 I'm Larry Temple as chairman of the LBJ Foundation is a very distinct privilege for me to welcome all of you and introduce this program tonight Before I introduce the people that will be on stage tonight. Let me acknowledge that we have here in the audience Robert K. Rose partner partner in a real sense His wife, but also his research partner all of the research on all the Bob's work Are done by Bob and his wife Ina And Ina is here with us tonight, and I know you're very welcome and glad you're here again I'm gonna do this in reverse order Tonight Robert K. Rose will engage in the conversation with Steven Harrigan Steve is No stranger to this Institution he's one of us and one of the most prominent Writers that we have in this state. He's one of the very very best Probably best known for his award-winning looming towers, but he's written so many wonderful books What The Alamo Okay, okay You know You're stuck with me the people coming on stage are a whole lot smarter But anyway, Steve Harrigan will lead the conversation with Bob K. Rose Now, how do you introduce Bob K. Rose? Obviously everybody in this audience knows who he is That's the reason you're here So what can I tell you in introducing him that? Might be a little new and a little different for you You obviously know that he is the most prominent biographer of LBJ. That's the reason you're here You probably also know that his first writing Was the power broker that he wrote about Robert Moses the man who really built New York and he won a Pulitzer Prize and a national book award for that publication and then he decided in 1976 He was going to take on what he called the years of Lyndon Johnson. It was to be a three-book work He's now finished his fourth book Working on the fifth book in that three book work And he also has won a Pulitzer Prize in a national book award and Many many other recognitions and awards for all of his work during all that time Now that tells you something about Bob K. Rose and Maybe what he's done But it doesn't really explain Bob K. Rose to you or to me And I think to really understand Bob K. Rose. You've got to go back to the beginning He originally Was a reporter. He's a journalist at heart his first writing was as a journalist for Newsday and He was a an investigative Reporter for Newsday and he learned his craft of investigation and research and writing By being an investigative reporter and he was very successful in doing that and Bob says that the best council the best advice that he ever got Was when his editor said turn every page Look under every rock and Bob has followed that throughout his career and even today Bob still has all of the traits and attributes of a journalist When he doesn't interview he doesn't have a recorder He has a journalist pad and he writes down and takes notes and that's the way he goes about his craft of his research Now Bob has spent and Ina has spent many many hours in this library And have been through probably more papers more archives than anybody that's ever come into this library But they also have a unique and different way of doing their research and again It's the work of an investigative reporter One example. I'm gonna give you two examples. One example Was that in the early time of doing the research Bob read that as a congressional aide LBJ used to run every morning From where he lived to his office at the Capitol same route almost the same time every day Bob said you didn't understand that. Why was he running? Was he trying to get to work in a hurry? What what was he seeing? What was he thinking? So Bob said that the way he wanted to try to learn a little something about that small piece of LBJ Was that he went that same route at the same time of the morning as LBJ did just to see what LBJ was seeing as he went along that route Well, now I think he probably didn't run like LBJ was a beauty to have done I think Bob may have walked but nonetheless He went that same route and then again when he first got started in doing the research and writing on LBJ He said he couldn't really get a feel for the Hill Country Couldn't really understand the people of the Hill Country So he said to Ina, I think we need to move to the Hill Country move from New York To the Hill Country and live there and see if we can get a feel for the people a feel for the territory and Ina by the way quipped and said well, I'm gonna go but why couldn't you have written a biography of Napoleon? I told you she was smart But anyway, they moved to the Hill Country actually lived there three years To get to know the people to get to know the area and it was just their way of Doing as an investigative reporter would have done to learn about the area and learn about the people Now Bob has said publicly. He still plans to go spend a considerable bound time in Vietnam He said he wants to go over there and see what it feels like What the people were feeling alive fighting fighting in the jungles of Vietnam? So you can see we have a man. That's not only a very very prominent very highly esteemed Biographer, but a man who still continues to be a journalist and we're all racially blessed because he brings the results of that journalism and that Biography to us in all of the writings and all that he does now tonight. He's probably going to talk about His new book that I hope some of you out bought out there called working Bob is said openly and publicly. It's not intended to be a memoir Rather it's to recite some of his experiences some of the things he's learned some of the things he's done in His writing craft and research craft over the years So I think we're in for a treat with two really outstanding writers of our time So welcome to the stage as Steve Harrigan and Robert Kero I'm welcome back to the LBJ library where I be here Larry mentioned you've been here before and You in your new book working you mentioned that you've spent not just Weeks here months here, but literally years here in the archives, which is pretty remarkable by the way, we're gonna have time in Last part of this for about 10 minutes of audience questions You and I both know the first question that's going to be asked which is when are you going to be finished with your LBJ? Biography so can we pretend I ask that question and you refuse to answer it? Move on to talk about about your new book this is as Magisterial as as your Robert Moses biography in your and your Johnson biography Have become or have always been This book is really special. It's a wonderful book. It's it's I'd say it's part memoir part cradle Part part how-to manual for people who who want to be writers and want to be reporters and One of the things that One of the the Crucial things that I took away from what was a phrase that you use which is time equals truth Can you talk about that and how? how You never give up in terms of looking for the next Detail there a little next anecdote or insight when you're working on a book Well, you're compliment. You put that in a complimentary way Sort of nuts But when I was a reporter Larry referred to this I Had never done investigative work and because I was the lowest man on the totem pole The day of my newspapers picnic everybody else was on a picnic and On the beach at Fire Island So there was an era before cell phones so no one could get a touch and someone called me from this federal Agency that Newsday had been looking into not me, but the real reporters and Finally my editor said well, you'll have to go yourself So I found out I Really loved going through files. I went down there. He this man met me at the door He led me to a room where all the files were that he said I'd find what I needed I wrote a long memo to my managing editor so I had an editor then who was out of the 1920s at the front page days his name was Alan Hathaway and We were never sure if Alan had actually attended a college But he hadn't graduated from one and he really didn't he had never he didn't like people from prestigious universities I was the first literally it's hard to believe the first reporter From an Ivy League school that had ever been hired into his city room and he wouldn't talk to me So that I've been there for like three or four months and he'd walk by my desk and I'd say hello Alan or Good morning, Mr. Hathaway, but he'd never respond So I wrote this memo on what I found in the files and I left it And I went we went I went home the next morning his secretary called and said Alan wants to see you right away And I said to I know see I was right not to move. I'm about to be fired So I drove in there and I he had a big head he only had a fringe of hair around the back of his head and His head was very red because he drank a lot And I'm walking across and I see this big head bent over something and as I get close to his office Which is glass and closed I saw that he's reading my memo and I'm standing there And he sort of waves me to the chair and I'm sitting there and he looks up and he says I Didn't know someone from Princeton could go through files like this from now on you do investigative work Well with my usual Savoir fair at moments like this. I said but I don't know anything about investigative work So he's looked up at me and he said just remember one thing Turn every page never assume everything anything Turn every goddamn page. And you know for the all the time that I'm down here in the Johnson Library Of course, you can't turn every page or even any real percentage of them because they're I think they said they're 45 million pieces of paper here But you can zero in on a period in Johnson's life and say I'm going and over and over again when I've done that You sit there turning these pages you think they're I'm just wasting my life And then suddenly there is the letter of the telegram you've been looking for Well, you and I met I think in 1990 when I wrote a Profile of me for Texas Monthly and at that time like I interviewed your your equally legendary editor Robert Gottlieb Who said this about you? what's most remarkable but Remarkable about Bob Carrow is the depth the obsessiveness the accuracy of his research the totalness of it he simply never stops and That's pretty remarkable quality and profession where Particularly like journalism where there's deadlines. Yes, and but you seem to have managed to Escape the idea of a deadline And how where does that self-confidence come from? Oh, I have to say whatever it is. It's not self-confident It's but you know, I always when I was a reporter you have deadlines I always hated having to write a story When there was I still had a question that I wanted to get an answer and when I started out to write books I remember when I said the first book on Robert Moses. I said, you know, I'm not going to start Writing until I've answered every question that that I had and People asked why my books take so long, but they do take a long time, but I always feel On easy, it's not self-confidence. If I feel there's still stuff that relates to what I'm writing that I haven't looked at But you're you saying your book that you're a very fast writer Paradoxically, I guess well as far as writing. I'm real. I'm really I am when I was like When I was on the newspaper, I was the fastest rewrite man, you know It's impressive You sweet, you know as you mentioned of course and as we know you you moved from daily journalism to decades-long books and the first book you wrote was the Power Broker about Robert Moses and you Thought it would take you nine months. I think knowing once and that took you five years Which is for those of us who write books. That's sounds about right but You got it. I think a five thousand dollar advance Yeah, and you got half of that up front. Yeah, is that right? Yeah, so And you're saying the book that you hate being broke so describe those years for us when you were in fact broke and Writing under this, you know humongous deadline of trying to produce this massive tome about Robert Moses well so I Got that what you say 2500 I was a reporter so I know and I basically we didn't have any savings, but I got a grant from the foundation grant and that The that was for a year that I remember I said to I know we'll finally get to go to France Because they're paying me for a whole year. I'm gonna be dying in nine months So of course after the year we were broke And I didn't know what to do when I came home one day and I know said we sold the house today And I didn't really care that much about the house, but I know really loved it But we sold it. Unfortunately. It was the days before the real estate boom, right? So I remember we bought it for forty five thousand dollars and we sold it for seventy thousand dollars So we cleared twenty five thousand dollars that got us through a second year then I was really I Remember the years after that as being broke and at some point I Had an editor who would never return my time He wouldn't return my telephone calls for a long time and I gave him about half the manuscript Which is about a half a million words and he didn't I didn't hear from him from a long time and finally he takes me to dinner at a very inexpensive Chinese restaurant on board I I I Would realize now what that meant and he said, you know, we like the this was not Bob Godley was another at another publishing house and he said We like the book basically we like the book keep going I said can I have my other twenty five hundred dollars and he said and There words that I never forgot because they so They've been bettered in my memory. He said oh no bomb I guess you didn't understand we like your book But nobody's going to read a book on Robert Moses and you have to be prepared for a very small printing And we're not prepared to go beyond the terms of the contract which even I Figured out meant I wasn't going to get the twenty five hundred dollars that you know was the worst Maybe we will have bad moments. That was the worst moment that I can remember in my professional life Anyway, I didn't know how to tell line of this I remember I walked all the way And this was the night this was the 1970s, you know And this lit the late 60s and Harlem was a dangerous place But I didn't even think about that I walked home because I didn't know how to tell I know this Luckily not long at just a couple of weeks after that this editor left now I had signed my contract. I didn't have an agent, but I knew I needed an agent so I went finally I Interviewed a number of agents. I remember I there were four Three men and a woman. This was before the women's movement. So I went to see the three men first finally, I went to see and Linne's but an agent and she said to me basically I like your manuscript I'd like to represent you but you have to tell me what are you so worried about and Course my editor had made me feel no one was going to read no one was interested in this book I said well, I'm worried that I won't have enough money to finish the book and she said well How much are you talking about? I don't remember what the figure was But it was enough for to live on for two years. It wasn't that long and I these were also Sentences that I've never forgotten. She said Is that what you're worried about? You can stop worrying right now Everybody in New York knows about this book and I can get that for you by just picking up the phone What I have to do is find you an editor you can work with for the rest of your life So she found me Bob Godley so they have been the year was 19 this year was 1971 and Lin has been my agent and Bob Godley have been my editor since 1971 When you finally turned that book into Gottlieb You ended up cut this this I really I This is hard to imagine. I just wrote a book. It was 325,000 words. I don't people don't think people understand how many book pages that is that's 900 pages Yes, you cut that much out of the power broker Yes, I mean what was that like? And that was that was bad Blood on the floor Yes, but so I handed in to him a million fifty thousand words and we had to cut it not because He himself has said I He uses the Pronoun I a lot. I'm not sure he has the pronoun we He says I cut 350,000 of the best words I ever wrote But that was the maximum amount the number of pages and the power broker Steve which I think is 1368 is the maximum number of pages you can bind between Covers and have a trade trade book Another thing you talk about in the book that's so interesting to me is there's this There's kind of thread of loneliness that runs through this book in a weird way when you're particularly in that part of your life when you're You're making that transition from from a from a daily journalist to a book writer and one of the things I wrote down Was you say The easy gratifications that go with the journalist's life the by lines the gratitude or the wary Respect or fear that the subjects of your articles had for you The awareness of friends and neighbors of what you were doing the feeling that you were at the center of the action That I was exceeding in doing what I had set out to do those are the things that Were it were you know keeping you alive During the time that you were a daily deadline. Yes, you had to give all that up for this Solitude that you endured and still enduring I'm assuming for many years. What was that transition line? Oh Hard you know, it's it's hard to be alone all day And it's hard also because you don't get any feedback You know, I don't show my manuscripts. I think I once we're talking about this I don't show my manuscript to my to Bob Godly, but anybody until I finish the book, right? So You don't get a feedback and you keep wondering how how it is But you learn to live with that so you don't even show it to I know To tell you the truth. I I don't But she I know I wish you'd talk a little bit about I know and You know the the partnership you guys have had all these years not just a marriage, but it but it you know You know literary comradeship like it because she she does a lot of the research a lot of the Stuff that needs to be done while you're working on these books. Yes, and she spent as much time here as There I would guess close to as much as you haven't she's moved to the Hill Country with you Yeah, yeah, well yeah, I know you know, but she's also written two wonderful books of her own I know is a historian medieval historian and the way we work it out is When we I finished a section of the book which can be many chapters or a few chapters we go to France and for we you know, we drive around and I know produces books out of that so But she's you know, she's the only person You look sometimes in the Acknowledgements of some books and you say they mentioned they have three or four Researchers, but I know is the only person I've ever been able to trust to do research on my books beside me She is the whole team of research. Yeah, so you can kind of read each other's mind about she knows what you're looking for and I'm I don't know that I could read her mind, but I'm afraid she can read my mind I'd like to talk a little bit about Which is what you talk about in the book as well About how you do how you write how you interview all the kind of you know tools of the trade I had the opportunity when I when I met you in New York that time was writing about you to see your office which is Really interesting in an uninteresting kind of way Because it's in a it's a it's a Building off Columbus circles. Well, I've had to move now just a couple of months ago. Yeah, okay Yeah, well, I hope you haven't changed much. No, I have changed because as I recall there was pretty much no decor Yeah, in your office. Yeah, you had a Frighteningly clean desk you you get up every morning and you put on a suit and tie Yeah, go to work or as everybody else is writing in their pajamas and So there's a there seems to be a Ritual that you follow that you feel the need to follow to be productive. Could you tell us about that? Well, that's a very good question. No one ever asked me that the reason I wear it at suit and toys So I have an editor and a publisher who are really unusual and they never asked me When is the I've never been asked when are you going to deliver? When is the book going to be done? No, no, all these people want to know And so you're sort of in that way in a vacuum and months follow months and they turn into years So it's so easy to fool yourself that you're really working hard when you're not so I do everything I count to remind me that it's a job and I have to produce so when I was young everybody wore Jackets and toys so I wear to remind myself. I'm going to a job and at the end of the day, you know, I Write always write down how many words I wrote that Wrote that day just so that I can see that I'm actually producing and you also have a kind of you have a wall That's that's covered with the sort of ever-growing outline correct. Yes Can you tell people how that works? How you how you visualize this massive books? Well I'm not it's I'm not sure it's easy to talk about I have to I don't start writing until I finished all the Research and then I have to figure out what the book is about the heart the hardest thing I do is I want to boil what the books down in my mind to I always try to say one paragraph But it's never one, but it's always two or three paragraphs Because and if you saw me during this period, I you'd see a really unhappy Guy I used to come home at the end of the days and have I love a Kentucky sourmoush called Weller 107 I used to sip that while I was Unwinding then I have to for now. I have to stop drinking. I need to keep saying boy. I wish you could still Drink at the end of the day, but if I can make my so sometimes it takes Couple of weeks or more than a couple of weeks before I can say this is what the book is really about In two or three paragraphs But I found if I can Do that and I can type it out these couple of paragraphs and As you say thumbtack it on the wall next to my desk when I go off on these digressions You know what was the Hill Country like before Lyndon Johnson board electricity or the biography of Richard Russell is or that sort of thing I Can always look over at that Those couple and say is what I'm writing here relate to that and bring it back to that main Theme I learned that the very I don't I learned that really the very hard way because when I was doing the power broker I'd never done a book. So I didn't know what I was just telling you right now So I I finished the research and I couldn't start Writing, you know, I just it's such a mess of stuff. I couldn't outline it But all I was doing then Robert Moses had long since had long since stopped speaking to me but I Would go whenever he was making a public appearance and I would be in the audience So one day he was speaking out. He was dedicating Something out of Flushing Meadow that the world's fair because he built the two worlds fairs are among other things, of course and the idea of his speech is Why weren't people more grateful to him? I mean he he couched it this way He said someday we're gonna sit here and reflect on the question of the ingratitude of the public toward great men This is the way he put it. So I'm standing there and he's saying this, you know, like what why? Why aren't they grateful and I suddenly it just hit me. I said, oh, that's what the books about Here's a man who did so much he built all the bridges all the roads all the parks so much public housing Why isn't New York grateful to him? The minute that hit me I said, oh, I could I went back to the office and I started outlining and the whole book Just fell into place. So I learned if I can just get it down to a succinct a Little summary of a sentence or two or a couple of paragraphs then it becomes easier for me It's kind of a big bang model. You start with a small thing and it expands from there. Maybe Have you found I'm not asking you to reveal it, but have you found that? Paragraph or two for volume five. I think I have yeah, good to know We'll find out when I Know There was Getting back to to how you write you don't use a type recorder when you're interviewing people You you work on legal pads, but not yellow legal pads white For any particular reason that we need to know No, I use white legal the trouble is they stop I use white legal parents You know for any particular reason the reason I'll tell you why I write in longhand the first few drafts is because I had a professor at Princeton a creative writing professor Very at the time of an old a very courtly Southern gentleman named RP Black He was quite famous at the time he's forgotten now and I was in his creative writing course And I see I'm answering your questions. They're all lawn. You see why my books are so long So I was taking his course for two years and every two weeks You had to hand in a new a short story and I always got a good mark on it And I but I was always doing these things at the last minute I was always starting the night before you know working all night And I thought I was fooling him about the amount of thought I was putting into the into the writing At our last session together He hands me back my shot short story and he says something complimentary And I get up to go and he says but you know mr. Carol you're never going to achieve what you want to achieve unless you stop thinking with your fingers and You know I say in the book. Did you ever realize that someone has seen right through you? He knew I wasn't putting any work into these stories So when I when I was a newspaper man I could also write very fairs, but when I stopped to do the power broker and I realized how Complex it was going to be I said I have to do something to slow myself down and Writing in longhand is really the slowest way of committing your thoughts to paper So that's why I do it that way and then you after you've done a couple longhand drafts You do a typewritten draft on your yes with corona or many many Yes, and it meanwhile the outline on your wall keeps expanding. There's more detail and stuff right in my No, the outlawing sort of I do the outline before I start writing yeah now in the book you talk about That your power. I'm calling it your power of concentration. You may call it something else But you almost slugged a guy once who wanted you to go Well, that's not a compliment for me because the guy I almost slow it slugged was an elderly gentlemen it is true that I Evidently tend to concentrate very hard and this guy came up behind when I was working in the public library and tapped me on the shoulder and before I knew it I was up with my fist Yes, very ashamed of that moment on the other hand it speaks well for your for your concentration When you move to the to the Hill Country Larry Temple has referred to this in his opening remarks you You really dug in you and I know you know came here and you you spent so much time Interviewing people or getting to know people are trying to to sort of infiltrate yourselves into this culture that was completely alien and you know, there are a lot of anecdotes in the book about that, but the one I'd like you to talk about tonight is your when you you Let me back up and say in one point in the book you talk about How you write in your notebooks s you which means shut up? Yeah, and how silence is the weapon not to not to interfere with somebody who's telling a story and So you're a you're not a passive interviewer, but you're you're a receptive one You're not saying much, but there are times When you have turned the tables a little bit and one of those times was with Lyndon Johnson's brother Sam Houston Johnson, could you tell people about that incident where you got him to to? Sure, really open up. Yeah Well, this was you know alone. This was a long time ago when I was just starting the work So of course one of the first people I wanted to talk to was Lyndon Johnson's little brother Sam Houston Johnson So he was a he was a heavy drinker I had heard that and he was the kind of a guy who was filled with bravado and braggadocio And he would tell these stories and over and over again when I checked out the details They turned out to be so exaggerated or completely untrue So I've sort of said I'm not going to waste any more time on him I'm not going to speak to him again So then there was a period of time and I heard he had this terrible operation for cancer And I heard he had stopped Drinking and one day I was walking around Johnson City I used to spend a lot of time just walking around Johnson City Chatting with people trying to get a feel of the place and there Sam Houston was coming towards me And he was like it. He was he had a cane. He was rather frail and When I we stopped to talk I found him very different We went to have a cup of coffee and I and I found him a different man So I decided to try interviewing him again and by this time I had spent enough time with Lyndon Johnson's family That I knew that whatever the secret was to Johnson's really Remarkable personality. It's this Tremendous drive, you know an ambition that he had The key to it had something to do with his relationship with his father because Lyndon Johnson idolized the father who was a respected legislator and The most successful businessman in Johnson City and lost everything He made one mistake and lost everything and the Johnson's lost the ranch and for the rest of Lyndon Johnson's boyhood from the time He was 13 they lived in a house a little house in Johnson City Where he was afraid every month that the house would be taken away from them There was often no food in the house because his mother was often sick So neighbors had to bring covered dishes as charity So I really wanted to get an accurate picture of that And I thought of a way that I might get Sam Houston to do it So I got the National Park Service to say we could go into the Johnson boyhood home Which were they they had recreated exactly the way it was when Lyndon and Sam Houston were growing up there After the tourists were gone for the day and it was empty. It was just him and me and I brought him into the dining room And I asked him to sit down at the same place at the table at that They had a long plank table and the three sisters sat on one side of the table and Lyndon and Sam Houston sat on the other and the father sat at one end in the high back chair and the mother at the other and I got him Sam Houston to sit down in the very same place He had sat out as a boy and I I didn't sit at the table I didn't want him to have anything to distract them. I said this I bring them in it's dinner hour It's about six o'clock So even the shadows in the room would be the same shadows as when he was having dinner there And I sat behind him so he wouldn't see me and I said now tell me about these arguments that your father and Lyndon used to have every night at dinner and At first I remember it was really slow-going, you know, he'd say something and I'd say when then what happened but he started talking faster and faster and Finally he was really into it and he was shouting, you know, you're a failure Lyndon You'll always be a failure. Well, what are you? You're a bus inspector, you know, and when he I said now Sam Houston, I want you to I felt he was really in the mood and Remembering accurately so I said now I'd like you to tell me all these wonderful anecdotes about your brother That you told me before and that other people have told me and it was a little I remembered as a very Important moment might he said it's a lawn pause and he said I can't and I said why not and he said Because they never happened and then without another word out of me He sat down and basically told me the story of Lyndon Johnson's youth a terrible youth That's in the in in the end of my first volume and this time when I went back to the other people who were involved in each Anecdote they said yes, that is what happened and then they gave me more details so I could tell the whole story That's amazing. See y'all basically orchestrated a seance And and getting back to the kind of more mundane realities of interviewing people you don't use a tape recorder You're using just a reporter's notepad. I see or something like Is I find The older I get the more frantic I get trying to write down things and you know the people said are you heavy? Are you just you have sure you use shorthand or how do you well when I was a reporter? I created my own short. Yeah, I have a shorthand But it's and so you can like take down conversations and stuff without being too Well, if you want if there are paragraphs that someone says to you that you want to get every word I feel I can get every word. Yeah, that's great. No one's ever in all my interviews I will say boastfully no one with all the people have criticized my books, but no one's ever said I misquoted them And the other thing you did and Learning about the Hill Country is that you you got a sleeping bag and you went out one night and you Put down a sleeping bag in the middle of nowhere and spent the night Woke up the next morning That was must have been odd for a guy from well, you know why that was that also relates to saying Houston Johnson We're not when we moved the reason one of the reasons we moved to the Hill Country was it was a place of such Loneliness I mean now, Austin has expanded out there, but then the Hill Country's Well, you know this started right at the Austin Western limit and it went on for like 300 miles and the population Very scattered houses. It was a land of great loneliness I mean, you know when you were interviewing these people who had grown up with Johnson the The directions might be something like you know You go out of look you drive out of Austin 47 miles and watch for the Cattle Guard And at the Cattle Guard your turn left and you drive let's say 30 miles On a unpaved rutted road when you get to this house you realize you haven't pay us another house in 30 miles So this was a land of such Loneliness and I didn't understand the loneliness, you know, so this was in an adequate way or what you said I said I want to see what it's like to spend a day all by yourself and night all by yourself and wake up The next day and still have nobody to talk to and that's why I did that. Yeah, and it worked Well, it's nice of you to say I was Larry had mentioned there's another really Wonderful vignette in this book that Larry Temple mentioned earlier where you you kind of retraced Lyndon Johnson steps when he was a young congressional aide, you know from his, you know rooming house to the to the Capitol and I would would you mind reading that? passage that's from from the from the I guess this was the first volume, right? Yeah It's just so vivid. I wanted to talk about it. I want to point. Could you remind us again? You you decided that there was something missing in your description of Lyndon Johnson's life as a young congruent congressional aide. Yes, and how did you come across the idea that? That you needed to retrace those steps and and follow his his route every morning. Yeah, you asked a good question I mean I mean one. I mean he had this, you know, even people in walk, Washington's a place of Ambition, you know, a lot of people are very ambitious but when I started talking to the people like in Franklin Roosevelt's in a circle who when he came up as a 29-year-old congressman in 1937 they said it was something special about his Desperation about his ambition, you know, and I felt myself. I wasn't really getting it, you know So I managed to find he was then what they called it. Oh, I'm sorry. I said 1937 as a congressman This was before he was a congressman's secretary with they called them secretaries So I found the woman who worked in the office with him she was from Santa Antonio and there was Estelle Horman and What would happen was Lyndon Johnson lived in a little hotel down by Union station So he'd come up walk up Capitol Hill, then then when he got in front of the Capitol He would start running and he'd run the length of the east front of the Capitol Which is 750 feet and then down to his office and the other side So Estelle Horman lived in a boarding house over here beyond the Library of Congress So she'd be coming this way and I asked about Lyndon Johnson and she told me what I just said to you that Every morning she'd see him walking up and all of a sudden he'd break into a run So I said is there something that's making him Excited that's thrilling him to make him break into a run every morning So over and over again I walked that same route and I never saw anything in particular and then I suddenly realized This is how this is slow on my part. I had never done it at the time. He did it They were both ranch kids. So they got up with the son So he was coming to work and Estelle was coming to work at like six o'clock or even in the 530 in the morning. I never did it at that time and As soon as I did it I Came and it was just remarkable because at 530 or 6 the Sun is coming up in the east. So the full force of its level rays hit that 750 foot mass of white marble and lighted it up like some great huge movies So I said of course he's coming from this land of little log cabin homes They call them dog run and all of a sudden everything that here's the whole majesty of Washington If he can succeed here He'll have what he wants and that's what I was trying to show. Well, you did it so well. I printed it out And would like to ask you to read it if you wouldn't mind. It's only like a few paragraphs Leaving his room early in the morning He would turn left down the alley on to a street that ran between the red brick walls of other shabby hotels But when he turned the corner at the end of the street Suddenly before him at the top of a long gentle hill Would be not brick but marble a great shadowy mass of marble Marble columns and marble arches and marble parapets and a long marble balustrade high against the sky Viering along a path to the left He would come up Capitol Hill and around the corner of the Capitol and the marble of the eastern facade Already caught by the early morning Sun Would be a gleaming Brilliant almost dazzling white a new line of columns stretched ahead of him a Line of columns so long that columns seemed to be marching endlessly before him The long freezes above them crammed with heroic figures and columns loomed not only before him But above him there were columns atop columns columns in the sky That's it That's such a beautiful and powerful passage and you know I've been studying that for the last couple days trying to figure out what makes it work and it's it's the repetition of the word marble the repetition of the word column, but it's this Sort of circular ever diverging ever digressing Thing that has this power to it. It's just a sheer narrative power and That's headed in one direction despite evidence to the contrary sometimes and I'm just wondering because you talk a lot in the book about how in how important the craft of writing is when it comes to history and biography and how how some writers have forgotten rhythm and and and other tools of Novelists typically use how when you write a passage like that Do you one thing do you remember writing that passage? Do you remember? Revising it endlessly or did it did it? No, that's what I remember Writing it over and over writing it over and over so what were the Can you talk a little bit about the decisions you would make in a passage like that because I'm assuming you knew it was important I'm assuming you knew that I've I've found something here So what what went through your mind as you were trying to get it right? well one thing that went I Don't remember ever ever and a lot of this stuff, but If I do this right, I don't have to give a lecture to the reader on this is why Lyndon Johnson Well Had such ambition because he saw what he could get in Washington what it could mean to him Because if I can do this right, I'll show the reader what he was seeing what made him break into a run What excited him so I said if I can just Show I don't say that I did this but this you asked me what I was trying to do So I said if if I'm succeeding if I'm Showing his character the way it really was and showing this scene that excited him The way he saw it then I don't have to give the reader a lecture and say Lyndon Johnson was so ambitious I can make the reader feel his ambition. That's what I was trying to do. That's a screenwriter's trick. I mean, you know, I Mean to make it visual and make it clear and you've written fiction You you wrote like a gigantic short story and Princeton Review Back back when you're a student. I mean do you feel Did you feel called to fiction as a writer early on in your career at all? I Well, I wrote a lot of short stories as you say at Princeton But um, you know my you look back on your life. You said so I got out of Princeton. I became a reporter So I wasn't writing fiction. Then I got suddenly felt I had to write this book about political power in New York And do it through Robert Moses So you went into that without thinking about fiction. So the answer is sort of no, you know But you've you've retained it the sense of Power and musicality that's really important to you and pros. I mean, it's where you were very complimentary Well, I'm just saying what you know, and it's it's but it's so vivid and Again, I those of us who are writers study those paragraphs trying to figure out how he does it, you know Which is the great thing about this book Working the book we're discussing it talks not just about Why you do it but how you do it and and it's a you know for anybody who wants to be a writer I think this is crucial reading. I wish I'd read this 40 years ago It's really a beautiful book We're gonna have some time for questions in a few minutes, but I wanted to I wanted to ask The There were a couple things that that intrigued me early on in the book where you talk about Visiting Robert Moses. Yeah, who was at that time 78 years old I think is that right? Yeah, and you had been on his trail for a long time. You had been You'd sort of broken in not broken in but found your way into his office in the try under the triboro bridge Is that right? I hadn't yet. No, you hadn't yet, but but you did you found all this great information But there was something that really struck me In your description of meeting him or this is like When you'd You're talking about meeting Moses and he's he's got this gigantic map up on the wall Yeah, and and he's getting 78 years old and he's in his office And he says now 78 years old is younger than you are now. I hate to bring that up But he says when he talked more over you saw how the dreams and the will to accomplish them We're still burning undimmed by age and then on the next page you write Driving home that night. I realized that when Robert Moses was looking at the window at the bridge and the park He hadn't been thinking about them about the things he had built He had been thinking about the things he hadn't built and when I read that I thought Robert Carroll Because you're you know, you've still got these this one gigantic project in front of you I mean, are you still feeling that? Intensity and that excitement about Bringing this thing to a close. Well, you do feel You do feel a sense of real excitement you want to do it because You take this last volume you talk about Lyndon Johnson So in this last volume Lyndon Johnson passes the civil rights bill the voting rights bill head start medicare Medicaid Could go on for a long time. You say I don't know that we would have these bills Now if Lyndon Johnson hadn't had the legislative genius to get them through then so on the one hand you really feel This is thrilling to see what government can do for people. That's it. I really think has been forgotten today What government what was it like now? I'm working on a section now What you basically could say is what it was like to be old and sick in America before medicare What was it like then and as rose Franklin Roosevelt? What was it like to be old in America before social security? You lost your you know You were you lost your job in a factory. You were never going to work again. There was no money coming in It was a different world so government can do so much for you and in this last volume If I if I managed to do it and say that I am You would see through Linda with the what Lyndon Johnson does what government can do for people at the same time You have Vietnam, which is a terrible story and that is also Lyndon Johnson's story So you said this is really a hard Volume to do but you'd really like to be able to do it right because you can show Both sides of government If you do that and you've also got the his life after the presidency Well, which in a way could be the whole volume itself But we won't talk about that But and you talked about at one point and maybe you're still thinking about it going to living in Vietnam for a while They're spending some time there because just as you did in the Hill Country You wanted to make sure that you understood the effects of power on Powerless people and certainly there could be no more powerful or you know effect on on people in Vietnam Than the war that yes, that was visited. Yes Also, you're thinking or maybe you are already writing a memoir. Yes Yeah, I've written. Yeah, you've written it. No, I haven't written all of it, but yeah So you're working on that at the same time. No, I well I can't write two books at the same time So when I'm writing the Johnson book, I'm not writing the memoir, but when I'm doing research, you know I can I can work on them. I'm right Well, I won't ask one word. We can expect that either We have time for a few questions. I If you would like to ask a question, I believe there are microphones somewhere Yes Parfully I was affected by it 40 years ago and Learning from Steve that there's so much that's not part of it After in 520 years you have finished all of the LBJ. Can we get the rest of the power broker? Well, it's it's true that I'd like to publish and my publisher would like me to publish The we cut as I said earlier 350,000 words out of the power broker. That's about Three novels. Yeah Novels eight 80 to 100,000 words. Well, so you live in hope that that will be published. So directors cut Bob going out and living in the Hill Country The Hill Country hadn't changed all that much From the time you were writing about to the time that you were there But Vietnam seems a very different place Do you really think you can get that same kind of sense of what it was like in the 60s by going to Vietnam now? Yeah, well two of the things you want to do is What it was like for American boys But if I have to fight in the jungle, you know, there are a lot of wonderful memoirs by Soldiers who were fighting in the jungle and that's a I'd like to try to do that But another thing you say, you know Lyndon Johnson Orphan picked bombing targets himself So I want to go to some of these villages. You see they were bombed by b-52s Which not only fly so high that they're invisible, but they fly so high that you can't hear them So these villages sometimes didn't know they were being bombed until the bombs actually hit So you say you want to go and see you don't you know, sir You it's a very good question that you asked You don't know what you're going to find until you go to it until you go to a place and I don't know what I'm going to find when I'm there Over here, we're just praying you all make it back Yes, ma'am I was I was dining on Saturday night with a friend of mine who's a federal judge in Houston and I was telling him about being so excited about coming to hear you tonight I had heard you in New York a couple years ago being interviewed and He said oh Robert Carroll He's a guy who's lived his whole life writing about men. He didn't like And I would like to to answer him with your own words Well, that's not true Certainly with Lyndon Johnson I Feel the two sides to him. I you know people say my feeling with Johnson is or AWE because I Think my books are about political power But this was a man Who could really? Use political power for great ends, you know you say So in the volume I'm doing now Martin Luther King is marching in Selma, you know Johnson decides to submit a voting rights act and One of his speech writers Richard Goodwin who I talked to about this told me He's writing this speech Johnson's great speech when he says we shall overcome. It's not It's not Negroes who have to overcome I was it's us who have to overcome and we shall overcome and Goodwin was telling me how he said asked Johnson Goodwin may have actually asked them in these words because he was not a diplomatic guy Do you really mean this is this or are you just doing this because politically the Right thing to do and Johnson told them about how when he was 21 years old he had to drop out of school For a year because he was so poor to make money to go on he taught What they called the Mexican in the Mexican school down in Contola and I wrote no teacher had ever I wrote No teacher had ever cared if these kids learned or not this teacher cared and Johnson says to Goodwin The exact words are in my book I but he says you know I swore then that if I ever had the power to help these children I was going to do it now. I have the power and I mean to use it now I think that's a real Sincere saw out of someone that I'm writing about. I don't think it's at all accurate to say That I'm writing about men. I don't like I'm writing about men who use political power In huge and significant ways and that's what I'm trying to do Thank you Several years ago you were interviewed by Evan Smith and we were there and you said The one person who would not agree to talk to you was Bill Moyers, and I wonder if he ever did no It's a succinct answer Is there any any gloss on that any reason that he doesn't want to talk to you that you know, no He hasn't said so But I'll take this opportunity to say because I know George Christians Daughter is here tonight. I don't know that's he is I think the about the only one Left the Johnson people now of course are all dead. I used to come to Austin I Whoever that was I apologize But I used to have so many friends down here people that I made friends with over the years John Connolly Walter Jenkins, you know Ed Clark Now when I come to Austin Almost all of those almost all of those people are now deceased So you you feel first place you feel this weird thing that you are left I felt with people like John Connolly and Ed Clark who for years That's a name that's so known anymore, but for about 40 years. He was known as the secret boss of Texas I felt they were taking all this time with me among other reasons So that I could try so that I would describe what Texas politics used to be like, you know It's a banished world. So where I have that in mind all the time when I'm writing now Well, you're you're reviving a vanished world and we're all grateful for it And we yeah, I think we're out of time, but we really appreciate you coming and this book is is wonderful I mean if you haven't read working It belongs on your shelf With a place of honor next to Robert caros of the other magisterial books. So thank you. Thank you Bob. Thank you all for coming