Was it ethically acceptable of me to buy Volume I of Robert A Caro's Pulitzer Prize-winning 3000-page Lyndon Baines Johnson biography, get bored by page 3, then exchange it for the Justin Timberlake

lol

nah the college years stuff in the 1st one is awesome, he's like scamming highly sought-after campus jobs for his cronies and undermining his enemies in pointlessly spectacular fashion. at a tiny teacher's college in nowhere, texas. good shit.

oh it sounds fascinating! but if i only get around to spending five hours reading one doorstop about lbj i feel like i ought to learn about the civil rights act instead, y'know?

yeah, the college stuff is great, plus 1 has insane coen-inspiring radio flour salesman and charlatan texas governor pappy o'daniel; it's as good as 3. 2 was kind of a dip for me because the last few hundred pages get very detailed about the blow-by-blow of johnson's 1948 senate election and start really suffering from caro's worst habit, which is that he likes explaining the same thing to you over and over to make sure you haven't forgotten; but the stuff about COKE STEVENSON, AMERICAN ICON is fun. (altho he's cast so flawlessly as mirror-johnson it's kinda suspicious.) third one is :O :O :O all thru tho so yeah if you do only read one -- although it will be full of spoilers! like reading only a storm of swords.

https://twitter.com/#!/aaronsw/status/197679232246235137

WSJ interview.

Just finished the JFK bio in the new one.

here's a moving anecdote about young RFK buying drinks at a bar for the football team but infuriated by someone else's birthday party:

...he walked up behind Magnuson and hit him over the head with a beer bottle, sending him to the hospital for stitches. (A few days later Ken O'Donnell apologized to Magnuson; Bobby hadn't come himself, he said, because "it just wasn't his nature to apologize"

or Bobby abandoning a bro who couldn't sail:

The wind was fading, and as lunchtime approached, Kennedy realized that they might not make it ashore in time for lunch. Obsessed with his father's insistence on punctuality, he simply dove overboard and swam for shore, leaving his helpless crewmate to fend for himself. After flailing about, the friend was rescued by a passing boat. Kennedy made no attempt to apologize. Bobby was not a boy at the time The incident occurred in 1948, when he was twenty two years old

Bill Clinton was the 42nd president of the United States.

insufferable "review"

I just reached the JFK assassination. Life often plays like a bad movie. Apparently at the same moment the Senate Rules Committee was accepting evidence that LBJ's aide de camp Bobby Baker had accepted bribes and peddled influence.

Lots of lols throughout. I didn't know that if the JFK campaign had been less ruthless LBJ would likely have garnered the nomination in '60. LBJ way with a insult (about JFK: "A little scrawny fella with rickets") glitters throughout.

pretty much everything i have ever read about RFK, minus apologetic stuff about the '68 campaign, has left me thinking he was a total SOB from day 1.

Garry Wills NYRB review, mostly just highlights:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/may/24/americas-nastiest-blood-feud/

http://assets.nybooks.com/media/photo/2012/04/30/wills_1-052412_jpg_470x320_q85.jpg

any idea what is the worst thing LBJ said about JFK in public?

He called Joe Kennedy a "Neville Chamberlain umbrella type" and a crook (he was right on both counts). That's where Caro and Jeff Shesol say the odium began; RFK never forgave him.

Caro makes by far the most convincing case for RFK Maturing than any one of the hagiographers I've read. Apparently he really did create a professional, elite Justice Department and did care about the poor.

i could swear i read somewhere that caro planned to spend a year or two living in a small village in vietnam to research the last volume, but i can't find a reference to it in any of the recent interviews.

any idea what is the worst thing LBJ said about JFK in public?

the rickets comment qualifies, although it probably amused JFK as much as it did me.

Also: "Have you heard the news? Jack's pediatricians have just given him a clean bill of health."

Erik Nelson: two-thirds too long.

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/07/robert_caros_bloated_lbj_biography/

there was a pretty silly review in the washington post: it complained that caro's sentences were too long, then patronizingly likened it to carl sandburg's book on 'lincoln' and said that it probably wouldn't be used by future historians.

The debate about JFK's decision to choose LBJ as a running mate DOES go on too long, and the book includes too many passages of the "Dormant for three years, suddenly aides saw the grim determination and tight-set mouth they recognized from the fifties" variety. But I haven't finished it yet.

Morbs, have you read any of it?

I mean Gibbon's history is also two-thirds too long tbh.

'another damned book! always scribble, scribble! eh, mr gibbon?'

No, I haven't even opened the copy of The Power Broker I've owned for eons.

all these books are too long but i mean whatever. what does everyone have to do that's so important.

caro does repeat himself like you wouldn't believe but the appropriate reaction to that i think is an indulgent lol. and some skimming.

also for some reason all of the copies of this on the shelf at powell's are autographed

'caro was here'

A relief to read the first stupid thing about this book

"But was there also something about Caro’s pursuit of L.B.J. that was just a little bit Ahab-like?"

an editor let this through?

If the Johnson of Volumes 1 and 2 is the “bad” L.B.J., then the Johnson of Volume 4 is the “good” one. It is almost as if Caro is writing about two different people — as if, for all his reportorial skill, he can’t countenance Johnson being both ruthless and compassionate in the same volume. He has to be one or the other.

This man has neither read Caro's book nor indeed any book.

I hope someday to become this maniacally devoted to a project. So far my project-perseverance record is a couple years at a couple hours a week.

guy is too effin' slow, he better live to 90

Caro makes by far the most convincing case for RFK Maturing than any one of the hagiographers I've read. Apparently he really did create a professional, elite Justice Department and did care about the poor.

oh, to have such an Attorney General once again ...

Jon Stewart seemed a little cowed by him the other night--hardly joked around at all.

after reading that Esquire profile I'd be cowed too.

alright i have a library copy of master of the senate

I finally decided to dig into this and um, started in the middle with "Passage of Power" since that was the first volume available from the library and holy shit this guy really delivers on the meticulously researched anecdotes

so many zingers

was sure he was either dead or finished

upon thread bump i mean.

johnson anecdotes always irresistable; i swear 50% of the footnotes in the taylor branch king years trilogy are just johnson quotes that couldn't be justified as part of the main text

or thin

xpost

Master of the Senate delivers big time.

passage of power probably the worst volume so far btw! mean this as good news.

he's so thin is the thing. he really is the shadow george r r martin.

I'll probably backtrack to the previous volumes if I can find them, I'm barreling through this one

JFK purportedly ordering his staff not to slight the veep, the veep getting snickered at Georgetown cocktail parties, Arthur Schlesinger the toady, the loathsome Kenny O'Donnell. I admire LBJ for being such a good politician that the mask never slipped: he never dissed JFK in public ever.

i need to go back and reread these, tho the thought of plowing through the first book again and all that forlorn texas countryside is kinda harrowing

what about the forlorn upholstery and the scampering feet of Kennedy children in the East Wing

it's not on the same level as caro but doris kearns goodwin's book about hanging out with LBJ at the end of his life is a good companion piece to these books, lots and lots of uncensored quotes from LBJ himself, probably more fun to read than his actual memoirs

what I've read about the final years is grim: LBJ becoming a mean old pasha directing to the last ounce grain rations for cattle, berating his staff over dumb shit, taking up smoking again. He treated the ranch like the majority leader's office.

shocked you didn't mention his hair