出版与作家生涯2012esquire.com编辑精选
罗伯特·卡罗用三十八年写一个人的传记
Robert Caro has spent thirty-eight years writing the biography of one man.
导读
这篇长文讲 Robert Caro 花三十八年写一个人的传记，重点呈现他近乎偏执的调研、记录与结构工艺。对写作者值得读，因为它把“可信的非虚构叙事”拆成可学习的方法：从外围人脉和档案找细节，用大纲维持长篇结构。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
核心人物拒绝受访时，先画同心圆，从最外围的熟人、一次见面者和员工入手，再借出勤表、雇佣记录、电话簿等公开线索逐层逼近核心。
- 02
关键引语和细节要落到可核查的档案与具体来源上，不能靠想象补写人物说过的话。
- 03
题材看似枯燥时，靠密集而具体的细节、清晰的叙事抓力让文章变得扣人心弦。
- 04
长篇写作可把结构做成钉在公告板上的大纲或规格表，并允许同一组事实换不同角度写成不同文章。
HN 评论精选
调研核心人物被封锁时，从最外围关系圈和公开档案反向逼近，能获得关键引语和细节。
Gottlieb 只质疑过一次 Caro 报道的真实性。在后来成为《权力经纪人》第214页的那一段里，Caro 写到贝拉和伊曼纽尔·摩西在 Camp Madison 夏令营翻阅《纽约时报》，得知儿子因非法拨款被判赔2.2万美元，并引用了早已去世的贝拉的话：“哦，他一辈子没挣过一美元，现在却要我们来付。”Gottlieb 问 Caro 这句引语怎么来的。Caro 说，摩西曾嘱咐朋友和亲信不要接受采访；被封锁后，他在纸上画了一组同心圆：中心是摩西，第一圈家人，第二圈朋友，第三圈熟人，依此类推。越往外，有人只见过摩西一次，摩西不可能全都打点到。Caro 从最外圈开始，找到 Camp Madison 的出勤表和雇佣记录等材料；四十年后，他又主要靠纽约公共图书馆的电话簿，逐一找到当年可能提供罗伯特与摩西关系细节的孩子和退休员工。
tptacek查看英文原文
Tradecraft: Gottlieb has questioned the veracity of Caro's reporting only once. There was a single paragraph that stood out on what would become the 214th page of The Power Broker. In it, Bella and Emanuel Moses, Robert's parents, were depicted at their summer lodge at Camp Madison, a camp for poor and immigrant children that Bella had helped found. There, they were leafing through The New York Times one morning in 1926, Caro wrote, when they learned of a $22,000 judgment against their son for illegal appropriations. Caro included a quote from Bella Moses, who was long dead: "Oh, he never earned a dollar in his life and now we'll have to pay this." How, Gottlieb asked Caro, did he get that quote? Caro told the story. Moses had instructed friends and close associates not to talk to him. Shut out, Caro then drew a series of concentric circles on a piece of paper. In the center, he put Moses. The first circle was his family, the second his friends, the third his acquaintances, and so on. "As the circles grew outward," Caro says, "there were people who'd only met him once. He wasn't going to be able to get to them all." Caro started with the widest circle, unearthing, among other things, the attendance rolls and employment records from Camp Madison. Now some four decades later, Caro tracked down, using mostly phone books at the New York Public Library, every now-adult child and every now-retired employee who might offer him some small detail about Robert's relationship with his parents. One of the employees he found was the camp's social worker, Israel Ben Scheiber, who also happened to deliver The New York Times to Bella and Emanuel Moses at their lodge each morning. Scheiber was standing there when Bella had expressed her frustration with her deadbeat son, and he remembered the moment exactly. "So that's how," Caro told Gottlieb. "Every step of that story is by all ordinary standards insane," Gottlieb says today. "But he didn't say any of it as though it were remarkable. We're dealing with an incredibly productive, wonderful mania." This is why journalists are irritable about "narrative journalism", about fudging the facts in the service of some underlying truth. It's also why the difference between "theater" and "journalism" was so important in Mike Daisey's Apple show. He bristles at the word obsessive, his eyes flashing through his thick, dark glasses. "That implies it's something strange," he says. "This is reporting. This is what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to turn every page." This guy is such a bad-ass. And let me be the 90347947th person on HN to urge you to read _The Power Broker_ immediately.
题材看似枯燥不等于文章乏味，执行力和细节能让它引人入胜。
我这是破例，但这篇文章太好了，必须推荐。我差点因为题目听起来无聊而不看，那会是大错。它非常抓人。
gruseom查看英文原文
I'm breaking the rules here, but this article is so good it cries out for a boost. I almost didn't look at it because the topic sounds so boring. What a mistake that would have been. It is simply gripping.
同一组事实可以用不同角度写成不同长文，角度决定可读性。
这是我本周看到的第二篇关于卡罗及其新书的长文，另一篇在明天《纽约时报杂志》上。有趣的是，两篇讲的事实很相似，但切入角度很不同。无疑是他经纪人的出色公关，但两篇都好看，值得花时间都读。
noahnoahnoah查看英文原文
This is the second long-form piece about Caro and his new book I've seen this week (the other is in tomorrow's New York Times magazine - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/magazine/robert-caros-big-dig.html?hpw). Interesting how similar the facts they tell are, but the angle is very different in each. Great PR by his agent no doubt, but both enjoyable reads -- well worth the time to read them both.
长篇写作可用钉在公告板上的大纲或规格表来维持结构，制作技术会变，结构方法仍有价值。
Caro 写得太久，他的书跨越了现代书籍制作史。《权力的路径》1982年出版，用 Linotype 机器热金属排版，封面字是手工精心绘制的；《上升之路》1990年出版，属于计算机主机世代；《参议院大师》2002年出版，通过桌面出版最容易制作。负责这些书的生产经理，职业生涯横跨三种不同技术。我们的职业也会如此——我做过电传打字和打孔卡。一切都这么短暂，不是吗？回到本论坛的话题：你注意到 Caro 为书使用规格说明吗？那些钉在公告板上的大纲表？
keithpeter查看英文原文
"Caro has been at his work for so long, his books span the modern history of book making. The Path to Power, published in 1982, was printed using hot-metal typesetting, on a Linotype machine; its handsome cover lettering was drawn meticulously by hand. Means of Ascent, published in 1990, was part of the computer-mainframe generation. Master of the Senate, published in 2002, was the easiest to create, via desktop publishing." The production manager for the books has a career that has spanned three distinct technologies. So will our careers (I've done teletypes and punched cards). Its all so short isn't it? Back on something like topic for this forum: did you notice how Caro uses a specification for his books? Those outline sheets pinned up on the notice boards?
同类还值得读
写书：值得吗？
Writing a book: is it worth it?
Martin Kleppmann（《设计数据密集型应用》作者）复盘写书到底值不值：金钱回报低、耗时极长，但带来了可见度、信任和职业机会。
出版与作家生涯2020 · 642 分 · 287 评4 条写作要点编辑精选写书并不是个好主意
Writing books is not really a good idea
这篇文章讨论靠写书谋生的现实难度，评论区从版税数学、收入预期和写作目标三个角度补充了作者视角。
出版与作家生涯2021 · 577 分 · 609 评4 条写作要点编辑精选如何自助出版一本书：实用资源清单
How to self-publish a book: A handy list of resources
这是一份关于「如何自助出版一本书」的资源清单帖，涵盖从编辑、排版到 ISBN、销售渠道的实操工具与花费。
出版与作家生涯2018 · 558 分 · 88 评4 条写作要点编辑精选我自助出版一本Ruby on Rails书，赚了7万美元
How I Made $70k Self-Publishing a Book about Ruby on Rails
这是一篇 Ruby 开发者自述：他把一套 Rails 性能课程（书＋视频＋答疑）自出版，一年毛收入约 7 万美元，并总结了选题、定价、营销等经验。
出版与作家生涯2017 · 539 分 · 175 评4 条写作要点编辑精选石黑一雄警告年轻作家因“恐惧”而自我审查
Sir Kazuo Ishiguro warns of young authors self-censoring out of 'fear'
石黑一雄提醒年轻作者因“恐惧”而自我审查，即这条帖子讨论的核心。
出版与作家生涯2021 · 396 分 · 641 评5 条写作要点编辑精选