BIRTHDAY | Robert Caro, 85

L to R: Alec Baldwin, Jules Feiffer,
Robert Caro, East Hampton Library,
2015. Photo by JTMarlin.

October 30, 2020—Happy 85th birthday, Robert Caro. A New Yorker by birth, Caro is known for his two in-depth biographies, of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson (five volumes so far, or is it six?), to which he has devoted his lifetime. 

These congratulations are a reprise of the Happy Birthday posted here on your 80th, five years ago.

Congratulations also on the fine tribute to you today from Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac, from which this is extracted:

As an investigative reporter for Newsday, Robert Caro wrote why a proposed bridge across Long Island Sound from Rye to Oyster Bay would be a bad idea. It was promoted by Robert Moses, the urban planner. Caro had been convinced his articles would reverse the decision to build the bridge, but the state’s Assembly voted to begin construction. Caro was stunned. He said: 

I got in the car and drove home to Long Island, and I kept thinking to myself: ‘Everything you’ve been doing is baloney. You’ve been writing under the belief that power in a democracy comes from the ballot box. But here’s a guy who has never been elected to anything, who has enough power to turn the entire state around, and you don’t have the slightest idea how he got it.

Caro's latest book, on his
work habits. Previewed in
The New Yorker.

Caro took seven years to write his 1,300-page biography of Moses, The Power Broker (1974). He was so broke while he was writing the book that his wife sold their Long Island house without telling him. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction [he won again with his LBJ biography]. To write biography well, Robert Caro believes it must read like fiction. He says:

Rhythm matters. Mood matters. Sense of place matters. All these things we talk about with novels, yet I feel that for history and biography to ­accomplish what they should accomplish, they have to pay as much attention to these devices as novels do. 

Caro keeps a strict routine when writing, like wearing a suit and a tie and keeping the same hours every day. He interviewed LBJ's speechwriter 22 times and lived in Texas for several years while doing research.

Comment: I was introduced to Robert Caro in New York City in 1974 when The Power Broker first came out, I think by Julius C. C. Edelstein, who was a fellow professor when I taught in the CUNY system in the 1970s. 

I have met the Caros several times since then at the Authors' Night in East Hampton, where they have a summer home. He has described both of his biographies as investigations into power—how it is acquired and how it is used. He has said: “The power of the historian is the power of the truth, a very basic thing.”

The Guardian published a fine interview with Caro last year that includes his wife Ina. She was Caro's sole research collaborator and recently wrote two books of her own on traveling in France. One of her books describes the palace that Fouquet built; it inspired Alice and me to visit it when we were in France recently.

GO DOWN MOSES | Rhodes Statues Removed... Next, Robert Moses?

A statue of Cecil Rhodes in Capetown being removed
to an undisclosed location. 

June 21, 2020—The shocking killing of George Floyd has had national and global implications. It reenergized the Black Lives Matter campaign and then the long-time "Rhodes Must Fall" campaign for the removal of statues to Cecil Rhodes.

The campaigns, which have recruited from a wide range of voters, are now coming after the statue to Robert Moses in front of the Village Hall in Babylon, New York. More about that after three paragraphs of background.

Rhodes, of course, was the Brit who had a dream of a "Capetown to Cairo" British Empire in Africa. He helped realize that dream and had two countries named after him for many decades—Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, and Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. He created the famed Rhodes Scholarships to Oxford, won by such American political successes as Senators Richard Lugar (Univ College, Oxford) and William Fulbright (Pembroke College, Oxford), and President Bill Clinton (Univ College, Oxford).

The Rhodes Must Fall campaign was successful in Capetown, South Africa, where the statue of Rhodes was lifted from its pedestal. However, the campaign to remove a statue of Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford came to a screeching halt when several alumni threatened to end their giving to Oriel if it acceded to the demands of the campaigners. At the time, the Rhodes Must Fall banner was not one that the Oriel Provost wanted to fight under. The resolution seemed reasonable—balancing the importance of keeping historical valuable monuments while facing up to the moral or other shortcomings of people who were once lionized.

What a difference the video of Floyd's killing has made! On June 9, a thousand RMF protesters descended on Oriel College. On June 17, the governing body of Oriel College voted to remove the statue to its alumnus, Cecil Rhodes. The next day (the 78th birthday of Sir Paul McCartney), Husayn Kassai, founder of the verification company Onfido, revealed that he promised to replace any funding commitments withdrawn by "racist" alumni donors who object to the removal of the memorial to Rhodes.

So, now, what about Robert Moses? His biographer, Robert Caro, has famously documented the man's aggregation of power. Moses was a New York City Parks Commissioner for 26 years. He built parks and parkways all over New York City and Long Island. He used his power to promote the automobile and higher-income residents. For example, he built bridges on his parkway with low clearance, to prevent busloads of poor people coming to use his park. There is a Rhodes connection. After Yale, Moses went to Oxford (Wadham College), graduating with a degree in jurisprudence in 1911. He was not himself a Rhodes Scholar, but he had some strong opinions about those who were Rhodes Scholars. The new campaign to remove his statue in Babylon gives new meaning to Paul Robeson's singing of Go Down Moses.

Meanwhile, the Governor of Virginia is determined to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee on his horse in Richmond. Which raises the question: What happens to statues that are taken down?