The Big Book

April 14, 2012 8:03 PM

Robert Caro has spent thirty-eight years writing the biography of one man. The fourth volume of that work, like its three predecessors a giant achievement and certain best seller, is about to be published. But Caro is not done. The world and all that's in it has changed, and still Caro is not done. Time has eaten everything around him, and still he is not done. But until he is done, one part of the world that we will never see again will not die.

posted by empath (6 comments total)

Isn't this a double?
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 8:06 PM on April 14, 2012

Purty much.
posted by ShutterBun at 8:09 PM on April 14, 2012

I don't think it is; the other post is about the book and the man who inspired it. This article is about what a giant weirdo Robert Caro must be to have spent 38 years working on the biography of one man.

There is another piece in the NY Times magazine this week, also about Caro-as-weirdo. Because seriously.
posted by Diablevert at 8:14 PM on April 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

I like the idea of how he sits on his hands and doesn't write anything, doesn't lift a pen, until he figures out the very last sentence of the book.
posted by storybored at 8:19 PM on April 14, 2012

All that time and effort spent on LBJ? Giant weirdo is right! I'll still never forgive the savage for picking that poor beagle up by the ears.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 8:20 PM on April 14, 2012 [1 favorite]

I like the idea of how he sits on his hands and doesn't write anything, doesn't lift a pen, until he figures out the very last sentence of the book.

Ah yes the literary equivalent of 'the stranger.'
posted by 2bucksplus at 8:35 PM on April 14, 2012