Hello this afternoon, hi. Thank you for coming. Good to see you all. I think we need no introduction or at least robert caro who i hope you have read all of his books and as enamored of them as i am. We are here because we are enamored to talk about writing. Not so much the subject matter per se but why writing matters. And we both feel, as im sure you do, that writing matters quite a bit. How it matters, is really a task for the writer to come to terms with. How are you going to get people to read, to turn the page, to be as enthralled with your subject as you are. And you know mr. Robert caro is working on he has a master of the enthralled. We thought we are talking a little bit about that. Recently and hope you saw this, there was recently a interview with bob and one of the things i thought was so wonderful about this was bob talking about certain working methods. And one of the things he said reminded me of walt whitman. And that, if you read whitman, one of the things you know about that exuberant poet is that he uses lists. Once william atalked about that too. Very different kind of writer than bob or whitman. And he said something to the effect of, if i go to the store and buy fruit athat is pretty boring. But if i go to the store and buy bananas and apples and cherries and plums and mangoes and ai am running out of fruit. But you get the hint. Then that is something. One of the things that bob so eloquently talks about in that review, the use of lists. Yes, what i was trying to. Everyone tell me no one will read a book about robert moses. I was hearing that year after year. I was feeling that i really wanted people to read this book. Because i felt he did something, my understanding is under career because he was never elected to anything. We live in a democracy where our supposedly comes from the ballot box from being elected. He was never elected yet he had more power than anyone he was elected. More than any governor, more than any mayor, more than any governor and mayor combined. And he shaped the metropolitan area in the lives of everyone who lives in it. I was thinking how do i get people to read this book, you have to do it in introduction. And in the introduction you have to show the immensity of what he did. You cannot just say he built 627 miles of expressways and parkways. And then i remembered ahe does it with lists. He lists all of the tribes and nations and they came to sack troy. And there is a real power in that. So i said maybe i can lift the parkways, list the expressways. And if i can do it right and get a real ato it maybe will make people understand that so you can say, he built the van wyck expressway. The major deegan expressway, the sheridan expressway and the governor expressway. He built the long island expressway. This. Net i went expressway, the cross bronx expressway, the brooklyn queens expressway etc. And then the same for the parkways. And of course, that only would work i felt if i had a ribbon to it was somehow the repetition of the words expressways for parkway, that is what i was trying to do. . I think we all go you succeeded. What is interesting is the subtitle of the talk here, rhythm matters. And that is what youre talking about. It is almost poetic really. And really awhitman is a poet so that means you are a poet two. Thank you. But to go into a different aspect of this, one of the things were talking before. Any talk about this a lot. One thing is that both of us feel very strongly that his story. You really need to tell. And it is not when it tells about robert moses or Lyndon Johnson or saint emily dickinson. When youre telling stories, there are certain kinds of devices that you use. One of them that i think is very important as the whole sense of the kind of narrative. With the following writing workshops the through line. I dont really know what that means. [laughter] but it sounds good. And it is a sense that you as writers always know what you will be doing. And i think you talk about that quite a bit. Well i tried. Because my books are so long to go in different directions. I tried before i start to boil down in my head to a few sentences. One or two paragraphs. What is this book about . So that if you go off on a digression, you remember how to get back to the main one. Right, when we talk about that i dont know how he feels about being wearing a necklace but i said this is almost like beads on a string. With a string of the narrative and we put beads on it. In the different breeds argus i digressions. And if you know of bob and you say, will give them examples i think of the Richard Russell chapter . That is a good example of that. So Lyndon Johnson for those of you who were here on overnight, his great achievement, greatest achievement was passing Civil Rights Act of 1964. And to do that he had to overcome you know today they say congress has never been fractured or divided as it is now. Its really not true. In the 1950s, the 30s, 40s and 50s it was not divided among a party line. It was the southern democrats, conservatives, racists, midwestern republicans amany of whom are also against civil rights and we southerners controlled congress. And as ai think of this in the 64th, i was going to look this up. Of the 16 great Standing Committees in the senate, nine were controlled, the chairman of nine were republicans and three others were republican allies. She could not get anything through there. Franklin roosevelt passed a wages in our ait was a last piece of social welfare that pass when jack kennedy was assassinated. Roosevelt did not pass a single piece of legislation in the last seven years of his presidency. Truman could not pass any. Eisenhower did not want to pass annie. Kennedys bills were basically all stopped. So i said well, i have got to show two things. I have got to show the power of the senate and congress. I also have to show the depth of their hatred of africanamericans. The depth of how they hated them and how determined they were to keep black americans in their place. And they use congress to do it. Someone wrote, the senate gave the revenge of gettysburg. And i said i can either do it by writing a couple of more chapters. There are so many books on race hatred in the south. I can do that again or i can take one senator, the had of the seven block. So his immense power and show at the same time, how he hated truly hated blacks. And so i did that by showing the biography. By doing a biography of russell. Showing these things. And it was easier for me to come back to the main theme because i knew the main theme had been laid out in my mind before. Right enough to find the narrative line. But i happen to the members one of my favorites, it begins terrifically. Because it really is this mini biography and it begins with Richard Russell as a little boy. Playing wargames which gives you an insight right away. But he is playing wargames. And as a little boy he is having that kind of fantasy. You know right from the very beginning you have a sense. And then we just get kind of, as i recall, straight narrative you know very well written. He did this and this. And then we come back to the kinds of legislation that he did not, you know the legislation he passed and i think that he did not see in his own community. So we get a sense of the depth of his complex relationships. The place in which he lives and wants to be like his father. But he really wants to say we litigate areanimate the civil war. You know, if you are a person from new york city like i am as you can probably tell my accent ayou really, saying that you understand the feelings of southerners is inadequate. I went down to Richard Russells town. In georgia, it was a little town. His father, something happened ai saw something that helped me understand the depth of this whole jim crow picture. More than anything else. So his father was a very powerful man in georgia. He was the chief judge of the supreme court. He lives in a big white house on a hill. And at the bottom of that long hill was a Railroad Line to atlanta. And he was so powerful that the railroad wanted to make a stop right as his house since he would have time to have another cup of coffee in the morning and it did not have to go into catch the train. So they made a station there. And the station is a little, like a subway. Like a bus stop. No wider than what we are sitting in here now. No more than two people could ever get in. Down in the middle is a aone side is as white and the other side says colored. And another thing about writing is a sense of play. He talked about that in terms of actually two places im thinking of. One which you might very elephant about is the hill country of texas. If you want to talk about can you came to understand it. Yes well, so we went up to texas when i started these johnson books. I think there were already seven johnson biographies that had been written. And they all talked about his boyhood. So i thought that story had been told. I did not think it had been told in enough detail. So what i would do was athe Lyndon Johnson library where i was working on the papers during the day, my wife who does the research for the bus along with me and myself. Every day at 5 oclock the library would close. I will drive up to the hill country, Lyndon Johnson died when he was only 64 years old. He would have been only 66 years old when i started the books. Therefore, almost all of the people who went to high school with him or college with him were still there. His best friend was truman for set and he lived on the side of the vacant lot next to the johnson city courthouse. He was still there. And his first girlfriend was kitty clyde ross. She was living in a different house was still in the same town. And i came back and i said, you know i am not understanding these people. And i am not really understanding Lyndon Johnson. Anna came to ai come to realize that a lot of it had to do with this hill country. Which from new york it is simply incredible. They had not parted to build austin. And for hundred and 60 miles, the hill country rolled on. It was called the land of endless horizons. Because every time settlers would cross one line of hills, there will be another line of hills. So there were very few People Living in that area. I think the population is Something Like 1. 3 persons per square mile. So i said, i know who loves france, will have to look to the hill country in two or three years to understand this please. And she said, can you write a biography of napoleon . [laughter] and you know all my life i said i wonder what it is like . [laughter] johnson said he was 43 miles out from austin. In which they were basically he was growing up, nothing. And the Johnson Ranch where he lived was not even in johnson city. It was 18 miles deeper in the hills. So his brother Sam Houston Johnson used to tell me how he and linda would be so lonely that one corner of that ranch down the heavy Austin Fredericksburg highway, which is really just a graded road. He said that he and linda used to go down to this corner and sit there for hours in hopes that one new person would come by, one new person for them to talk to. I had no idea what loneliness like that was like. And i knew i wasnt ever going to find out. But to get some sense of it i say well i wonder what it is like to spend all day by yourself and go to bed and get up and know that youre going to spend the next day by yourself. So i took a sleeping bag, not on the Johnson Ranch with the adjoining ranch. The johnsons were not too fond of me at the time. And i did that. I slept out and it really gives you a different sense of things. To know that the next day you are going to be alone again. I mean its like, if you were there with your father, given older domineering father for example, as Lyndon Johnson did athis figure will be the father because there is nothing to soften, there he is. Great figure. All of these things are more dramatic than they would be in the city. Right, no and it is such an interesting thing to think about the way which place shapes our lives. And so once you think about that it really changes the way you create a narrative. Exactly. We can explain it or lecture about it. But to actually create the sense of place, and also the way in which wanting to leave place aleave place behind. Create sense of character, creates character creates ambition creates the psychology. Of character. And i think you see that in johnson from very early on coming to the hill country. That is exactly right. You understand his desperation to get out of there. Right. I mean he has a real desperation. I mean i have a passage ill try to read aforgive me father for i dont do it but this is from the past to power. This is about the hill country and it gives you an example i think of what we are talking about. This might say better than i do. Inevitably drought came. The land burned beneath the blazing hill country son. What was left of its nutrient forged alooking away. Was left in the roof was shriveling. Wind, blew the soil away and blew it. As one big hill Country Farmer put it into the next country the next region the next day. And when henry henry ranch time they watch the soil away down the steeple side and along the cotton fields which the farmers all too often cut up and down the slopes. Instead across it. Into the creeks and rivers cutting gullies in the ground. The next rain would make even deeper. So that the rain would move down that land even faster. Water poured down the hillside and into the creeks in a torrent and flash floods roared down the stone beds. Sweeping away fertile land on their banks. That would be the only truly fertile land in the hill country. The waters rose and when they receded sucked more of the fertile soil back down with them to run down to the colorado. Down the colorado to the golf. And all the time and the places to stay for mules to plow, men remembering the trails and pouches of gold persisted in grazing cattle. Eating down the grass as fast as it could grow and faster, leaving soil in those places to to blow intellectually. It has taken centuries to create the richness of the hill country and two decades or three after man came into it. The richness was gone. In the early 1870s the first few years of Cotton Planting there, they produce a valid or more kind. By 1890 it took more than three acres to produce that failed. By 1900 it took 11 acres. The hill country had been a beautiful trap. You know in getting to the point where it is a trap. [applause] thank you. [laughter] didnt she read that wonderful . I did not practice. I would like to add that. How did i find out about the soil . Because Lyndon Johnson, wendy Lyndon Johnson is in the center, they never let him news ayou cant ever miscount for votes. Johnson would say to his aides, find out how the senators are going to vote. The aide came back and said i think hes going to go with us, johnson would say, how awhat do i care about what he thinks . I need to know. And i realize because of really something that ties into that paragraph, why johnson did not want ayou know when he was in the senate, he was majority leader for six years. He never lost a single vote. And this was a divided congress. Because i felt he had learned course of the state. His father thought the land of the Johnson Ranch was covered with grass and look beautiful. The father thought it was always going to be abut he found out in the first rain came that were very little soil there. And he would abasically he could not raise enough capital there and they lost the ranch. For the rest of his boyhood, they lived in a house in johnson city where they were afraid each month that the bank was going to take it away. There is often no food in the house, neighbors had to bring them dishes. So Lyndon Johnson had a sister aexcuse me, Lyndon Johnson had a cousin whose favorite ahis favorite cousin ava. Have a sort of took it on herself to try and teach me about the hill country. And she would say to me, you are a city boy. You do not understand the land. And without understanding the land, you will never understand Lyndon Johnson. Well, i dont know what that sounded to you but to me it sounds like a great western. Yes. [laughter] one day she took me in a car out to the Johnson Ranch. Which is beautiful. And she said not get out of the car. I got out of the car. There was a field of grass there. She said now, stick your fingers into the ground. And i set my fingers in and there was so little soil on top of the rocks that you could not even get the length of my fingers into the ground. And you knew, it was going to wash away again. And i always felt ajohnsons incredible b his refusal to take anything for granted, his knowledge of what one state could do something ain fact do with the land. That is so interesting, it really is. Because it is what creates character, ambition, anxiety. All of the stands. You know . Thank you for reading so beautifully. Under know about that. Thank you. [laughter] the other thing, talk about before, place creates mood also. Talking a little about the mood. Not just johnsons mood or our mood but the mood that you want to create. In other words, johnson is feeling something or i am what you are feeling something or whoever. Lets say he is feeling, i think we talked about desperation. How do you create that . Its like saying i went to the store and bought fruit. Okay. You know, and aif you say johnson felt decimated the same kind of thing. How do you go about that . [laughter] that is really hard to say. You asked some good questions. Desperation, i will tell you about a couple of months. Not your desperation. [laughter] no. Well, ai thought i wasnt doing that but johnson is running for the senate. This is the election that he finally wins stealing those at the end. This is his last chance. His money from the senate is a popular governor of texas. He is far behind and as the Campaign Starts to get a kidney stone which requires an operation. So he is going to be unable to campaign. And having to recuperate for six weeks. He gets out and he is so far behind he seems to have no chance in the polls at all. He thinks because this is a political genius, he thinks of something th