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

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

lbj back on the ranch is what's meant by the cliche "a broken man"

as shocked as Sissy Spacek during her BOTH BROTHERS moment

lbj back on the ranch is what's meant by the cliche "a broken man"

just going by the wiki entry it sounds like pretty hardcore deathwish shit

http://www-tc.pbs.org/prod-media/newshour/photos/2012/12/04/LBJ_Library_slideshow.jpg

Discussing his latest new age electronica record

so how bad is this HBO thing w Cranston gonna be? Feel like they should've put some prosthetic jowls on him

is he playing Lady Bird

"It premiered on Broadway in March 2014, in a production also directed by Rauch, which won the 2014 Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. Bryan Cranston won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance."

maybe not that bad

wow, I had no idea Justin Timberlake wrote an LBJ bio

singer-songwriter-keyboardist-LBJ hagiographer

Turns out this HBO thing is really bad. I turned it off after drunk LBJ crashes his car into a lake while swigging whiskey behind the wheel and terrorizing hubert humphrey

cuz he caught Justin's dancing during "Suit & Tie"?

the car turns, bondstyle, into a boat, which is accurate lbj story #551

i couldn't finish it either tho. the sort of movie where people always say "the 1957 civil rights act," never "the '57 bill".

got off on the wrong foot with it when lbj's first scene was waking from a troubled+uncertain sleep returning from dallas on air force one. in caro he's a suddenly reactivated dynamo.

sort of admired mackie's 0% resemblance to mlk -- a pencil moustache and done -- and the decision to emphasize his canny+unyielding political operator side is probably a much-needed antidote to the cuddly dreamer cliche, but it kinda misses the freakish softness with which he'd be hard imo. did like what i saw of bob moses -- tho for the sake of staging its intra-movement ideological battles between its characters in person, for drama, the movie kept putting roy wilkins in rooms i'm not sure he'd be in. whatever tho it's a play, but see also something worse: when hoover, instead of sending bowdlerized excerpts of his mlk sex tapes to joseph alsop or writing intricately passive-agressive blackmail memos to nicholas katzenbach, is just suddenly sitting in the parked limo from Every Political Thriller while lbj himself listens to sex noises on reel-to-reel. idk.

those sorts of things i imagine playing better onstage -- interactions between movement ideologies or govt departments boiled down to dramatic abstraction. but movie realism made it seem cheap and dumbed-down somehow -- and also i think a network that finds so much time for the details of cersei's schemes should find some for hoover's.

after drunk LBJ crashes his car into a lake while swigging whiskey behind the wheel and terrorizing hubert humphrey

it's probably pretty boring but this sounds hilarious