Episode 29: The Biography Police
An account of the campaigns orchestrated against biographers, using as examples biographies of T. E. Lawrence and Susan Sontag.
24 Loka 202036min
Reading and Writing Biography: A Primer
The sorry state of reviewing biography as reviewers turns in what amounts to book reports, letting down the genre of biography and those who practice it.
17 Loka 202027min
What a biographer knows.
I read and discuss a section from The Life of William Faulkner, pointing out my use of evidence, and concluding that I am my own best evidence.
10 Loka 202051min
What is a definitive biography?
I consider the question in the light of biographies of Sylvia Plath, William Faulkner, Olson Welles, John F. Kennedy, and others.
3 Loka 202048min
The Cruelty of Biography
A wide ranging discussion of the anathemas against biography perpetuated by modern writers, including Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Somerset Maugham, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Anthony Powell.
26 Syys 202026min
Episode 24: Psychologizing Biography
What does Psychologizing biography mean? How I have used it.
19 Syys 202018min
Episode 22: The Case Against Biography
What to say about the epistemology of biography and why it is sometimes better to not have been there, but to see it all from afar and yet in closeup, as the past is recreated in the biographer’s imagination.
5 Syys 202015min
