On stage at Radio City Music Hall, I hid The Power Broker. All 1,200+ pages of it. I clutched the paperback close, under my academic regalia. On stage, helping deliver diplomas to eager graduating students at SVA, I sat behind the unmatched Robert Caro himself during a not-brief graduation ceremony where he would deliver the final Commencement address. I would ask him to sign the hidden book afterward as we walked offstage.
I knew nothing of what seminal authors did after a Commencement address or how to approach one for an autograph of a book hidden under a robe. Yet I was determined. It was 20 years earlier when I had moved to New York City, and used the subway as a reading device for the book. I wrote once about reading Caro’s book for Field Tested Books, a guide to reading a specific book in a specific place, from Coudal Partners:
I’d travel throughout the city in the molded plastic seats of the 1975 Pullman Standard F train. As I read about the making of our parks and transport systems, I’d pass the same on the subway. Sunset Park, 4th Avenue, 2nd Avenue. Two lives, two stories — one on the page, one out the window. But I never finished it. 465 of its pages are unread. Today, my neighborhood replaces chapters. My block replaces pages. My conversations are my marginalia. The city has taken me over.
As I walked off stage that day after the ceremony at Radio City, I learned Caro had been swiftly escorted backstage and picked up by car. Poof. He had left undetected, working behind the scenes as he does, to continue his work. My copy of the book: still unsigned.
I was, then, irrationally excited to learn of 99% Invisible’s power broker book club, 100 pages at a time, commencing January. I am in.
After all this time, I admit I still have 465 pages to go, two decades after starting the book. So it’s for the best. Now I can finish it. And, like my relationship to New York City itself, my relationship with the book continues.
