Elaine and I began reading Robert Caro’s The Power Broker (1974) a couple of weeks ago. It’s a daunting book. I don’t mind long — not at all — but The Power Broker isn’t Joyce or Proust. I was ambivalent about devoting so much time and energy to the life of Robert Moses. But Elaine already had a copy and had made a start. I bought a copy on impulse in New Jersey. Elaine was happy to go back to page one, and here we are, with the Four Seasons Reading Club (our household’s two-person reading project) not having to think about what to read next for quite some time.
Two hundred-odd pages in, I can offer some suggestions to a prospective reader:
~ Decide on a set number of pages per day. We decided on fifteen and have added a bit here and there. Having a page count lets us know that we should be finishing the book in mid-to-late January.
~ Place a sturdy throw pillow on your lap to support the book. Yes, book. It seems wrong to fly in the face of fifty years’ worth of hardcovers and paperbacks by reading The Power Broker as an e-book.¹
~ Do not be tempted to lift the book from its pillow and support it with one hand, with one finger pressing into the book’s upper rear corner. Rapt in reading, you won’t realize that you’re going to end up with a weird little bruise on that finger, looking as if someone has pushed a pencil point into it. The dent will last for some time. I speak from experience.
~ Recognize that everything will develop slowly. It’s like listening to a storyteller who stops to say “But first I have to tell you about —.” You’re along for the ride, so to speak, and there are many stops to make along the way.
~ Marvel at the depth of research that’s gone into the book. As Caro says, it’s the research that makes his books take so long. He’s done his homework — as well as the homework for every kid in the school district. On every page you’ll find details, mentioned in passing, that are occasions for wonder. No spoilers here.
As you may suspect, I think The Power Broker is a great reading experience, all about the acquisition and use of power to reshape — and deform, really — the life of a city. What a time to be reading a book about reshaping and deforming things. The Power Broker is so intensely readable that I could kick myself for ever doubting.
Robert Caro, in Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb (dir. Lizzie Gottlieb, 2022):
“I’ve always felt that if a nonfiction book is going to endure, the level of the prose in it, the narrative, the rhythm, et cetera, the setting of scenes, has to be at the same level as a great work of fiction that endures.”We have 917 pages to go.
Related posts
Caro on facts and truth : “Is there desperation on this page?” : Longhand and a Smith-Corona _____
¹ But if circumstances make an e-book the right choice, choose the e-book.
comments: 9
I have a bit over 200 left to go... I think. (I have to get back to it.) The experience is not improved by the fact that the binding of my almost-50-year-old paperback has has begun to disintegrate.
i just pulled out my copy that i bought a few years ago and am tempted to read it. i've read all of proust and war and peace so this should be easy!!! ha!
good hint to select a number of pages to read each day. i did start at one time but it seemed to get bogged down.
kirsten
DN3, have you seen the movie? There's someone teaching a class whose book is split into two parts.
Kirsten, it's only a third as long as Proust, and it moves pretty quickly, or rather, the prose does.
And if you do hold it improperly and end up with a weird little bruise on that finger, never expound "ug!"
Ha!
Some of the episodes of the Ric Burns documentary about New York City had some interesting coverage of Robert Moses.
I’ve never seen it — I’ll have to seek it out. I started wondering while reading if Caro’s prose might be an influence on Ken Burns’s narrative style.
I'm on page 454. I have to read it at the dining-room table (our only table, now that we are in this smallish house. [Aside: the "breakfast area" has a built-in desk and a sewing machine and ironing board set up, plus a lateral file and a wine rack (which has some wine, some artwork, some jars of hot peppers, some ceramic pieces, topped by two pottery geese.) It's not as crowded as it sounds.] I am waiting for Caro's 5th and final volume on "The Years of LBJ" and praying he completes it... I read the first one at this table, then bought paperbacks and chopped them into portable segments. For some reason I hate to do that to this book on its 50th birthday... I love that Carol doesn't just drop 'the rest of the story' when individuals are no longer part of the larger narrative; he tells us what became of those people.
I’m considering the Johnson bio — something I would never have thought I’d thought about reading. But Caro is so good. I’m beginning to feel that The Power Broker is going by too quickly — now almost a third of the way through.
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