And welcome to New York City. C-SPAN is on location here. It's a home of America's publishing industry. It's a home of history museums, American culture, and it's also the home to several American historians. And we had the pleasure and the honor of being allowed to interview Robert Caro, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, in his office and in his home. Here's our interview. Well, we walk into the office here and the first thing we really notice, Mr. Caro, is this corkboard which we are not allowed to get close to.
Huh. Well, you can get close. I just don't want people to... It's just my notes to myself. So.
This is the outline for the rest of my book that I'm working on now.
For the fifth volume of the LBJ.
Okay, what's up here? Can you walk us through a little bit of what's up there?
Well, I don't want to do that. Uh, I mean, what it is is I outline in great detail the whole book before I start writing. So, I just took this off the... I finished this. This is like I've written... Well, the page I'm working on is 983. So, I've written 983 pages. That's this. Okay? And this is the rest of the book. So, I... The way I am, I have to have it all outlined. I can't just start writing. I have to know the beginning to the end, all the way to the last book. Like, if you want to know something, um, that I don't usually... I don't think I've ever told... See, I can't... When I was doing The Power Broker, I finished the research and I couldn't figure out how to write the book. It was too long. Just a mess of stuff. I really didn't know what to do. I was just stuck.
And then I went to... um... He was giving a talk. I went to the fairgrounds, the world's fairgrounds. And in the first couple of rows, that he was opening a new book, he's opening a something like that. And in the first couple of rows were all his Moses men, the engineers and all. So, I was behind them. 'Cause he wasn't talking to me anymore, but I went to his... every time he appeared in public, I went to see him. And the idea of his talk was, um, the ingratitude of the public toward great men. Meaning him. And he's really saying, talking, why aren't people more grateful to me? And I'm sitting behind these men, and they're... they're basically saying, I'm not going to pretend I remember the exact words. 'Oh, RM is right. RM is right. Why aren't people grateful? Why aren't they more grateful?' And all of a sudden I... I... I thought of the last line of the book, which is, why weren't they grateful? And all of a sudden I knew how to outline the whole book, and I remember I ran back to my office. I couldn't wait to get back, and I sat down and outlined The Power Broker from beginning to end. Just... just in a rush. So, ever since then, you know, you learn stuff about yourself. It sounds like you figured it out, but it's really just luck. I can't write the book until I know the last line. So, the last lines of every book are important to me.
You know, that's interesting because when I'm doing an interview, the hardest part for me is the first question. I don't know how to start. And once I get going, I under... you know, it... we're going to be fine, but that first question drives me bonkers. You know, you think you have to have this master question. So, does the first line of a book bother you?
No, if I know the... if I know the ending, I can outline right up to it. And, um, I put the outline up on a cork... on this cork board. Um, and I follow it. So, um, that's all.
And everything is typed on that...
That's a Smith Corona, um...
Everything you've typed... Every... every book you've written has come from that typewriter?
No, not from that one, but from a Smith Corona Electra 2... Electra 210.
Does your typing keep up with your thinking?
No. Neither does my writing. Yeah.
