Extraordinary lives: the art and craft of American biography

Extraordinary Lives: The Art and Craft of American Biography

edited by William Zinsser (American Heritage, 252 pp., $16.95)

THE BIOGRAPHER is an investigative reporter of the spirit. He must utilize original research that casts new light on the subject, have a thorough mastery of the material, experience the locales, portray the social and political background, synthesize the facts about the private and the public life, form a sympathetic identification with the subject, present a perceptive interpretation of character and motives, reveal a meaningful pattern, provide an evaluation of the achievement, and do justice to the end and extinction of life.

Extraordinary Lives originated as a series of six lectures--three on nineteenth-century women, two on recent Presidents, and one on a distinguished journalist--sponsored by the middlebrow Book-of-the-Month Club and by the New York Public Library. It touches on how the biographer chooses (or is chosen for) his subject, uses biographical models, does archival research, conducts interviews, interprets evidence, establishes chronology, organizes material, and illuminates the significance of the subject's work. But the approach is anecdotal, the substance superficial, and the content too often banal. The book does not provide a serious response to these issues. The editor's introduction is superfluous, there is no logical order to the chapters (except that the weakest come first), and the book is padded out with answers to questions from the audience.

The editor, who published a book On Writing Well, has allowed his contributors to indulge in shoddy style. David McCullough suggests the level of his discourse by announcing: "And of course Kansas City is really something,' and, "I'm having a wonderful time getting to know Harry Truman.' (He adds, ignoring figures like Hitler and Stalin, that "a biographer must genuinely care about his subject. . . . It's as if you were choosing a spouse or a roommate.') Robert Caro, discussing Lyndon Johnson, packs several cliches into one clause: "The whole, great surging and heaving panorama of the turbulent Sixties.' And Ronald Steel writes clumsily of Walter Lippmann: "Also, the atmosphere in Washington was unpleasant between him and Lyndon Johnson.'

Jean Strouse and Richard Sewall, considering Alice James (sister of Henry and William) and Emily Dickinson, edge around the question of how to describe an obscure neurasthenic or a life that has no story. Sewall concludes with a fatuous remark: "Nobody owns Emily Dickinson or ever will own her.' Miss Strouse, in a more interesting chapter, admits she likes telling but not inventing stories. Following Leon Edel, she argues that biographers combine the talents of the novelist, historian, and psychologist, emphasizing the need to discover the revelations beneath the concealments, to find the real beneath the apparent reasons. Robert Caro argues that Lyndon Johnson obliterated his past and created his own legend. But he does not discuss the conflict between the legend and Johnson's ruthless betrayal of his early mentors, Franklin Roosevelt and Sam Rayburn.

Paul Nagel, writing about the Adams women, states the obvious: "Biography . . . has never ignored the mind and motive of the subject.' Ignoring the three brilliant Bronte sisters (exact contemporaries of his subjects) he dubiously claims: "I doubt that in England or America three such amazing sisters grew up together, particularly in a rural parsonage.' Contemporary readers expect to learn the whole truth about the psychological, sexual, and medical aspects of the subject. Nagel barely mentions the biographer's conflict between disclosure and reticence (the latter prompted by morality, legality, or loyalty) and claims the complete story "should be told with affection [I would say, "with sympathetic understanding'] rather than with ruthlessness.'

Ronald Steel, in a potentially valuable essay, quotes the epigram of Sir Charles Wetherell (which he wrongly attributes to Oscar Wilde): "My noble and biographical friend [Lord Campbell] has added a new terror to death.' For Steel, who had in Lippmann the only living subject considered in this book, found himself both partner and antagonist. He passed judgment on Lippmann's private papers and held Lippmann's life in his hands (the evaluation of a persuasive biographer often counts more than a subject's achievement). But he also feared, during the long years of working on the book, that Lippmann would insidiously take over his life and provoke unconscious resentment. Just as Lippmann's second wife was about to give his love letters to Steel, she suddenly died. Steel betrays his limited knowledge of medical reality by explaining: "She was consumed by anxiety and guilt [about her earlier adultery with Lippmann] and the combination was more than she could deal with.' This disappointing book substantiates Lytton Strachey's observation: "It is perhaps as difficult to writ a good life as to live one.'

COPYRIGHT 1986 National Review, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning