TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/111389/11138900.013

Text File | 1990-09-19 | 6KB | 103 lines

HISTORY, Page 98

A Texas-Size L.B.J. Obsession

Robert Caro, 14 years into his biography, traces a web of deceit

By R.Z. Sheppard


    Lyndon Baines Johnson may have been larger than life, but since
his death 16 years ago, he has been getting bigger. The growth
spurt is due largely to the diligence of Robert A. Caro, the
biographer and political historian who has made L.B.J.'s saga into
an obsession and virtually a life's work. Caro is one of the best
known of a small breed of long-distance writers who appear from
their orbits of research to offer big books on big subjects. Among
others in the select group, most of whom tend to be, like Caro,
journalist-scholars: Richard Kluger, author of the civil rights
classic Simple Justice (1976), and J. Anthony Lukas, whose Common
Ground (1985), a social history of ethnic Boston, was well worth
the wait.

    Caro began work on his Texas-size biography of L.B.J. 14 years
ago. The choice of subject was a natural progression from his first
marathon, The Power Broker (1974), a 1,200-page study of New York
City master builder Robert Moses. The Power Broker is an obligatory
book for understanding modern urban politics. In turning to L.B.J.,
Caro shifted his focus from how New York City works to what makes
the nation run. The answer is not surprising. As Franklin
Roosevelt's factotum Tommy ("the Cork") Corcoran responded when
Caro asked how the young L.B.J. gained power, "Money, kid. But
you'll never be able to write about it."

    Caro's first Johnson volume, The Path to Power, was published
in 1982 and proved Corcoran wrong. In comprehensive and forceful
detail, it followed Johnson from the lonely Texas hill country, out
from under the humiliating shadow of his failed father. The book
ended with his unexpected defeat in a 1941 race for the U.S.
Senate. The Path remained a best seller for three months and won
the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction.

    Last week Volume II, Means of Ascent, began to run in the New
Yorker. The excerpt details a shameless pattern of deceit in
L.B.J.'s early career. Among the juicier disclosures is how
Johnson, as a noncombatant in World War II, was able to parlay 13
minutes under enemy fire into a Silver Star, which he then had
repeatedly presented to himself at public ceremonies. Alice Glass,
who according to Caro was Johnson's mistress as well as the lover
of one of his most influential supporters, had a more realistic
view of Lyndon's war. "I can write a very illuminating chapter on
his military career in Los Angeles," she later revealed to a
friend, "with photographs, letters from voice teachers, and
photographers who tried to teach him which was the best side of his
face."

    As many as six further excerpts are expected to appear in the
magazine, covering the founding of L.B.J.'s fortune and his
controversial election to the Senate in 1948. Knopf will issue a
first printing of 200,000 copies in March.

    To Caro, Volume II is already history. He is well into the
making of Volume III, which will take Johnson from his reign as
Senate majority leader to his swearing-in as President after John
F. Kennedy's assassination. A fourth, final volume is planned.
Meanwhile, the work moves slowly. Caro and his wife Ina, who is
also his research assistant, spent four years living in Texas,
driving tens of thousands of miles to interview sources. "It took
me two years to realize what I was hearing," says Caro. The young
Johnson's role in bringing electricity to his constituents filled
the author with populist enthusiasm. But later, going through some
of the 34 million documents stored in the Johnson Library in
Austin, he recalls a letdown. "I thought Johnson was going to be
like Al Smith. But a different picture started to emerge in the
library, and I realized, with depression coming over me, how he got
to be F.D.R.'s man in Texas."

    Caro insists he is more interested in Johnson's power than in
his personality. "The basic concern of all my books is how
political power works in America," he says. "I don't think there
is an adequate understanding of that. Look at the effect Johnson
had on so many lives. If you were a young black American getting
an education, Johnson had a lot to do with that. And if you were
a young man drafted off to Viet Nam, he had a lot to do with that
too."

    At 53, Caro could spend the rest of his working life wrestling
with the enigma of L.B.J. With his hefty book contract and a $1
million movie deal, he can afford the commitment. Yet to see Caro
in his Manhattan office, one might think he was a struggling small
businessman out of the 1950s. He works amid a makeshift table, an
old desk and stained bookshelves. There is no word processor, only
an electric portable.

    He often observes from the U.S. Senate gallery, where he finds
the routine business of Government thrilling. Sometimes he is an
audience of one, as if, he says, "the Senate were being staged only
for me." Caro is less anonymous at the Johnson Library. Since The
Path to Power, Lady Bird Johnson has become uncooperative, and her
former press secretary Liz Carpenter occasionally glares from
behind a glass wall as Caro makes his notes.

    Caro is understandably reluctant to give away findings that he
has worked years to uncover, and for which his publisher and the
New Yorker have paid good money. When asked about the basis of
Johnson's wealth or about the 1948 election, the biographer
responds teasingly, "I think I can add something to our
understanding." Judging from that answer, the only surprise would
be if future installments indicated that Johnson got rich through
his business acumen and won his first Senate term fair and square.