'The Power Broker,' 40 Years Later

[cpzilliacus]

N.Y. Times: "˜The Power Broker,' 40 Years Later

Working on "The Power Broker"  – researching it, writing it – took me seven years, and when I finished I was sure I never wanted to see it again. For a long time after it was published (in 1974, 40 years ago), for a couple of decades probably, I never opened the book. When, more recently, I occasionally did so, it was only to read a chapter or two to prepare myself for a lecture or an interview I was giving, certainly never to read it all the way through to the last line. This year, however, because PEN asked me to annotate the book, I did read it all the way through, and I was glad I did, because when I got to that final sentence, I suddenly remembered something I had long since forgotten: The moment when I thought of that sentence – and how much that moment meant to me.

The year was probably 1969. I had finished most of my research and interviewing, and had accumulated a huge amount of material – so much that I couldn't get my mind around it all, couldn't see it whole, couldn't organize it, and therefore couldn't start turning it into a book. I had been struggling with that problem, for what in my memory seems many weeks, with no success at all.

And then, all at once, as I was reading yet again through my documents and interview notes, there came into my mind a scene I had witnessed several years before.