Working

 

I revere Robert Caro, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography titled The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, and the four-volume (soon to be five-volume) biography of Lyndon Johnson, which also won a Pulitzer, as well as many other prizes.  The books read like novels and the depth of his research is astonishing and widely celebrated - "Due to Caro's reputation for exhaustive research and detail, he is sometimes invoked by reviewers of other writers who are called "Caro-esque" for their own extensive research" (Wikipedia).  Master of the Senate, which covers 11 years of Johnson's life, took Caro 12 years to write.  

Caro is now 89.  I used to say that I hoped he would finish the final volume of his Johnson biography before he died, but I now say that I hope he will finish it before I die.

Caro ends the Introduction to Working this way: 

AND, FINALLY, one more question to answer: why am I publishing this book now, why don't I just include this material in the longer, full-length memoir I'm hoping to write? Why am I publishing these random recollections toward a memoir while I'm still working on the last volume of the Johnson biography, when I haven't finished it, while I'm still - at the age of 83 - several years from finishing it?

The answer is, I'm afraid, quite obvious, and if I forget it for a few days, I am frequently reminded of it by journalists who, in the course of writing about me and my hopes of finishing, often express their doubts about that happening in a sarcastic phrase: "Do the math." Well, I can do that math. I am quite aware that I may never get to write the memoir, although I have so many thoughts about writing, so many anecdotes about research, that I would like to preserve for anyone interested enough to read them. I decided that, just in case, I'd put some of them on paper now.

And the book is a profound pleasure.  It recaps some of the main conclusions of the Moses and LBJ books, providing fascinating context and detail about how the research was done. And, as he reluctantly admits, to give the full story, he must sometimes provide insights into his own personality and motivations.  For me, in addition to his incomparable reputation as researcher and writer, this book shows him to be a modest, honorable and admirable person.

 

The Perfect House

First published in 2002, The Perfect House by Witold Rybczynski is pure pleasure.  Rybczynski is now an Emeritus Professor of Urbanism (who knew?) at Penn.  He's a noted author, having written over 300 articles and more than a dozen books, which have received several important awards.

This book is an account of a trip to Italy Rybczynski took to personally visit the many villas in the Veneto designed by Palladio. He describes the history and design of each villa, and some history and thoughts on Palladio's life.  It's all very interesting, but a delightful surprise to me was how wonderful the writing is.  Simple, graceful, effortlessly insightful and witty. For example:

The final step of the makeover involved finding a more impressive name than Andrea di Pietro.  Renaissance architects regularly adopted professional names.  Jacopo Sansovino was born Tatti; Giulio Pippi de' Giannuzzi, a Roman expatriate practicing in the Venetian Republic, called himself Giulio Romano, or simply Giulio.  The mellifluously named Michele Sanmicheli had adopted the name of his birthplace, San Micheli, a village near Verona.  Andrea di Pietro might have become Andrea Padovano, or Andrea Vicentino.  It is generally assumed that Tissino (his mentor) proposed the name since he later used it in an epic poem.  The Latin palladius means pertaining to sagacity, knowledge, or study, and is derived from Pallas Athena, the goddess of wisdom.  It is a name to live up to.

Here's another example:

Every evening I walk across the Piazza dei Signori from the trattoria where I regularly eat dinner to my hotel.  The ivory white Basilica shimmers in the moonlight.  Goethe characterized architecture as frozen music, which well describes this extraordinary building.  I don't know what kind of music Goethe heard when he looked at the Basilica, but I hear percussion - the great jazz drummer Philly Joe Jones, my boyhood idol. The tall half-columns are the steady rhythm beat of the bass drum, which Palladio accentuates by breaking the extremely deep cornice and projecting it forward over each capital.  At the attic level, a statue above each column provides a high-pitched cymbal clash.......(and further correlations!) 

And another striking description, of Rybczynski's visit to a different Palladio villa, with a powerful conclusion:

The main street of Piombino Dese, a large village east of Vicenza, is Via Roma.  The busy artery is lined with unremarkable apartment buildings and neon-fronted shops.  It's Sunday morning and there's not much traffic.  A parking lot near the church is temporarily occupied by a traveling amusement park whose single attraction resembles a huge lazy Susan.  Children line up to get on, then scream as the ride begins to turn, slowly at first, then faster and faster, finally tilting and turning at the same time.  The more daring boys leave their seats to crawl, crablike, across the angled floor. Strobe lights flash, and noisy calliope music is piped over loudspeakers.

Across the street, rising behind a brick wall, the stately portico of the Villa Cornaro overlooks the raucous spectacle.  The juxtaposition of the fun fair and the villa makes me think of a scene in a Fellini film. The villa more than holds it own.

Rybczynski thoughtfully adds a glossary of architectural terms and a chronology of Palladio's designs, with sensible cautions about the relative certainty of the dates of construction of different buildings.

Maybe not to everyone's taste, but a delightful read.