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Loomis – Ah, fair enough. I thought the idea sounded vaguely promising and I know sod all about London so I’d wanted to read it. The thought of a tv series (I’ve no seen it) with Ackroyd delivering moody asides does put one off a bit.
Thinking about it, I’ve never been a huge fan of literary biographies. Perhaps because whenever I read a music biography (which is more common) I invariably end up thinking that the subjects are both less interesting than their material, and usually pricks to boot eg Patti Smith, Ian Curtis, most of Talking Heads.
However, if you like either writer, both Charles Bukowski and John Fante have excellent biographies in Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life and Full of Life, respectively. Both writers’ fiction is highly autobiographical as it is, but these books are interesting in, for Bukowski, puncturing somewhat the myth he had made of himself, and Fante’s is heartbreaking as it recounts how he wasted the prime of his life churning out scripts for Hollywood and his last years of illness. Mervyn Peake had a fascinating life and both A World Away: A Memoir of Mervyn Peake by his widow Maeve Gilmore and His Eyes Mint Gold by Michael Yorke were excellent. Plus A Child of Bliss: Growing up with Mervyn Peake by his son was good if you’re super-interested...
What about autobiographies? And correspondence? Do they fit? Personally I like reading authors’ letters - the privacy they might have assumed is revelatory – and as I recall Allen Ginsberg’s was particularly moving.
I don’t think I have any literary biographies that I’m currently desperate to read; I got a rather weighty volume on A.A. Milne a little while ago but it’s nowhere near even being IN my to-read pile… I don’t really think I have a favourite biography ever either (but if it occurs to me I’ll post it), both Fante’s biography and Maeve Gilmore’s memoir were the last things I read that deeply moved me, but perhaps largely because they tried to express truths and grief that wouldn’t fit easily into words - which I can’t imagine being one of the primary criteria of scholarly biography. As above, claims to the best factual biography ever probably rely on comparison of different biographies and actual consultation of the sources, so it’s always going to be a discussion limited to those critics reading for information purposes primarily. On that basis it would really always come back to the strength of the writing for the general reader. Somewhat sidestepping this I’m more attracted to writers’ who write without apparent notice for the division of history and fiction, for example Henry Miller and Hunter S Thompson. Thinking about Miller here, he writes neither explicitly claiming identification or distance with the narrative voice he occupies (whose fictional story largely mirrors Miller’s own we assume). It really works for me… possibly for others it’s just a sign he didn’t have the artistic ability or detachment to create alter egos. And in some ways I’d always be on the side of the entertaining, possibly embellished, but never emotionally fraudulent fictional biography rather than an exhaustively researched linear sequence of facts. Despite Miller’s occasionally dubious racist attitudes or contentious sexual politics the sheer irreducible vitality of his attitude to life, and the quality and commitment of his writing, would probably have him near the top of the list if that sort of assuredly ambiguous definition of biography was allowed, so: recommended. He had interesting views on Joyce as well! |
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