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 Okt 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 Okt 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 Okt 202051min
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 Sep 202026min
Episode 24: Psychologizing Biography
What does Psychologizing biography mean? How I have used it.
19 Sep 202018min
Reviewing Biography: The Case of Sylvia Plath
I read a review of my book, The Last Days of Sylvia Plath, in order to discuss the methodology of biography and of the reviewer.
12 Sep 202020min
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 Sep 202015min
