Quote of the Day (Margaret Forster, on the Burden and Satisfaction of Writing a Biography)

“With biography, you’re really weighted down with responsibility all the time. You’re fretting about, is this true? Is it fair? And then on top of that, am I making it readable? You know, you’re juggling so many things with biography. It’s a real sweat, a real grind. But on the other hand, it’s immensely satisfying. When you get to the end of it and you’ve done the job, then you feel—I feel—quite differently from a novel, when I think, ‘Okay, so I enjoyed it,  but after all, what is it?’”—English novelist, biographer, memoirist, historian and critic Margaret Forster (1938-2016), interview with Sue Lawley on Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4, Dec. 9, 1994

I came across a podcast featuring this quote after watching the famous adaptation of one of the novels of Margaret Forster, Georgy Girl, last week. I had known nothing about the author, so I was surprised to find out not only that she had written so much, but that a considerable body of her work consisted of biographies.

As co-author (with my friend Rob Polner) of a biography myself (An Irish Passion for Justice: The Life of Rebel New York Attorney Paul O’Dwyer), I identified completely with Ms. Forster’s anxiety about bringing a biography to the level she desired.

And I also could relate to a dilemma she mentioned in her interview with Sue Lawley: the fear of a discovery late in the project that could significantly alter or even delay publication. This occurred with Ms. Forster when working on her acclaimed, path-breaking biography of Rebecca novelist Daphne du Maurier.

While astonishingly prolific (25 novels and 14 works of nonfiction), Ms. Forster remains far better known in her native Britain than in the U.S. (In my local county library system, for instance, I could find only eight of her works.) But she sounds like an author whose works invite reading and whose dedication encourages imitation.

(For a warm and affectionate appreciation of the very private Ms. Forster, see Kathleen Jones’s 2016 post on her “A Writer’s Life” blog.)

Quote of the Day (James Atlas, on Why Biography is an Art Form)

“Writing a biography resembles writing a novel in that you have to solve the problems that present themselves in writing any narrative. That is why I claim that biography is an art form, because it involves the same narrative and aesthetic questions. The only difference, I’m tempted to say, is that you're dealing with fact instead of inventing facts.”—Biographer James Atlas (1949-2019), interview with Humanities (2000), quoted by Matt Schudel, “Biographer, Publisher Was Meticulous in His Exploration of Literary Lives,” Washington Post, Sept. 12, 2019

After co-writing a biography myself, I’ve come to conclude that such works are, if they’re done right, products of endless toil, tears and sweat—not just for the very real aesthetic reasons of narrative and style that the late Mr. Atlas identifies, but also for the need to get the facts right.

A charitable reader might find one mistake regrettable; a less forgiving reader will feel the worm of doubt growing about the book’s accuracy. With every error after that, the whole edifice of credibility crumbles from within, and with it the reader’s trust in the author and his tale.

Quote of the Day ('Hamilton' Scribe Ron Chernow, on How He Treats His Subjects)

"Great historical figures carry the weight of their own defects. It's not my job to pretty them up."—Hamilton biographer Ron Chernow quoted in Alexandra Wolfe, “Weekend Confidential: Ron Chernow,” The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 16-17, 2017

Quote of the Day (Susan Cheever, on Research in Writing)

“For many writers, research is a big yawn. The past is a foreign country, and who cares how they do things differently there? Research is reading disintegrating papers in dusty libraries; sifting through shoe boxes in ancient attics; interviewing people who don’t know when to stop talking. But for biographers, research is thrilling. Reconstructing history is delicious. Research is where the story comes from; it’s the bits and pieces of the past we are trying to bring to life.”— Susan Cheever, “Riff: ‘Why Didn’t Rebecca Stop at the Railroad Crossing?’” The New York Times Sunday Magazine, June 29, 2014

Quote of the Day (David McCullough, on Interesting Material for His Books)

“I want to find out. There isn’t anything in the world that isn’t inherently interesting—if only someone will explain it to you in English, if only someone will frame it in a story.” —Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David McCullough, quoted by Marie Arana in The Writing Life: Writers On How They Think And Work, edited by Marie Arana (2003)

Quote of the Day (Willard Sterne Randall, on the Value of Biography)

“Biography enables the reader to approach the great mass of ideas, actions and struggles that historians have too often rendered impenetrable. We need some path or bridge to approach history and biographies provide that approach. Writing about great men and women prompts us to discuss leadership, charisma, the relationships between leadership and power, between leaders and the people. But the lives of the not-so-great can also show us how people in everyday life react to the same events and problems. They provide case studies into the periods in which people lived.”—Willard Sterne Randall, biographer of major Revolutionary War figures, quoted in George Cooper, “Randall to Present Lecture on Ethan Allen,” The Chautauquan Daily, July 12, 2011

This Day in Renaissance History (Giorgio Vasari, Father of Art History, Born)

July 30, 1511—Giorgio Vasari, who embodied the term “Renaissance man” with his painting, architecture, and biographical profiles of prior influential artists of the age, was born in Arezzo in Tuscany.

A child prodigy, Vasari paid heed to a relative who urged him, “Study well, little kinsman.” As he grew into adulthood and became the breadwinner for his family (his father, an ornamental potter, had died in a plague), Vasari became a busy, if not trend-setting, painter (his teacher was Michelangelo) and architect. (Two weeks ago, The International Herald Tribune, marking the 500th anniversary of Vasari’s birth, published an article by Roderick Conway Morris that highlighted the artist’s extraordinary commissions from his patron, Cosimo de’ Medici, the Duke of Florence.)

But Vasari’s great fame rests on Vite de' più eccell, pitori, scultori et archit (On the Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects). It had its faults, to be sure (notably, Vasari’s bias in favor of Tuscans and occasional inaccuracies).

But, at a time when the art of biography was not very well advanced, Vasari created a blueprint for how it could be done, offering a practitioner’s insight into the problems faced by his subjects, as well as willingness in later editions to correct prior inaccuracies. He not only created an indispensable record of the Renaissance in Italy, but, when translated, also influenced historical portraits of this period elsewhere, too.

In his The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, for instance, Jacob Burckhardt, the influential 19th century historian, wrote: “Without Giorgio Vasari of Arezzo and his all-important work, we should perhaps to this day have no history of modern art, or of the art of modern Europe, at all.”

In addition to illuminating the lives of the great Italian Renaissance artists (he’s one of the principal sources for our knowledge that Leonardo and Michelangelo, Vasari’s teacher and friend, were not-so-friendly rivals), Vasari also framed subsequent understanding of the Renaissance. It was a rebirth of the great art of antiquity, which, he argued, had been left in mere shards by a Roman Catholic hierarchy intent on destroying any pagan art that could adversely affect the morals of Christians.

In recent years, modern historians, while valuing Vasari’s writing for its insight and verve, have also learned to regard some of it with a critical eye. In discussing medieval architecture, for instance, he coined the term “Gothic” to express his extreme displeasure with a form he regarded as Germanic and barbarian. The artist-biographer's disdain not only reeks of prejudice but, as one looks around examples of such architecture, is hardly evidence of a reversion of civilization, but an advance on it.

Quote of the Day (Robert A. Caro, on the Art of Biography)

"I am trying to make clear through my writing something which I believe: that biography—history in general—can be literature in the deepest and highest sense of that term. Whether I am succeeding at that I don't know—and I suppose nobody will know for many years, because the test of whether something is literature is whether it endures for a long time."—Robert A. Caro, biographer of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson, quoted in Jonathan Darman, “The Marathon Man,” Newsweek, Feb. 16, 2009

I can still recall when I saw Robert A. Caro speak, in the winter of 1982, at a dinner of aspiring young journalists like myself at Columbia University. He had just issued the first volume of his epic biography of Lyndon Johnson. Twenty-seven years later, he is in the midst of his fourth and last volume of that work.

You wonder sometimes if he worries about expending virtually his entire adulthood slaving away on a biography not just about someone who frequently is anything but admirable, but whether that work is even going to endure. If he does fret about this, though, I think that’s misplaced.

In one crucial way, Caro resembles a great general as much as a great biographer: He stakes out the ground where the subsequent battle takes place. No subsequent biographer will be able to take the measure of either Moses or Johnson without coming to grips with Caro’s revelations and conclusions (often harsh) about each man. For writers, he is a model for finding the story that’s never been told before through indefatigable research.

Another reason why I admire his biographies is the focus he sheds on subsidiary characters in the lives of his main subjects. In The Power Broker, that person is New York Gov. Alfred E. Smith. In the three volumes of The Years of Lyndon Johnson to appear to date, those men are Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House; Coke Stevenson, the man LBJ defeated for the Senate in a stolen election; and Richard Russell, the lonely bachelor taken under their wing by Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson and who, in turn, taught the new Senator from Texas everything he knew about the levers of power.

Caro’s work is a magnificent achievement. Like many readers, no matter how thick his final LBJ volume, I can’t wait to get my hands on it.