Ok I don’t get it. Recently a horde of book reviews came out for a recent biography of Tolstoy, all the reviews mentioning the previous biographies that Tolstoy has already been subject to.
Ok, I admit that Tolstoy is a major writer of the canon, but why do we care so much about his biography? Why not just read his work? Why keep publishing new biographies about the same writer? How much new information could have come out?
I just don’t understand why writing about particular writers has become so popular.
Probably because a biography isn’t just about what a person did, but why and how. I’d expect that a biography of an author would talk about his life, what influences he had in life that were reflected in his writing, the experiences he had while writing his famous works, etc. In other words, everything beyond the actual text of his writings.
I just read the new Vonnegut biography (highly recommended, btw), and think it’s a great example of why we SHOULD read them. The conflict between the voice of Vonnegut the author, and who he actually was, is probably the most important theme of the book.
Do you read Tolstoy yourself? If not, who do you read? Would having a biography available be more appealing if you if you read the originals yourself? Do you read biographies of non-writers? If so, what type of people and why?
Many thanks for the link! This one is a must-have for me, and your comments intrigue me. I saw him speak once back in the '80s and fell immediately in love.
I read biographies of writers because I want to know what circumstances created that particular point of view. How was that writer similar to me or different from me? How did she respond to the events in her life and how did that affect the way she wrote?
A biography by a person other than the writer gives a closer-to-objective view of those events than I could ever get from the writer’s own work. Since no human can be truly objective, there are multiple biographies of interesting people by different authors because there are multiple perspectives from which to view them. The more of them you read, the closer you are to the true character of the writer.
Tolstoy was a very interesting character, a wealthy Russian nobleman who moved out of his mansion to live in a peasant hut and work in the fields. (His wife and children said “We’ll stay here in the big house, thank you very much”; he actually wanted to give away his estate but they vetoed that as well.) His views on politics and Jesus Christ were very interesting and influential- men as diverse as Lenin and MLK and Gandhi claimed to take inspiration from him. He didn’t just wake up at 10 a.m., write for a couple of hours, go have a highball with Vladimir and Marge, and play acrostics- he had a very interesting life in and of itself.
For many other authors, it gives you a major insight into their works. Knowing of Mark Twain’s childhood gives great perspective on Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both of them highly autobiographical; knowing Charles Dickens’ father was a charming dreamer whose recklessness with money caused his family to live in debtor’s prisons and on charity (or in Charles’s case, a basement putting labels on bottles for pennies a week that all went to his father’s debt) gives you an idea of why he was so pissed at the workhouses and the plight and the trap of London’s poor.
And, some people just think biographies in general are interesting. I’m increasingly convinced there are no boring lives, just boring biographers and storytellers.
No (so you have a good point that i might be more interested in the biography then).
Mostly non-fiction or sometimes science fiction
Yes; but it still strikes me as a bit off to read a biography of a writer when there are something like 7000 new books published a year (from major houses; or more than that, I forgot the number).
Yes; my ideal would be the Robert Caro (unfinished) trilogy biography of Johnson.
Why is a writer different from any other biographic subject? You might as well ask, “why read a biography of Lyndon Johnson when his record in public life is well known?”
A good biography tells things outside of the public record. And, for a writer, his work is his work, but without a biography you can’t know what influenced that work.
Most biographies are written about fiction writers and I think that’s mostly because people tend to read the bulk of the output of a writer of fiction, but normally only a few selected books by a writer of nonfiction. That gives them more investment in fiction writers. Science fiction writers have been slightly compared to mainstream writers, but there are biographies of the major ones and a 600-page part 1 on Heinlein’s life was just published.
And there are well-known psychological experiments that say that people value what they’ve put their own time into over objectively equal objects they haven’t. If they spend a lifetime reading the books of an author, that author’s life becomes not just more interesting but more valuable.
There are something like 50,000 new books a year published by established presses. Maybe 200,000 more are self-published. Even if the number were closer to 7000 that’s still orders of magnitude more than anybody can read in a year. So why not read what you’re interested in? So many books, so little time.
I may have mentioned elsewhere that I was impressed by Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End. Last August, I read the one-volume edition that’s been most common in recent years. Wanting to know more, I bought the four-volume critical edition just published by Carcanet Press & returned to that world. Then tried to learn more online. I got confused. Most critics agree that his The Good Soldier was an great novel; Parade’s End is loved by those few who’ve read it. But Ford was immensely prolific & has gone out of fashion—in some ways, he was never really “in fashion.” Even with the little knowledge I’d gathered, I was able to tell that certain “experts” were wrong & hated him for weird reasons. His “official” biographer apparently dislikes him…
Then I found a biography by Alan Judd, a British writer who loved The Good Soldier & researched Ford’s life. Yes, he was contradictory, charming & infuriating. Yes, his work was uneven in quality. Yes, he sometimes embroidered the truth; but Ford called one memoir I read a “novel”* in the introduction*. He was an influential editor & supporter of other writers, who sometimes turned on him—and he rarely bothered to defend himself from rumors & lies. Hemingway apparently pilloried him in Moveable Feast–here’s what Judd had to say:
I’d read that Ford’s poetry was excellent & neglected; Judd includes some rather long examples–whole–in the book. He doesn’t discuss Ford’s two most popular works as deeply as he might—but urges everybody to read them or read them again. He’s excellent about recommending certain books from the 81 that Ford published as the best choices for those of us wanting to read more. And I’ve added Judd’s own novels to my Never-Ending List…
I read that too. While I can’t imagine life with Kurt would ever be easy, his second wife, Jill Krementz, comes across as a first order selfish controlling neurotic bitch, doesn’t she? I’ve never understood why people remain in miserable marriages like that when money’s not an issue, and especially in cases like their marriage when they lived apart for years at a time anyway.