{"id":2830,"date":"2019-04-05T07:42:30","date_gmt":"2019-04-05T12:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/?p=2830"},"modified":"2019-04-05T07:42:30","modified_gmt":"2019-04-05T12:42:30","slug":"still-waiting-semi-patiently-for-final-volume","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/still-waiting-semi-patiently-for-final-volume\/","title":{"rendered":"Still Waiting, Semi-Patiently, For Final Volume"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In 1982, I bought and devoured The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power<\/em>, by Robert A. Caro. It was the first volume of a planned trilogy profiling the large-than-life Texan who became the 36th<\/sup> president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Caro\u2019s previous work was The Power <\/em>Broker, an epic account of the life of Robert Moses, the New York titan of development. No one will ever accuse Caro of not being thorough.\"\"<\/a> The original draft of The Power Broker<\/em> weighed in at one million words and had to be cut by a third.<\/p>\n

Eight years later, in 1990, the second volume of Caro\u2019s trilogy was published: Means of Ascent<\/em>. Again, it was a masterful account of Johnson\u2019s rise to power, his narrow Senate loss in 1941 and then the narrow and controversial victory in the 1948 election. I recall talking to Ambassador Ed Clark, a San Augustine native who became a powerful behind-the-scenes attorney and served as Johnson\u2019s \u201cbagman.\u201d Clark told me once, chuckling all the while, that if George Parr, the South Texas political boss, hadn\u2019t been able to come up with enough bogus votes to elect Johnson, Clark had a box of votes ready to go in San Augustine County.<\/p>\n

A dozen years passed. Master of the Senate<\/em> was published in 2002. I eagerly purchased what I mistakenly believed would be the third and final volume. After all, that\u2019s what constitutes a trilogy. But no, it turns out this volume, weighing in at 1,167 pages, only gets us to the eve of Johnson\u2019s election to the vice-presidency. Another decade would pass before the fourth volume, The Passage of Power<\/em>, would be published, bringing readers through the assassination of Kennedy and Johnson\u2019s assumption of the presidency to the eve of the 1964 election.<\/p>\n

That was seven years ago.\u00a0 Devotees of Caro \u2014 and I am one \u2014 have now devoured 3,267 pages devoted to Johnson with great appreciation. Caro, with the invaluable assistance of his wife, Ina, will go down as one of the greatest researchers in American history. As Nicholas von Hoffman wrote, \u201cCaro has changed the art of political biography.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robert A. Caro is now 83 years old. The dark-haired fellow on the back of the book cover in 1982 is now an old man. I\u2019m no spring chicken myself. I was not exactly miffed to discover Caro has published a book titled Working<\/em>, while the final \u2014 really, really \u2014 volume of the Johnson opus awaits. The book is described in the New York Times Magazine<\/em> as a \u201cprecise and detailed set of recollections about his painstaking, near-mythically thorough job of researching, interviewing, and writing about political figures.\u201d I just pre-ordered my copy on Amazon.<\/p>\n

But thunderation! Caro looks great for 83, and I hope he gets regular physical checkups. I guess he just needed the distraction of writing about something else, thus Working<\/em>. In the Times<\/em> piece, Caro laments that the few dozen people with whom he became friends in Austin \u2014 Ed Clark was one \u2014 are all dead now. And he naturally does not appreciate the morbidity of readers like me, hoping he finishes that final LBJ volume.<\/p>\n

I fervently hope that Caro has a few more decades left in him. In the Times<\/em> interview, he says he still has plenty of energy and when he shows up at the LBJ Library, he works 9-5. I appreciate the vastness of material Caro must go through for the final volume \u2014 the Vietnam War, which ultimately proved to be Johnson\u2019s undoing alone generated thousands of files in the nine stories of records that comprise the library.<\/p>\n

When Caro was asked how confident he is that he will finish, he replied, \u201c\u2026 it is a mistake to think about it, because it would make me rush\u2026 I\u2019m trying very hard to keep the standard of this book up to whatever standard I had in the other ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is indeed a high bar. I promise to be patient. In the meantime, I look forward to reading Working<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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