Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb (Sony Pictures Classics, NR)

I don’t have one of those “I finished The Power Broker” buttons, but I should, since I read all 1300+ pages of Robert Caro’s masterpiece this summer. It’s a brilliant book, full of insights not just about how things got done in New York City in the 20th century, but more generally about what it means to have power in modern America and how the exercise of power, both seen and unseen, shapes the world we live in. There’s also some stuff about Robert Moses in it.

The Power Broker, of course, is Robert Caro’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of the infamous city planner Robert Moses, who more than anyone else shaped New York City into its modern form. It’s also a case study in how one can attain and exercise civic power while remaining outside the reach of normal political processes. You can vote for or against someone running for mayor or city council, but how can you influence the appointed head of multiple public authorities who controls the revenue generated by those authorities? Fugeddaboutit.

Caro’s second major book project is even more massive: a five-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson, of which four volumes have been published to date. Caro hasn’t done all of this work alone, of course, and one of the major influences on his work is that of his editor, Robert Gottlieb. When Gottlieb’s daughter, director Lizzie Gottlieb, proposed the idea of a documentary about Caro and Gottlieb’s working relationship, both vetoed the idea. But she was persistent, and eventually got both to agree to participate in this film, although with certain conditions, such as that they would never be interviewed in the same room at once. Fair enough—both have strong egos, both are good at what they do, and their collaborations have been notably successful. If they prefer to keep their working relationship private, more power to them.

Given that restriction, it’s not surprising that Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb often feels like it’s proceeding on two parallel tracks, resulting in a dual portrait of two giants of the American publishing industry. It’s also a love letter to a certain type of privileged intellectual life which barely seems to exist any more—one in which a relatively unknown writer can spend years researching and writing a book about a topic that everyone says is not of particular interest to anyone (that topic would be Robert Moses), an editor can put his best efforts into making that book as good as it can possibly be, and the result is both a popular and commercial hit.

The title refers to advice given to Caro when he was a reporter at Newsday—when investigating an issue, take nothing for granted, but look thoroughly into every source of information. Of course, for that to happen, someone must be willing to pay the writer to invest that kind of time and effort in his stories, and young people trying to establish careers in the media today can be forgiven for rolling their eyes in a “Sure, Grandpa” sort of way when hearing that story.

Turn Every Page is a celebration, not only of its subjects, but of a certain literary culture embedded in a historical period now long gone. As befits its celebratory air, Turn Every Page includes plenty of testimonials from famous fans, among them Bill Clinton and Ethan Hawke. One thing it’s not is an investigative piece, and the privileges enjoyed by these men, from their race and gender to their private-school educations to the support of their wives in an era when most women had few career opportunities, is left unexamined. It’s not the complete story, for sure, but it’s still a good story, and one worth telling. | Sarah Boslaugh

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