Tips for reading The Power Broker

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.

Veterans Day

The Great War ended on November 11, 1918. Armistice Day was observed the next year. In the United Kingdom and Commonwealth nations, Armistice Day is now Remembrance Day. In the United States, Armistice Day is now Veterans Day.

In 1924 Armistice Day fell on a Tuesday.

[“Broadcasters to Celebrate Armistice Day: Special Programs Arranged for Tuesday — Bugler to Sound Taps at WEAF.” The New York Times, November 9, 1924.]

Chamois chop suey

[289, 291, 293 Church Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view, with one person at a window, another atop a fire escape..]

This tax photograph follows from last Sunday’s photograph of Needle & Thread Grill: here we see the side of the restaurant and the establishments that follow: Sidney’s Luncheonette (289), Schroeder & Tremayne Inc., Sponges–Chamois (291), and Holland Tire Distributors (293). It’s like something from the world of Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer.

Schroeder & Tremayne and Holland certainly had their pick of places for lunch: if they didn’t want to walk all the way to the Needle & Thread, they could have had a quick bite at Sidney’s. There’s no listing for Sidney’s in the 1940 Manhattan directory, but Holland is in it, at a different address. Maybe the food choices drew Holland to Church Street. Or drove them away.

[Click for larger sponges.]

Schroeder & Tremayne was in business in St. Louis as early in 1918 as a wholesaler of — you guessed it — sponges and chamois. The firm made a splash with a “tasty display” at the 1918 convention of the National Association of Retail Druggists.

[N.A.R.D. Journal 26, no. 27 (1918). Click for a larger view.]

Back to food: the oddest detail in this tax photograph is CHOP SUEY, the stylized (clichéd) letters squirming every which way against a giant T. (Why?) There’s no restaurant in sight other than the Needle & Thread Grill, so the grill must have been taking its menu in a new direction.

In today’s Tribeca, Sidney’s appears to be a residential property. Schroeder & Tremayne houses apexart, a not-for-profit arts organization. Holland Tire Distributors is now OD Studio, home to a personal trainer. No spare tires to be found there, I’m sure.

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

[The Pinboard link does a search: no account needed.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Stella Zawistowski. Such a challenge — I spent about an hour on the puzzle before getting stuck and driving off to our favorite restaurant for dinner. I came back with, as they say, fresh eyes, and filled in the remaining five answers in a minute, maybe less. What had been so difficult about their clues? Nothing that eggplant with beef and pad woon sen with pork couldn’t figure out.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note (and there were many):

4-D, four letters, “Maltese Falcon force.” I can imagine many a solver getting it wrong. But I know Dashiell Hammett’s novel and John Huston’s movie.

9-D, three letters, “Big-letter word on an I-35 map north of Kansas City.” All for three letters? Let’s defamiliarize this answer a little more.

13-D, four letters, “Biker jacket.” I would say I have no clue, but I had a clue — I just didn’t understand the answer. Now I do.

15-A, nine letters, “When plants dance!” A festive thought. Reader, have you heard this expression?

16-A, five letters, “Boston Symphony’s Berkshires residence.” A giveaway, for me, and my starting point.

19-A, three letters, “Get into.” DIG, right?

21-D, five letters, “Pop group.” Again and again, this puzzle invokes and veers away from familiar phrasing.

22-D, eleven letters, “Investor’s bane.” I thought it had to be a technical term.

24-A, six letters, “Got a ticket for.” Oblique.

27-A, eight letters, “Source of ethereal sounds.” Tricky.

28-D, five letters, “Play way?” Good grief.

31-D, five letters, “‘_____ a tavola a mangiare !’ (Italian ‘Eat!’).” Who has time for all those words? I’m familiar with a simple “Mangia!” But the clue would be familiar to many solvers from the cooking show Lidia’s Kitchen.

39-A, six letters, “Incredibly close.” See 21-D.

46-D, four letters, “B, C, P, or V.” U can C Y this puzzle gave me fits.

49-D, three letters, “Saw around.” Had to be LED, like a guide, right?

52-A, nine letters, “Experimental fiction.” The modernist and postmodernist in me dislike the clue and the answer, both of which suggest a sadly narrow view of the possibilities of narrative. I never in my teaching career used either term. I would prefer to think of experimental fiction as phony lab results.

My favorite in this puzzle, because it’s so out there: 30-A, five letters, “Shoe that sounds like an apartment number.” Not experimental, just out there.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

[If you’re wondering about going out to dinner when I’m writing about Saturday’s puzzle: the puzzle comes online the day before at 4:00 p.m. Central.]

Flip

[By me. Click for a larger squirrel.]

That’s Flip, the pancake cook of Squirrel Forest.

It’s totally normal to test the shades of colored pencils on a scrap of paper, isn’t it?

Related reading
All OCA squirrel posts (Pinboard)

[Elaine said that I had to post this scrap. And just to be clear: I was testing at home, to make sure I had the right colors for my purposes.]

A happy warrior in Illinois

From the Chicago Tribune:

Gov. JB Pritzker on Thursday sought to assure Illinois residents that he would fight to preserve the state’s protections on fronts including reproductive health, immigration and LGBTQ+ rights during Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.

“To anyone who intends to come take away the freedom, and opportunity, and dignity of Illinoisans, I would remind you that a happy warrior is still a warrior. You come for my people, you come through me,” Pritzker said Thursday at a news conference in Chicago, where he made his first public appearance since the election.

“You come for my people, you come through me”: I like that. And I like “happy warrior,” which I’ve known only in relation to Alfred E. Smith, who’s now camped in our living room, in the pages of Robert Caro’s The Power Broker. I had no idea that the phrase “happy warrior” derives from a poem by William Wordsworth (inspired by Lord Horatio Nelson) and that it’s been applied to any number of post-Smith politicians.

Recently updated

Other thoughts on the election I’ve added Adam Kinzinger.

Beautiful afternoon, ugly moment

We were walking one of our several routes this afternoon. “Uh-oh,” I said to Elaine.

Far down the street, a house now displayed a large sign. It went up only after the election — that seemed odd. The homeowner, an old guy, was walking out to the middle of the street and pointing to his sign. He must have spotted us and remembered us from the days before the 2020 election, when we gave a thumbs-down to a previous sign every time we walked past his house.

As we neared, he walked toward us, pointing to his sign and yelling about how they won. I said some things about the character of his hero. Elaine said some things too. “Bullshit,” he said. I then asked him, “Would you want your daughter to marry him?” No answer. I asked him three times. He said that I must have trouble speaking — he couldn’t understand me.

Post-walk, Elaine refined my question into un esprit de l’escalier, or maybe un esprit de la rue: “Would you leave your pretty granddaughter in a room alone with him?”

I’m now saving that question for possible future use. And if the reply is something along the lines of He may not be a good husband but I’m choosing a president, the next question would be how someone unwilling to honor a promise to a partner can be trusted to honor an oath to the U.S. Constitution.

Or maybe we should just send pizzas.

[Putting up a sign only after your guy wins is a pretty chickenshit move, is it not?]

Eyes

Guy de Maupassant, Alien Hearts. 1890. Trans. Richard Howard (New York: New York Review Books, 2009).

Related reading
All OCA Maupassant posts (Pinboard)

Other thoughts on the election

Some thoughts on the election, all via Substacks and other subscriptions: Noah Berlatsky, Mona Charen, Mark Hurst, Bess Kalb, Robert Reich, Heather Cox Richardson, Margaret Sullivan.

I’m not prepared to discuss them; I just want to share resources that might be off a reader’s radar.

*

One more: Adam Kinzinger.