Good (and bad) Biographies of Writers

[jenks]

Inspired by @Benny Bunter asking about Ackroyd’s Eliot and also reading that Ellman’s biography of Joyce is to be the subject of its own book, I was interested by: what are the good biographies of writers out there; what makes a good one and, by comparison what makes a bad one.

Exile and otherness

Where to begin with a book about a book about the writer of a book regularly acknowledged as the most important novel of the twentieth century? It is a question that will surely dog every reviewer of Zachary Leader’s biography of Richard Ellmann’s celebrated biography, the masterly James Joyce...

www.the-tls.co.uk

 

[version]

I don't think I've ever actually read a biography of a writer. I thought I had, but now I think about it... The last one I heard anything about was that Philip Roth one which got rave reviews then quickly disappeared when the author was accused of abusing some of his students.

Philip Roth: The Biography

The renowned biographer’s definitive portrait of a lite…

www.goodreads.com

 

[Benny Bunter]

I've only read the Ellman Yeats one, (on a rec from @Corpsey ) which was brilliant, and a Camus one which I read so long ago I can't remember anything, but i enjoyed it at the time.

The Ellman Yeats was great cos he had unprecedented access to his private papers and is just a really good writer and critic, so you get the impression he really got inside in his head. He doesn't dwell much on the mundane detail of his life. It's more like a great long essay with a properly thought out thesis ('masks', in a word) rather than a standard biography. Definitely want to read the Joyce one he did at some point.

 

[version]

The closest thing I've read to one's probably Anselm Jappe's intellectual biography of Debord. That was really good.

Guy Debord

«This is the first serious intellectual biography of Gu…

www.goodreads.com

what makes a good one and, by comparison what makes a bad one.

With the above, I thought it was good because it was short, well written and firmly focused on the development of his ideas rather than muckraking and his personal life. I find that sort of thing entertaining in some instances, but in Debord's case I'm more interested in his theories than who he insulted and how much he had to drink.

 

[Benny Bunter]

I'd like to read a good one of someone who lived a properly exciting life like Cervantes or Melville, sailing the seven seas, going to war, getting thrown into prison and being captured by pirates and stuff.

 

[sufi]

I read Katherine Rundells biog of John Donne recently
Maybe too pop for this discussion but an enjoyable enthusiastic romp about a poet I knew nothing about and would have struggled to get to know thru his work

 

[sufi]

I'd like to read a good one of someone who lived a properly exciting life like Cervantes or Melville, sailing the seven seas, going to war, getting thrown into prison and being captured by pirates and stuff.

Oh yeah read that Donne biography, surprisingly covers most of that

 

[Benny Bunter]

Most those 17th century guys have fucking mental life stories, I like to read them on wikipedia. Garcilaso, San Juan, Philip Sidney etc etc

 

[Benny Bunter]

Modern writers look like proper fannies in comparison. Some of these old guys it's mind blowing the adventures they got up to.

 

[version]

I'd like to read a good one of someone who lived a properly exciting life like Cervantes or Melville, sailing the seven seas, going to war, getting thrown into prison and being captured by pirates and stuff.

Conrad could be an interesting one, also Rimbaud. There are some Burroughs biographies out there, but they seem like they'd be dull next to the novels. We already know his story from reading him anyway.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Wordsworth did a lot of interesting stuff in the first half of his life, but it's sort of all there in the prelude so I'm not too interested in a modern biography

 

[version]

I suppose The Pound Era is a sort of biography. I've read that and that was really good.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Would definitely read a rimbaud one if it was good, that's a good shout.

 

[Benny Bunter]

I suppose The Pound Era is a sort of biography. I've read that and that was really good.

I've just read bits of it on pdf, need to get a paper copy though. I agree it's good, but pushing it to call it a biography.

Is there a decent Pound one?

 

[version]

I've just read bits of it on pdf, need to get a paper copy though. I agree it's good, but pushing it to call it a biography.

Is there a decent Pound one?

There's one called The Bughouse, but I haven't read that and reviews are mixed.

The Bughouse: The Poetry, Politics, and Madness of Ezra…

A captivating biography of Ezra Pound told via the stor…

www.goodreads.com

 

[Benny Bunter]

I read a lester bangs one once come to think of it, sort of alright, but I think 99.9% of these things, while you can't really call them bad, they're never more than just functional. The ellman yeats elevates the form cos it's an essay by a great writer and ignores the boring bits.

 

[version]

Ellman on Joyce is the only one I've seen talked about as a great work in its own right rather than just very good secondary literature.

 

[jenks]

There's one called The Bughouse, but I haven't read that and reviews are mixed.

The Bughouse: The Poetry, Politics, and Madness of Ezra…

A captivating biography of Ezra Pound told via the stor…

www.goodreads.com

That’s a rather vicious one. There is a three volume Pound biog that is forensic in its detail. Probably more information than anyone ever needs.

 

[jenks]

I read a lot of them - the very best ones are either the totally exhaustive doorstops like Ellman on Joyce or the Robb biogs of Rimbaud or Hugo, Bellos on Perec or they’ve got some stylistic or structural quirky angle - Schama’s Rembrandt’s Eyes or Lewis’ Peter Sellers or his Erotic Vagrancy.
I think I like them because I hope it sheds light on the work, the life story making sense of their stories - Shapiro and Greenblatt on Shakespeare for example. But I also like them because I’m nosy. I’ll read letters, diaries of writers I like as well - Flaubert’s for example.
I think the quality of biography has altered - I’m reading one about Verlaine from 71 and she doesn’t really know how to address his homosexuality- going so far as to blame it on his mother. The Painter two vol biog of Proust is also rather coy in places.
I’m looking forward to both the Brookner and Spark biogs that come out next year - one because she led such a seemingly quiet life and I’ll be fascinated to see what was going on beneath it all and the other cos she had a ‘larger than life’ persona and I think she’d have got up to much mischief.

 

[Corpsey]

Burgess wrote some very enjoyable short books on Joyce, Shakespeare, and DH Lawrence. He's a better writer than the average biographer, I should think.

Chesterton's book on Dickens is very well regarded, but I've only read a bit of that. Ditto V.S. Pritchett's book about Chekhov. On the subject of the unfinished biographies, I read maybe a third of that massive and often praised Beckett biography. "Damned to Fame."

I've read Ellmann, a million years ago. I read one about Ellot, here it is https://www.virago.co.uk/titles/lyndall-gordon/the-imperfect-life-of-t-s-eliot/9781844088935/

I would quite like to read this famously 'candid' and horrible biography of V.S. Naipaul https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/apr/13/biography.features