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The Two Roberts

Michael Hayward

If you care about the proper use of semicolons, then you should definitely see Turn Every Page (Sony), the 2022 documentary about the two Roberts: Robert Caro (author of an acclaimed four-going-on-five-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson), and his editor of fifty-plus years, Robert Gottlieb (“the most important editor of the post-war period” according to some). Turn Every Page, which is directed by Gottlieb’s daughter Lizzie, offers an intimate look at a remarkable working relationship, one that is highly professional, patient (on both sides), and productive. Though I should caution that “productive” is definitely a relative term: the first volume of Caro’s Lyndon Johnson biography was published in 1982, the fourth volume appeared in 2012, and Caro has been at work on volume five ever since. In one of my favourite scenes in Turn Every Page, Caro shows Lizzie Gottlieb his backup system. Caro types everything using carbon paper and a second sheet of paper. The originals are kept in his Manhattan office; the carbons Caro brings home, where they are shoved into a high cupboard above his refrigerator: paper copies of everything he’s written since they moved into that apartment. “Every so often I get up on a ladder and push, and there’s always some room behind.” Robert Gottlieb passed away in June of this year at the age of ninety-two, so he will not see the completion of this mammoth undertaking. Hopefully, though, Robert Caro will. Now age eighty-seven, Caro still walks to his office seven days a week. Once there, he hangs up his suit jacket and settles at his desk wearing a shirt and tie, facing his Smith Corona Electra 210. In January 2020, Caro said he had “typed 604 manuscript pages [of volume five] so far”; he is rumoured to be working on the years 1966 or 1967, with much of the Vietnam War still to be addressed. —Michael Hayward

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