podcast 99% Invisible is doing a series of monthly episodes
| on The Power Broker. I don't live in NY and I don't pretend to
| really understand NY, but it's so interesting to listen to the
| hosts as they work their way through Caro's massive book. I
| really enjoy it and just wish the episodes were more frequent
| than once a month.
| iaw wrote:
| I can't endorse this more. I wasn't familiar with Robert Caro
| until this series started (I had heard of the LBJ biography
| but hadn't looked into it).
|
| The interviews at the end of each episode is super insightful
| about how the structures of power continue to operate in the
| current day.
| ewoijfawoifj wrote:
| > The Power Broker
|
| They really need to publish this in ebook form. It's so hard to
| read as a real book because of the size, and the only other way
| is audiobook.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I recommend tearing it in half.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| What's ironic is that the book was originally excerpted in
| the _New Yorker_ :
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_Broker#Reception>
|
| (I'd thought it had been _serialised_ , per a recent _New
| Yorker Radio Our_ podcast episode, but Wikipedia suggests
| just only sections were published.)
|
| Serialisation remains one of the more viable ways of making
| long works accessible, as well as financing their creation.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I recently saw a guy on Amtrak reading an old, maybe original
| edition hardback of The Power Broker and it was even bigger!
| Just way too big to be practical. By comparison the current
| paperback edition is almost portable.
| vinnyvichy wrote:
| For those who wonder why Caro didn't write more about Jane
| Jacobs (in, e.g. The Power Broker)
|
| https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/jane-jacobs-missing-chapt...
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Robert Caro and Kurt Vonnegut interview each other (1999)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26018824 - Feb 2021 (46
| comments)
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _Well, you stand outside a society and a culture and realize
| that it is an invention and that you can improve it. Well, I like
| the American culture, such as it is, but let 's get rid of the
| fucking guns._ --KV
|
| So, it's relatively easy to find out that the US currently has
| about ~120 civilian firearms for every 100 people, but how does
| that number compare with whatever it was in 1999, when Vonnegut
| said the above?
| harshreality wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/01/business/coro...
|
| Guns per person has gone up significantly. A wild guess might
| be 20-40%, but exact estimates are difficult. _Sales_ are
| tracked and have gone way up, which is the starting point for
| estimating change in guns per person, but difficulty in
| estimating and combining all the factors makes it difficult to
| integrate.
|
| (Most states don't track ownership, background checks aren't
| 1:1 with guns, gun purchase stats depending on how they're
| reported might include used guns, guns manufactured aren't
| necessarily going to civilians, and of course some guns are
| permanently lost or destroyed, or taken out of the country.)
| ks2048 wrote:
| My understanding is guns per person has gone up
| significantly, but percentage of people who own guns has not.
| Which means some people of LOTS of guns.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-07-28 23:13 UTC)