American history lovers anxiously await Robert Caro's completion of his monumental Lyndon Johnson biography.
At 86, Caro painstakingly works on the fifth volume of his life of Johnson, covering how the president's escalation of the Vietnam War wrecked his progressive administration.
Earlier volumes recounted Johnson's rise from Texas Hill Country poverty, his ironclad control of the U.S. Senate and his humiliating turn as John F. Kennedy's vice president before Kennedy's assassination in Dallas thrust Johnson into the White House.
The burning question of whether Caro will finish his work is a central theme of the documentary "Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb," available for streaming on Prime Video.
Gottlieb, the New York publishing titan, has edited Caro's ambitious work for 50 years, beginning with Caro's "The Power Broker," his exhaustive account of New York City Public Works executive Robert Moses' transformation of the city during the 20th century.
Produced by Gottlieb's daughter, Lizzie, the documentary looks at Caro and Gobblieb's contentious working relationship, in which they have fiercely battled over manuscript cuts and grammatical questions such as the proper use of semicolons.
The film, whose title comes from advice Caro's first managing editor gave him when he was a young investigative reporter for Newsday, shows the two Roberts' advancement from young men into aged literary lions still editing typewritten pages word by word and line by line with old-fashioned No. 2 pencils.
Caro, who still completes his pages with a typewriter after initially writing longhand on a legal pad, was reluctant to participate in the film, and remains skittish about Lizzie peering too closely into his working techniques.
Visibly aging during the film's five-year completion, Caroslowly reveals details such as how he persuaded Lyndon's brother, Sam, to express the truth about their harsh relationship with their father, demolishing sunny myths about their childhoods.
The author also tells how he tracked down an aged Johnson operative who reveals to Caro how he fixed Johnson's initial election to the U.S. Senate in 1949.
Gottlieb, the 91-year-old former chief of Simon & Schuster and Knoph, comes across as arrogant and self-satisfied. In a visit to the Strand Bookstore, the still spry Gottlieb shows his grandson the cornucopia of books he's edited.
Luminaries like superagent Lynn Nesbit, New Yorker editor David Remnick, writer Daniel Mendelsohn, New Yorker "Comma Queen" Mary Norris, actor Ethan Hawke and former President Bill Clinton reflect upon the careers of Caro and Gottlieb.
Caro's wife, Ina, whom Caro met when he was a Princeton student, receives well-deserved recognition. Ina has contributed to Caro's books as his sole researcher through the years.
Gottlieb's wife, the former Broadway star Maria Tucci, fondly recounts Gottlieb's personality quirks. She admits her dislike of his bizarre extensive collection of women's plastic handbags.
Caro insists that an editorial meeting between him and Gottlieb be shown without sound.
At the end of the movie, they sit side by side, peering over Caro's typewritten manuscript, making changes with pencils, their voices unheard.
Perhaps one day Caro lovers will read those pages.
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