Robert Caro: I Don’t Write Biographies
Claudia Dreifus interviews Robert Caro, who responds to her question: ‘Many biographers working on a long project complain that their subject has eaten up their life. Did that happen to you?’ Robert Caro: ‘No. Because I don’t really regard my books as biographies. I’ve never had the slightest interest in writing a book to tell the life of a great man. I started The Power Broker because I realized that there was this man, Robert Moses, who had all this power and he had shaped New York for forty-four years. I regarded the book as a study of power in cities. After I finished that, I wanted to do national power. I felt I could learn about [that] by studying Lyndon Johnson. I regard these books as studies in political power, not biography.’
