Had a really tedious, detailed dream last night about Robert Caro's system for doing research for his multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson. Other than a piece in the New Yorker and maybe hearing him on NPR once, I have never read or even looked at these books. According to my dream, Caro assigned a number to each bit of information he wrote in his notebooks. So, the color of the necktie that LBJ was wearing on, say, April 16, 1965, was noted and then this note was labeled 1249448, and then who LBJ met with that morning was noted and labeled as 1249449, and the next thing he did that day was 1249450, and so on. I don't understand how this system was supposed to help him write his biographies, but I watched Caro doing this for what seemed like hours, and then I woke up. Thanks, brain.
1 comment:
I'd like to think he really does do that, and that he has a huge LBJ necktie chart that takes up one entire wall of his study. Sometimes he'll just stare at it for an hour.
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