Robert Caro at work. (Dima Gavrysh/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Over more than 50 years as a working journalist, Robert Caro has assayed the complex valences of 20th century American social, political and cultural history in two Pulitzer Prize-winning books: "The Power Broker," his 1974 biography of midcentury New York master builder Robert Moses; and "Master of the Senate" (2002), the third installment in the multi-volume "Years of Lyndon Johnson."
But while Caro remains a key avatar of old-school reporting – exemplified by his eschewal of contemporary technology and the relentless legwork that characterized his account of Johnson's disputed 1948 Senate primary campaign against former Governor Coke Stevenson in "Means of Ascent" (1990) – the voluminous documentation underpinning his output remained unavailable.
Running from October 22 at the New-York Historical Society, "'Turn Every Page': Inside the Robert A. Caro Archive" begins to remedy this situation by offering an unprecedented look (authorized in early 2020) at the journalist's papers in a permanent exhibit spanning decades of hitherto unseen process documents, personal artifacts and ephemera. These include a vintage Smith Corona Electra 210 typewriter from the "Power Broker" era, interview notes from a conversation with Moses and a ledger tracking how many words he has written against his stringent 1,000-word daily goal. A rare ad for "The Power Broker" foregrounds laudatory blurbs from such contemporaries as 1962 General Nonfiction winner Theodore H. White and 1964 International Reporting winner David Halberstam, while "The Corkboard" showcases representative pages from the mounted outlines that have anchored his oeuvre throughout the completion of "The Years of Lyndon Johnson." Drawn by Caro with a red 314 Berol Draughting pencil, a strikethrough "bold, vertical line" signifies the completion of each section.
Although many of the items pertain to his biographical work, the title of the exhibit alludes to a maxim Caro received under the tutelage of editor Alan Hathaway during his early career as a journeyman investigative reporter for Newsday in the 1960s, a vital (if lesser-known) period that culminated in the young journalist receiving a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University during the 1965-1966 academic year. As early as 1963, "Misery Acres" – an investigation of predatory land sales to New York retirees – was a key triumph, eliciting praise from Newsday founder Alicia Patterson and precipitating near-immediate reforms from the state legislature. Shortly thereafter, the 28-year-old Caro was photographed with Governor Nelson Rockefeller during the April bill signing. Taken retrospectively in the exhibit, it is an auspicious interlock: within a matter of years, the future 41st Vice President would become an outsized figure in the denouement of "The Power Broker," employing the strong arm of the newly-formed Metropolitan Transportation Authority to effectively strip bête noire Moses of his agglomeration of political roles.
In a recent interview with Jen Carlson and Scott Heins of Gothamist, NYHS Curator of Manuscripts Ted O’Reilly indicated that the exhibit would continue to draw upon the archive. "This is basically the first look," he said. "We've covered things that we might not emphasize as much in future interactions. How these things will evolve and change in the exhibit itself, we're still kind of working on. But something like the LBJ section, it covers mainly 'The Path to Power,' the first volume... As anniversaries of some of these publications come about, we’ll probably place an emphasis on other volumes. Just because someone doesn’t see something in the exhibit, doesn’t mean that it won’t be out there for people to see."
Read more about the exhibit at the NYHS website. Caro's personal website (including some of his Newsday articles) may be accessed here.
-- Sean Murphy