I renamed this Substack Strangers and Intimates because although I will continue to write about museums and the arts, I also want to tell the stories and discuss the ideas that have come up in the research for my next book, Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life. Future posts will reveal the forces that shaped private life, reaching back to the 17th century, and what threatens it, which is so much more than Mark Zuckerberg and digital technology.
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I recently watched Turn Every Page, a documentary about the long-term partnership between Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Caro and his editor, literary giant Robert Gottlieb, directed by Gottlieb’s daughter, Lizzie Gottlieb.
They started working together on The Power Brokers, Caro’s (1974) blockbuster about Robert Moses, the urban planner who was never elected to office but was one of the most powerful individuals in the history of New York City and New York State. Fifty years on, they are still working together. Caro is writing the final volume of his five-part series on the life of President Lyndon Baines Johnson. He is 87 but refuses to rush, batting away questions about when he will finish. Gottlieb is 92.
The film attempts to document the writing process and the relationship between the editor and writer, which transforms a book from an idea, into a pile of research notes, into a typewritten manuscript, into one covered in pencil marks, and finally into the best-selling must-read that has meant Caro has won pretty much every book prize going.
And yet, despite Turn Every Page being about how Caro does it, and the remarkable partnership with his editor, he resists most attempts to peek under the bonnet of his process, and Lizzie Gottlieb spends most of her time interviewing the two men apart.
Caro, all angular limbs, is shown working at a typewriter in an office in a suit and tie or walking to the LBJ Presidential Library clutching a briefcase. Gottlieb appears comfortable crumpled in an armchair at home and opens up about his collection of Lucite handbags, the most dazzling of which surround him and his wife in their bedroom.
Both men refused the documentary idea at first. Caro only relented after years of badgering by Lizzie, and even then he keeps the camera at bay and imposes conditions. When he talks about his work, he gestures to the progress chart on the wall, which records what he has written daily: how many words and a summarising sentence. But as the camera focuses in on the numerals and letters, jumpily, he waves it away: it’s not for us to see; the record is for his eyes only. As a rule, he won’t let anyone read his notes or very early drafts. For every single book, he delivers to his editor a completed manuscript.
The privacy required for this author isn’t protection from the state or digital trackers. It’s not about pulling the curtain across to hide domestic or intimate affairs. It’s not even the withholding of something specific— if we, the viewer, were to read the list of daily word counts, they would mean nothing to us. There is no secret to be uncovered.
Many writers resist the scrutiny of the outside world to be true to the book's subject and to the writing, which has a demanding life of its own. Following up on scrappy thoughts or a whiff of inspiration requires 100% concentration without an external pull. It requires an inward focus. The pressure of the public gaze, even if it's just a question about a word count, can tug in the wrong direction.
The privacy required is hard to achieve in a relentlessly public culture. Authors are invited to speak about their process, favourite writing spot, routine, and when and where they work, and to share conclusions before they are formed. When they are ready, that’s when an editor steps in, and even then it is with protection from view.
An editor isn’t like Twitter, where a quick thought is fixed, fought over, and ridiculed in moments. The editor shelters the writer from the public world until their work is finessed. They may act as a midwife to ideas that haven’t yet landed or remove ones that don’t belong. They road-test the manuscript and help to make it serviceable. "He does the work. I do the cleanup. Then we fight.” That is how Gottlieb playfully describes it.
It’s a professional relationship. Despite 52 years of working together, intensely, Caro and Gottlieb do not socialise with each other. That was unusual for Gottlieb who had many of his writers over for dinner. Lizzie herself had met many of the big names with whom her father worked: Toni Morrison, John Le Carré, Doris Lessing, Joseph Heller, and Salman Rushdie. But not Caro. She only met him on her father’s 80th birthday.
It's also an intimate relationship. The editor sees parts of the writer, professional and personal, that others do not. They know the strengths and weakness - Gottlieb famously cut 350,000 words out of The Power Broker, leaving 700,000 words for publication. And it requires privacy.
Turn Every Page took seven years to film and even then, Caro wouldn’t let Lizzie film the actual editing process: how the two men sit next to each other and inch through thousands of words to make the book sing. He was determined to protect the integrity of their relationship, reinforcing barriers around them, despite constant interest, not least from the filmmakers.
Lizzie pushed, keen to film them working on a manuscript, but they both rebuffed her advances. When it finally happens, for they sort of, kind of, relent, it’s at the end, and only just for a moment. Then, and I hope I am not spoiling it for anyone, Caro imposes another condition: no audio. In his old-fashioned New York drawl, he half explains why: “It’s sort of a private thing”, he says, before they get down to it. The camera films them through the glass, as they look down at the printed pages, talking to each other, but no one can hear what they are saying.
LINKS:
With Hannah Gadsby’s ‘It’s Pablo-matic,’ the Joke’s on the Brooklyn Museum, Jason Fargo, the New York Times.
Excellent review by the critic Jason Fargo of Hannah Gadsby’s Brooklyn Museum show It’s Pablo-matic: “the reactions came first, the objects reacted to second”. Fargo, who is considered and precise, delivers more than a shallow critique. He gets to the heart of what is lacking in exhibitions that present as progressive but actually foster ignorance. He shows how Gadsby's lazy approach is an insult to female artists and historians.