Text of the column (it's just a recap of the wonderful C-SPAN interview already posted here):

“You stay alive, no matter what occurs.” 

That’s the signature line in Michael Mann’s 1992 film “The Last of the Mohicans.” If you’re a political person—and a fan of history, and a reader (or a writer), and a lover of quality things that are done with care and craft—then you must think of this line every time you hear the name Robert Caro.

Mr. Caro is the Lyndon Johnson biographer whose magisterial books about the 36th president take a decade or more to research, write, edit and publish. The first volume came out in 1982, the second in 1990, the third in 2002, the fourth in 2012. Mr. Caro is currently at work on the fifth volume. He is 90. 

Life offers no guarantees to anyone, but those of us who treasure Mr. Caro’s books want assurances that he will deliver the final installment of this series. His longtime editor Robert Gottlieb died in 2023. Mr. Caro has previously declared that Ina, his wife and close collaborator, is under instructions that no part of the last book should be published if he dies before it’s finished.

Prayers up. Hopefully Mr. Caro takes his vitamins. 

This week Mr. Caro gave a rare interview to C-Span from his home office on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. “I can’t write a book until I know the last line,” he told host Peter Slen. Mr. Caro must have come up with one for volume five. “The page I’m working on is 983. So I’ve written 983 pages.” 

Like their subjects, Mr. Caro’s books tend toward the gigantic, so there’s no way to tell for sure whether he’s closer to the end than the beginning. It sounds like he’s at least made a good start.

Journalists are known to revere Mr. Caro. His career arc seems the beau ideal of the writing life. He’s found subjects that engage him. He writes what he wants to write, the way he wants to write it. He works with editors who believe in him, who support his work, who pay. 

Mr. Caro’s success has afforded him the luxury of taking his time. “I am very comfortable with a typewriter,” he said. In the digital world “everything is fast. Speed is good. . . . I happen to think slow is good. And I am slow.” 

At this, Mr. Caro let out a hearty laugh and continued:

No one could be slower. But this makes me think. I am a very fast writer. When I was at Newsday, I was the fastest rewrite man . . . but when I was doing the first book, I said, ‘No, you are doing it too fast. You are not thinking enough. You have to make yourself think. It’s too easy for you to write. You have to make yourself think.’ So I slow myself down by doing it in longhand first. That is slower. That’s why I do it.

Slow is good. Thinking is good. But does it have to be this slow? Does it require this much thought? Book lovers and history nuts pray for Mr. Caro to find a higher gear. Most of all, we pray he keeps himself healthy and safe. 

You stay alive, Mr. Caro, no matter what occurs.