On Caro, McCullough, and Hunter
It’s Sunday evening in Austin—seventy-eight degrees, the sun is setting, and quiet—save for a few college kids fraternizing. I live a stones throw from the University of Texas campus, off W 21st St. If you know UT, you probably know where I am—a few blocks from the iconic Tower.
This afternoon, I walked to the Co-Op to buy my daughter a sticker—after picking up an old copy of The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories by Hemingway. On the inside page is a note in cursive that reads: “From the Hemingway Museum, Sept 4, 1976,” along with a sticker from his house in Key West.
I bought it because I’m on the final stretch of Caro’s first volume on LBJ, and once I’m done, I plan to read a few short stories before diving into Vol. 2.
Vol. 1 is 773 pages of small-font, Caro-style writing (i.e., not a single superfluous word). It’s a lot to consume; by comparison, Vol. 2 will feel like a walk in the park at 439 pages. But when I’m done with that, I have Vol. 3 (1,167 pages) and Vol. 4 (768 pages).
Had anyone told me I’d read over 3,000 pages on Lyndon Johnson, I’d have said they were nuts—but I can’t stop. Caro reminds me of David McCullough in that he takes on massive projects but somehow keeps you engaged to the point of fanaticism.
I’ve collectively read north of 3,000 pages of McCullough, but they were spread across several men and events: Truman (1,120 pages), John Adams (752 pages), 1776 (386 pages), Mornings on Horseback (370 pages), The Greater Journey (576 pages), The Wright Brothers (320 pages).
Again, I’m reading almost the same amount on ONE MAN—and it’s LBJ!
When I travel, I start my mornings with one, maybe two, stories from Hunter Thompson’s Gonzo Papers, Vol. 2. They’re each a few pages—tops. But man alive, does he pack a lot in. His work reminds me I’m not Caro or McCullough—and that’s OK. It’s too high a bar for a writer to compare himself to those legends.
I find Hunter the perfect writer to share a morning coffee with—though if I were in his presence, it’d be laced with LSD, in a hot tub, in Aspen, after being awake for 24 hours.
But it’s half past seven in Texas, Hunter’s remains were shot up in a rocket, and I have to work tomorrow—which is just as well (I guess).
*Composed, Edited, and Published in Austin, TX
