January 9, 2023

Robert Caro on Truth, Facts, and Nonfiction

“While I am aware that there is no Truth, no objective truth, no single truth, no truth simple or unsimple, either; no verity, eternal or otherwise; no Truth about anything, there are Facts, objective facts, discernible and verifiable. And the more facts you accumulate, the closer you come to whatever truth there is.”

 

…from Robert Caro’s Work: Researching, Interviewing, Writing (April 2019)

Robert Caro has twice won the Pulitzer Prize, twice won the National Book Award, and has won the National Book Critics Circle Award three times, all for his biographies of urban planner Robert Moses and former U.S. president Lyndon Johnson (which is ongoing; a fifth and final volume forthcoming).  In 2010, then-President Barack Obama awarded Caro the National Humanities Medal. Caro