Most editor-writer relationships don't make headlines, the way Lish and Carver's did. But there are other famous partnerships—like Maxwell Perkins and F. Scott Fitzgerald—where the editor plays such an important role they can't just be relegated to the background. Ezra Pound didn't "edit" T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land so much as he shaped it, and forcefully. You can feel Pound in that singular work. I'm sure, according to Pound, The Waste Land needed his heavy hand. But what is the editing process? There's a mystique about it, even to those participating in it.
“Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb” is an engaging documentary about a famous editor-writer partnership, one that is ongoing. Robert Caro is the author of five massive best-selling books (1974's The Power Broker, about urban planner Robert Moses, and four volumes of a projected five-volume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson), and each of these books has been edited by Robert Gottlieb. Directed by Lizzie Gottlieb, Robert's daughter, "Turn Every Page" is a fascinating look at these two men, their separate careers, and their shared goals. It's also a glimpse of a world long gone, a world where there was more time to build careers (as opposed to erecting brands), and where a relationship like this one could be allowed to flourish.
Caro's "claim to fame" are his five books, which have garnered him legions of enthusiastic fans spanning generations. Gottlieb's claim to fame is more diffuse. Over the course of his lengthy career, he has edited upwards of 600 books, from Rona Jaffe's The Best of Everything, to Charles Portis' True Grit, to Jessica Mitford's expose on the funeral business, The American Way of Death. He edited Bill Clinton's autobiography. He worked with Doris Lessing, he edited many of Toni Morrison's books. He, famously, suggested to Joseph Heller that "Catch 18" be changed to Catch 22 (mainly to avoid comparison with Leon Uris' best-selling Mila 18). That one sure worked out, didn't it? With all of his other projects, Gottlieb's partnership with Caro is the most long-lasting. Caro is 87 and Gottlieb is 91. They both are fully aware that they don't have much time left to bring this project—and their legendary partnership—to its most satisfying conclusion, which would be, the publication of the final volume of Caro's LBJ biography.
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