Robert A. Caro

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Robert A. Caro (2012)

Robert Allan Caro (born October 30, 1935 in New York City ) is an American author and journalist , who became known as the author of extensive biographical works on the city planner Robert Moses and the former US President Lyndon B. Johnson .

Life

Caro grew up as the child of Jewish parents in the Central Park West district of Manhattan in New York City. After completing his English studies at Princeton University , where he also served as Managing Editor of the student newspaper The Daily Princetonian , he took up a professional journalism activity in 1957. He was u. a. worked as an investigative reporter for Newsday on Long Island for six years .

In 1967, Caro began writing his first book while spending a year at Harvard University . The Power Broker , a description of the life and work of the influential New York city ​​planner Robert Moses, was published after extensive research in 1974 and is considered a fundamental work of political biography.

While maintaining the high research effort, Caro turned his attention to the 36th US President , Lyndon B. Johnson, after the commercially successful publication of his first book , and has since written a multi-volume biography under the title The Years of Lyndon Johnson . The first volume, The Path to Power , covers the years 1908 to 1941 and was published in 1982, while the second volume, Means of Ascent , published in 1990 tracks Johnson's Senate candidacies . The third volume, Master of the Senate , was published in 2002 , dealing with Johnson's Senate activities. The fourth volume, The Passage of Power , was published in May 2012. Contrary to the original plans to complete the series, it contains the time from the election of John F. Kennedy as Democratic candidate in 1960, to his election with Johnson as Vice President, the assassination of Kennedy making Johnson president, and ending with the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act . Developments in the Vietnam War , Johnson's renouncement of another candidacy, the end of the presidency and the rest of his life are planned for a fifth volume. Caro has already largely completed the research for this one, so that despite his advanced age he is counting on completing this too. Otherwise he has forbidden in his will that his work could be continued by another author. At the beginning of January 2020 it was announced that Caro's extensive archive - if not required to complete the fifth Years of Lyndon Johnson volume - would be given to the New York Historical Society .

Working method

In addition to the last volume of his LBJ biography, Caro is preparing an autobiography in which he wants to present his life, his way of working and the findings from his research. In 2019, Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing was published, a small book in anticipation of the great autobiography. In it he compiled texts and abstracts of interviews that had already been published and added new parts to them.

Caro presents several principles that amount to an exceptionally extensive research and recommends them to all journalists and historians. In files, this means "turn every page". And he describes how to find and interview any person who can provide information about his research topic. To understand the social impact of Robert Moses' major infrastructure projects, he visited several hundred of the socially disadvantaged African-Americans, whose residential areas and social relationships were destroyed when it was demolished for the construction of the city highways. He conducted a total of 522 interviews for the book. From this follows his central method “show instead of describe” (show not tell). He lets contemporary witnesses and files speak for themselves instead of appearing as narrators themselves. And in addition to all the detailed facts, he wants the reader to get a feeling for the place where actions develop. The principle is established in fictional writing, but in non-fictional writing, too, Caro attaches importance to the fact that readers are emotionally involved and can see themselves in the space of activity.

The statement that Caro writes quickly came as a surprise to reviewers. The supposedly slow development of his extensive works is due to preparation and research, not to the actual writing process.

Perhaps the central aspect of Caro's motivation is that, despite his method of great biographies, he does not write the story of "great men". His theme is political power and about it he says that “power does not necessarily corrupt, but it exposes”. Reveals properties of the person who uses them. And he writes: “In order to really show political power, you have to show the effect on the powerless.” Next to or behind political power, Caro ignores economic power. Actors with him are the oil and gas industry in Texas, which was crucial for Johnson's rise. The financial markets and their bonds that finance infrastructure measures and bring their own interests with them, however, would not be discussed at Caro.

For journalists, the book is described as "humiliating" because it describes a way of working that, although ideal and motivating, has never been generalizable and is unrealistic under the conditions of journalism in the 21st century. For historians, however, it is referred to as a “manual for self-help” and Caro as the doyen of political history in the USA. It is recommended to anyone looking for a master class in political history. And Caro is a historian with the heart of a narrator who is just as interested in the psychology of political power as it is in its process or effect.

Awards

Robert Caro has received several awards for his detailed and extensively researched books. So he was u. a. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography and Biography for The Power Broker in 1975 . For Master of the Senate , Caro received the National Book Award in the non-fiction category in 2002 and his second Pulitzer Prize in 2003. In 2008 Caro was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 2009 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 2016 Caro received a National Book Award for his life's work.

Works

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Daniel Stern: The Round Table: Fiction, Biography And The Use Of Power . In: Hampton Shorts . Volume IV, 1999, ISBN 978-0-9658652-1-0 (interview with Robert Caro and Kurt Vonnegut ).
  2. ^ Robert A. Caro: The City Shaper . In: The New Yorker . January 5, 1998, p. 38 ff .
  3. ↑ Chris Jones: Robert Caro Fourth Volume - The Big Book . In: Esquire , May 2012
  4. ↑ Jennifer Schuessler: Robert Caro's Papers Headed to New-York Historical Society . In: The New York Times . January 8, 2020 (English, nytimes.com; full text ).
  5. ^ A b New York Times: In 'Working,' Robert A. Caro Gives Us a Brief Look at the Process of Writing His Epic Books , April 9, 2019
  6. ↑ a b c d Theo Zenou: Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing . In: Reviews in History, August 2019
  7. ↑ a b c NPR: In 'Working,' Writer Robert Caro Explains His Process - And What Drives Him , April 8, 2019
  8. ↑ a b Kim Phillips-Fein: Against the Great Man Theory of Historians . Jacobin Magazine, June 12, 2019
  9. ↑ Academy Members. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed January 11, 2019 .
  10. ^ Paul Ingendaay : The Most Interesting President. Meeting. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , May 4, 2019.
  11. ↑ The day of the assassination. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , November 8, 2013, p. 36.
personal data
SURNAME Caro, Robert A.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Caro, Robert Allan (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American author and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH October 30, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City