Quote of the Day (Janet Malcolm, on Biographies)

“The narratives called biographies pale and shrink in the face of the disorderly actuality that is a life."—Czech-born American journalist Janet Malcolm (1934-2021), The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (1994)

The image accompanying this post of Janet Malcolm was taken Mar. 18, 2013, at the Kelly Writers House in the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.  

Quote of the Day (Joseph Epstein, on How ‘Biography Counters Determinism’)

“Biography counters determinism, the notion of history being made chiefly, or even exclusively, by irresistible tendencies, trends, and movements. It reinforces the idea that fortune, accident, above all strong character can rise above the impersonal forces of politics, economics, and even culture to forge human destiny and change the flow of history itself. For this reason, and many more, I say, long live biography.” — American essayist and editor Joseph Epstein, “Life Within Lives,” The Weekly Standard, Apr. 11, 2016

This is one reason why I have been captivated by biography (unlike my peers, more, even, than fantasy) since I was a child—as well as something I kept in mind while writing a biography of my own with my friend Rob Polner, An Irish Passion for Justice: The Life of Rebel New York Attorney Paul O’Dwyer.

Quote of the Day (Peter Davison, on Criteria for ‘The Perfect Biographer’)

“If there were a perfect biographer, he or she would be the following: a real writer, one who understands how to construct and recount a labile and sensuous narrative; a master of research, in both documents and interviews; a person who is tactful in dealings with relatives, librarians, lovers, executors, children, parents, and editors; one who is so cannily devoted to the personality of the biographical subject as to pursue every true lead and abandon every false one; one who cares so deeply about the precision of the text as to check every fact again and again, every document, every photograph, every rumor. But, beyond the conscientious practice of these skills, the biographer's genius lies in having the sympathy and imagination to create the story of a life about which the subject’s ghost would say, ‘That’s as close to me as anybody else could be expected to get.’ The biographer’s worst temptation is to transform the subject into someone preferable to the original.”—American poet and editor Peter Davison (1928–2004), “To Edit a Life,” The Atlantic Monthly, October 1992

As a lifelong reader of biographies—and, now, a biographer myself—I read this passage by Davison with great interest, knowing just how difficult it is to meet all the qualities he mentions.

But, when I think of a biographer who changes how his subject is perceived, rendering him in all his complexity and in the context of his times, I think of Ron Chernow (pictured). 

He has made his greatest mark on American culture with a biography of Alexander Hamilton that helped inspire the long-running Broadway musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and has won the Pulitzer Prize for his life of Washington.

But even before that, I had been enthralled by Titan, his account of John D. Rockefeller, which built on his background as a financial journalist. In the process, he pierced the membrane of what he called “silence, mystery and evasion” surrounding this paradoxical billionaire.

(The image accompanying this post of Chernow was taken Sept. 13, 2004, by the U.S. Department of the Treasury—the institution founded by his subject Alexander Hamilton.)

Quote of the Day (Penelope Fitzgerald, on Writing Biographies vs. Novels)

“On the whole I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings who you think are sadly mistaken.”—British novelist-biographer Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000), in a 1987 letter to her American publisher, Chris Carduff, in So I Have Thought of You: The Letters of Penelope Fitzgerald, edited by Terence Dooley (2008)

In one sense, I agree with Ms. Fitzgerald (who chronicled the lives of her father and three uncles in The Knox Family): For the biographer, it may be enormously difficult to spend years researching and writing about a figure you despise (or come to despise, as Lawrence Thompson did while producing his three-volume life of Robert Frost).

But in another sense, I must take issue with her. For readers, learning about a hateful figure—particularly one possessing power—is crucial in ensuring that the influence of such people is never wielded again.

Even for people in between—more complicated types, like Ernest Hemingway—putting distasteful details in the full context of their lives and times can demonstrate why their work matters and endures, despite their considerable personal failings.