Biography in the Prison House of Modernism, Part 2

An account of the campaigns orchestrated against biographers, using as examples biographies of T. E. Lawrence and Susan Sontag.

24 Okt 202036min

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

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

I consider the question in the light of biographies of Sylvia Plath, William Faulkner, Olson Welles, John F. Kennedy, and others.

3 Okt 202048min

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

What does Psychologizing biography mean? How I have used it.

19 Sep 202018min

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

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