A civil war over semicolons: Robert Caro and his editor | Hacker News Reader

A civil war over semicolons: Robert Caro and his editor

theatlantic.com

69 pointssamclemens57 comments

I sympathize. In another life I wrote for a newspaper occasionally, and I gave it up because I didn't have copy approval, and the voice I wrote in vs. the voice they published were sufficiently different to me that I preferred to just not write if that was how it was reflected. However, the beauty of an editor/writer relationship is that the writer is who they are, and a good editor understands what readers like about them. These are rarely the same thing. I couldn't read anything I wrote after it was published, as if it were possible to die of cringe, I probably would have. They (it was a newspaper, their sub editors could have been anyone, and often I thought they most certainly were) knew their readership and what kept readers reading, and they managed my conceits like pros, because that's literally what they did for a living. This argument over semicolons, however, looks like a straight power struggle. A semicolon is what a writer uses to connect two poorly formed ideas to affect a single good one. Even as a writer, I would only ever expect to get one semicolon in the course of the entire relationship, and if I picked that hill to die on, the only situation I would bet it on would be the single idea I was known for - like taking down a sitting president, or the reasoned confidence my turn of phrase would turn the course of history. Otherwise, it's a domestic dispute.

I have an exchange in my email from some years ago about a letter I sent to the Financial Times where, when they published it, the post-edit version was so off that I sincerely explained to the editor that my original phrasing was a reference to a common colloquialism, with the implication that I thought that english was not the editor's first language. She was as impressed by this as you can imagine, explaining back that she was in fact an accomplished athlete in the sport I was referencing. The ensuing thread should probably go down in writer/editor lore. As a writer, of course I would think that. It's why dealing with that sort of thing is a job. For similar reasons, I am waiting for an editor die-off at The Economist before attempting to be on assignment for them again. Those people live forever.

I enjoyed the writing in this comment. Humorous, lilting and enlightening. Where can I read more of your stuff?

Here. :)

Well you certainly sold me on your style.

> A semicolon is what a writer uses to connect two poorly formed ideas to affect a single good one.

I know that your use of "affect" (feign, pretend) is technically correct but even as a ridiculous over-user of sesquipedalian words, it made me double-take.

Hah, thank you. I could go on at some length about how the most important distinction in the english language is disguised in a homonym. Imagine the lives that could be changed by appreciating the difference between something as an effect vs. a representation of it.

It would change their perception of self and real. It's a very different experience of the world.

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.)

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.

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.

For the ignorant.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Russell_Jr.

Richard Brevard Russell Jr. (November 2, 1897 – January 21, 1971) was an American politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 66th Governor of Georgia from 1931 to 1933 before serving in the United States Senate for almost 40 years, from 1933 to 1971. Russell was a founder and leader of the conservative coalition that dominated Congress from 1937 to 1963, and at his death was the most senior member of the Senate.[1][2] He was for decades a leader of Southern opposition to the civil rights movement.[3]

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.

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.

the only other book that scratched the Caro itch was the Montefiore's books about Stalin. The Churchill's biography was also ok, but Stalin's were more revelatory for me.

The off-handed mention of Putin's grandfather, personal chef of Stalin, who's been famously obsessed over not getting poisoned, explains so much about today's Russia

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...

I hope so! The two of them have an enormous book to finish.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

Indeed, we're still living in the society he tried to create. I wish he'd been more successful.

Agree that 3 is great. My favorite is 1, which is next-level even by the high Caro standard: moving to the hill country? Finding un-censored copies of LBJ's yearbook? Unearthing his affair with Alice Glass and the tales of family conflict from his brother? The manic ambition of his first Congressional race as related by his driver? The secret, crucial influence of Brown&Root? -- WTF, no other writer in a thousand years could have written that book. Also, I'll put in a plug for 2, which in my opinion is sorely underrated.

4 was the my least favorite

Me too. The last portion felt rushed and hollow. The metaphor of “holding the hand of the black man to help him vote” is problematic along several axes. On the other hand, still wicked good account of the Kennedy brothers and Hoover.

yep!

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.

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...

There is nothing better than semicolons as a casus belli.

How about semicolons as a casus amoris?

I like dem clauses; I cannot lie.

But clauses, best joined with commas, rarely need semicolons.

Unfortunately métrique 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?)

Oxford commas?

“The Power Broker” by Caro is a must-read.

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!

> 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.

It’s too bad, because the nature of that grass created the economic conditions of Johnson’s early life

As I recall, tons of this background on the geology and ecology of the Texas Hill Country is still in the book.

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.

> 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.

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.

What's the necessity of making biographies read like fiction?

They’re really really fun to read? Real life can be dramatic too.

The details of building and wielding power is the point of the series.

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...

One strategy I’ve seen employee is to tear the book into three parts.

I have an epub if you want it.

If it's the epub passed around different corners of the web, then it's not worth sharing. The formatting is garbage. One is better off reading the book in print.

I read the book on my kindle using it, format seemed fine to me.

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.

Agree. The Audible versions of The Power Broker and the LBJ books have excellent narration.

The high point of my reading life was listening to the audio Caro books. In a book review, George Will somewhat derogatorily called the Caro style "incantatory", with Caro's relentless repetition of metaphors such as the "dam" of Southern Democrats holding back Civil Rights, and phrases such as the "three R's" of Roosevelt, Rayburn, Russell. But it is this incantatory style that makes the writing spring to life in audio. And, yes, you can make your way through them while doing laundry or driving to work.

Yes, I had the exact same reaction and actually donated a print version of the book to the Internet Archive so they might create a digital ebook. It never materialized and I ended up reading the print version, and found it well worth the physical effort.

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

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