Sounds about right …

… Robert Caro: ‘The more facts you collect, the closer you come to the truth’ | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip. Dave Lull.)

He doesn’t worry about the future of biography, though it seems clear that he is the last of the last in terms of producing multiple volume lives. His main concern is that people do not forget that the quality of the prose in the writing of history and biography is as important as it is in fiction. “I have no trouble in understanding why [Edward] Gibbon endures,” he says. “Look at the writing! He is great.”

Caro’s own prose makes me think of waves: in the paragraphs roll, grandiose as anything, crashing against the shore as he winds them up with a last, very short sentence. “Well, that’s from Paradise, um…” He shakes his head. “I don’t compare myself with Milton, but great works can be models. He [Milton] has these long lines about Satan falling and falling and then, suddenly, the rhythm changes. I try to do things with rhythm. In the second volume, Johnson is campaigning in Texas in a helicopter, and he’s so desperate. I wrote on an index card: is there desperation on this page? I meant in the rhythm. I want to reinforce the reader’s understanding with that rhythm.” What about facts? Does he fear for those in the age of Trump? The truth no longer seems to matter to some. “Of course it’s dangerous. People who believe there aren’t facts… it’s irrational. There are facts, and the more of them you collect, the closer you come to whatever the truth is.”