Robert Caro on what it takes to become one of the greatest biographers of all time:

He does not use a computer. He does have a telephone, but its chief virtue, Caro says, is that it "can be turned off." There are seldom knocks on the door. Still, Caro wears a coat and tie to the office each morning so he never forgets when he sits down with his research that he is going to work.

Every inch of the New York office is governed by rules. There are regulations for book placement (general nonfiction on the post–Cold War is farthest from Caro's desk; books on his immediate subject are kept closest) and the stacking of notebooks (new interview subjects, like the JFK speechwriter Theodore Sorensen, sit at the top of the heap, while the oldest interviews, like Johnson's brother, Sam Houston, inhabit the bottom). The western wall contains only a giant outline—20 pages that get Caro from the beginning to the end of each book. "I trained myself to be organized," he explains, pointing almost apologetically at his massive writer's map. "If you're fumbling around trying to remember what notebook has what quote, you can't be in the room with the people you're writing about."

I am now officially vowing to never write in pajamas again.

There are a lot of reasons to doubt Diane Keaton will write a worthy book (she's an actress!) but if you consider this premise it sounds like she has a lot to go on:

Ms. Keaton’s mother, Dorothy Keaton Hall, kept some 90 notebooks during her life, chronicling the upbringing of her children and her frustrating marriage; Ms. Keaton read those journals back to her mother during her final years, and began writing her memoir soon after her mother’s death from Alzheimer’s in 2008.

Those notebooks sound like an amazing resource - there could be quite a story here. (And can you imagine reading them to her mother as she was slowing drifting away? Unreal.)

Over at The Millions, Anne Yoder pulled out some choice quotes from Susan Sontag's recently published journals to provide a short cheeky "girl's guide to becoming an intellectual". Here's the bit that really resonated with me:

"A thought occurred to me today - so obvious, so always obvious! It was absurd to suddenly comprehend it for the first time - I felt rather giddy, a little hysterical: - There is nothing, nothing that stops me from doing anything except myself..." And also: "The really important thing is not to reject anything...," and, "I want to err on the side of violence and excess, rather than to underfill my moments."

Some of the biggest regrets of my life are due to moments where I stopped myself and I still, more than two decades later, can't figure out why I made the choices I did. Lameness. Fear. Chronic worrying about failure. I don't know if this quote would have mattered to my 17-year old self, but it would be cool to know what the result would have been if it did.

Jezebel took Anne's post completely the wrong way - and also seems to have missed the fact that these journals date to Sontag when she was rather young. A lot of Sontag hate over there in the comments which I don't understand at all. She was smart and not ashamed of it. What's not to like? (And really - is the goal there to publish the most least flattering picture of someone they can find or what?)

Jim Lynch wrote one of my favorite novels in recent years, The Highest Tide (my review). Somehow I completely missed that he had a new book coming out this year. Thank goodness I'm not the only one who loves him. Here's a description of it:

Like Miles, the teenage protagonist of The Highest Tide, Border Songs' central figure Brandon Vanderkool is an awkward kid with a profound connection to nature. Where 13-year-old Miles' marine life obsessions were rewarded by the discovery of a strange creature washed up on the shores of Puget Sound, six-food-eight Brandon's possibly autistic birdwatching makes him the best Border Patrol agent on the America-Canada border, which mostly embarrasses him. Brandon is heartbreakingly lovable, but the novel is really an ensemble piece about the idiosyncratic farmers, academics, pot dealers, lost souls, illegal immigrants, and observers in a contentious border town in a present day much like our own.

It's due from Knopf in June.

Dan Wickett has a great occasional feature at the Emerging Writers Network where he provides brief descriptions of the latest cool books to grace his doorstop (or mailbox). His most recent post on this subject had a couple of titles that got me very excited, first the new collection from Graywolf:

Notes from No Man's Land - American Essays by Eula Biss (Graywolf Press). This, the winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, will be read if only for that reason - the two other winners of this award in past years that I've read, by Ander Monson and Terese Svoboda, are two of my favorite nonficton books of recent years.

And there's also this very timely collection from Penguin:

Gods and Soldiers, edited by Rob Spillman (Penguin Original forthcoming in May).Gods and Soldiers Per the copy, theis book "captures the energy, vitality, and immediacy of the continent today. From northern Arabic-speaking to southern Zulu-speaking writers, the pieces in this collection can be viewed as thirty different ways of seeing what it means to be African." With both previously published and unpublished works by authors such as Achebe, Adichie, Lalami, Abani, Mabanckou, Wainaina, and Thiong'o, it's one I can't wait to dig into, piece by piece.

Notes From No Man's Land sounded particularly interesting so I headed over to Graywolf to learn a bit more:

“I fought with this book. I shouted, ‘Amen!’ I cursed at it for being so wildly wrong and right. It’s so smart, combative, surprising, and sometimes shocking that it kept me twisting and turning in my seat like I was on some kind of socio-political roller coaster ride. Eula Biss writes with equal parts beauty and terror. I love it.”

That quote would be from Mr. Sherman Alexie. I'm so sold on this one it's not even funny. (And really - all the essay collections at Graywolf sound very cool and I must make my way through that backlist.)

Finally, I am familiar with the story of Bridget Cleary but it never fails to make me sad. This post over at Tor is very effective - if you aren't familiar with the last known incident of witch burning (in 1895) then it's a must read.

[Post pic of Robert Caro in the office.]