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Two weeks ago I read Caro’s new book, “Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing.” It’s exceptional – no surprise there. I put it down and just went back to skim the parts I had highlighted. Several things stand out.
“My books are an examination of what power does to people. Power doesn’t always corrupt. But what power always does is reveal.”
“I will never forget that night. It was the first time I had ever gone through the files…and somehow, in a strange way, sitting there going through them, I felt at home.”
The dedication to his craft is incredible. Selling his house and moving his family into a rundown apartment to keep writing his first book. Being “dead broke” for seven years. Reading millions of pages and doing thousands of interviews all to research a single subject.
Moving to a desolate part of Texas for three years to understand it better. Then, “to get a feeling for such loneliness I decided to spend a whole day alone in the hills, spend the night there in a sleeping bag and wake up the next day and spend another with no one there but me.”
The process: “First you read the books on the subject, then you go to the big newspapers, and all the magazines, then the newspapers from the little towns. Then the next thing you do is the documents. Then come the interviews.”
Caro’s early editor: “Just remember. Turn every page. Never assume anything. Turn every goddamned page.”
On setting daily quotas: “I have to, because…I have no real deadlines. So it’s easy to fool yourself that you’re really working hard when you’re not. And I’m naturally lazy. So I put on a jacket and a tie and come to work…I want to remind myself that I’m going to a job.”
“I write down how many words I’ve done in a day. I try to do at least three pages a day. Some days you don’t, but without some kind of quota, I think you’re fooling yourself.”
“Interviews: silence is the weapon, silence and people’s need to fill it – as long as the person isn’t you, the interviewer. When I’m waiting for the person I’m interviewing to break a silence by giving me information I want, I write ‘SU’ (for Shut Up!) in my notebook.”
