A little treat for Caro-heads: Bryan Cranston reads from The Power Broker.
The 92nd Street Y held a conversation to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Caro’s landmark book The Power Broker, his masterwork on Robert Moses and how he remade New York City through an audacious program of public building. The live conversation happened last month, but is now available to purchase and stream. Caro was interviewed Stacy Schiff, the writer of award-winning biographies of Vera Nabokov, Cleopatra, as well as a book on the Salem Witch Trials.
As Lit Hub’s resident Caro-head, I was already excited to check out this event, but I hadn’t realized that the evening opened with a reading by actor Bryan Cranston — incidentally the same actor who played Caro’s other great subject, LBJ, in the 2016 HBO film All the Way.
After some loving jabs at the devotion this book inspires and its notorious length (“There are only 50 chapters…”), Cranston reads from Power Broker’s opening pages. The performance is fun, and Cranston gets an ad-libbed laugh by archly reading “Shea Stadium,” a part of Moses’ legacy that was demolished and replaced in 2009. Cranston’s also reads some of the famous list sections that Caro rattles off in The Power Broker’s opening chapters. The drumbeat of names is Caro’s attempt to contextualize the scale of Moses’ impact, a technique cribbed from The Aeneid.
The Power Broker is a pleasure to hear read out loud, which is a testament to Cranston’s acting abilities and to Caro’s writing. His lyrical cadence and force make for a captivating performance — I feel like sections of his books could be good audition monologues for actors, especially if there happen to be some nerdy casting directors out there.
If you’re interested to hear more, the entire interview is available now on the 92nd Street Y’s website.
