The frustration of everyone involved in a biography — the author, the reader, and the subject (if he or she is still living) — is the inability of the form to capture the essence of the “real” person who lurks inside a dense cocoon of facts, statistics, family connections, resumes, observations, interviews, letters, and photographs. Ronald Reagan’s biographer, Edmund Morris, was so baffled by his famously opaque subject that he resorted to writing a novel instead (Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, 1999).
The frustration of everyone involved in a biography — the author, the reader, and the subject (if he or she is still living) — is the inability of the form to capture the essence of the “real” person who lurks inside a dense cocoon of facts, statistics, family connections, resumes, observations, interviews, letters, and photographs. Ronald Reagan’s biographer, Edmund Morris, was so baffled by his famously opaque subject that he resorted to writing a novel instead (Alexander Masters was similarly baffled by his subject, a British man named Stuart Shorter, though not because his subject was famous, controversial, undocumented, or remote in time. Stuart was very much alive during the writing of his biography, very forthcoming with the details of his life, and had a large hand in shaping the book into its final form. The problem was that Stuart was a member of what Masters terms “the chaotic homeless,” with the emphasis on chaotic….
Read more at Blogcritics. This article has also been syndicated to Advance.net.
I remember hearing about this title somewhere else, it was an interview with the books author. But I can’t remember where exactly- either an NPR book review series or a BBC radio author interview series.
In any event it’s a well written review. Makes me want to go out and read the book, although I don’t think I am up to tackling such a dark topic right now.