It’s a 768-page book that is somehow without boring parts. The Path to Power in particular (the first of his four-and-counting LBJ books) is one of those books you read on vacation and then end up remembering better than the vacation. However! Robert Caro’s biographies are astonishing. The obligations of biography (thoroughness, respect for chronology) seem indifferent or even hostile to the prime imperative of storytelling, as articulated by Elmore Leonard: skip the boring parts ! To which Biography, raising its bespectacled head from a pile of years-old Daily Planners, says, Boring parts? And then on the third, weirdly, I realized the filter was the wrong size…” I call this friend Biography. On March second, I went and got a new filter for my air conditioner. You settle in, order some guacamole, and say, “So - what’s been going on?” And your friend says, “Well, lemme seem, the last time we saw each other was March first. Imagine you’re going out to dinner with a friend you haven’t seen in a few months. This will, I know, make me sound like a moron, but: they seem as a form almost built to be dull.
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