On Reading “The Power Broker” — Missing Chapters
[Update: 9 January 2020. At the end of this May 2017 essay, I write that Robert Caro had not donated his surely voluminous papers to any institution and that they remain unopened. On January, 8, 2020, Caro announced that he had sold his papers, 200-feet of linear material, to the New York Historical Society. The New York Times notes it should include “everything that was cut from Mr. Caro’s already-gargantuan books, like some 300,000 words axed from “The Power Broker” by his longtime editor, Robert Gottlieb, including extensive material on figures like Jane Jacobs and Al Smith.” We may soon be able to read the “missing chapter.”]
How, after months of dedicated reading, do you come to the end of a massive, 1246-page book (not including the index) — and wonder about what was missing?
Yet that was precisely my question, even as I was closing “The Power Broker.”
I came to the book knowing New York City lore of an epic struggle between a then-unknown homeowner, Jane Jacobs, and the all-powerful Moses, then at the height of his powers. Moses was planning to build a bridge and highway that would cut right through the Lower Manhattan neighborhood in which Jacobs lived.
Yet there is not a mention of Jacobs in the text or index.
Robert Caro was a masterful and thorough reporter. He had worked for years on his biography of Robert Moses. Knowing the size of the book, I suspected the answer: Parts of the book had been cut. At that time, multi-volume works were rare.
A Google search — Power Broker Jane Jacobs missing chapter — provided the details. There are numerous links. One stands out. In 2007, blogger and journalist Norman Oder too had noted the omission and wrote about it. He was contacted by Ina Caro, the author’s wife and research assistant who had typed the manuscript. She remembered an entire chapter on Jacobs. But the submitted manuscript — more than 1 million words — had to be cut by a third and the Jacobs chapter was a victim. (Anthony Flint does write about Moses and Jacobs’ battle in his 2009 book, Wrestling with Moses.)
Writers suggest that another missing chapter concerns Moses’ role in the beloved Brooklyn Dodgers decamping for Los Angeles, an event that shattered New York baseball fans for decades.
I was wondering where Caro’s papers are and when the missing chapters might be published. He has gone on to win two Pulitzer Prizes in Biography; three National Book Critics Circle Awards, for Best Nonfiction Book of the Year and Best Biography, the National Book Award and other acclamations for his work on Moses, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and others. His papers remain tantalizing and unopened.
