Sign in to follow this  
Argobot

Good Biographies

Recommended Posts

The current big literary 'thing' is the recent publication of DT Max's David Foster Wallace biography. My reaction to it was generally positive, I felt that Max did a fair job of summing up DFW's tortuous life and writing career. So I'm a little surprised to hear/read that so many people are dissatisfied with this biography. The major criticism against Max is that he didn't delve deep enough into DFW's history and that the biography is too short. Personally, I can't really picture what a more 'thorough' DFW biography would look like, so I feel these complaints are a little overblown.

All the internet chatter over this, and the recent news that Philip Roth has agreed to work with his own biographer, has got me thinking about biographies in general. Has there ever been a biography of someone (I'm thinking more specifically of writers, but any famous or 'famous' person will do) that was received with an overall positive reaction? Or are biographies incapable of every fully satisfying readers?

Have any of you read any good/satisfying biographies?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Do autobiographies count? Memoirs of Napoleon, The Education of Henry Adams and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin are all great reads. You can get all three off of Project Gutenberg.

Will in the World is OK for what it is. It's mostly speculation, you know? And Shakespeare by Another Name is an interesting read if you're wondering about the validity of the Oxfordian Theory on Shakespeare's authorship.

I'm happily reading through Steven Englund's Napoleon: A Political Life, just for the hell of it. It's interesting.

Biographies to avoid would be The Lives of John Lennon, which is this bitter, angry hate letter to Lennon, and Heavier Than Heaven, which is Kurt Cobain doused in a goo of Courtney Love-authorized tidbits and casting her as this poor victim. It also has these scenes where Cobain is alone and but where we get glimpses into what the fuck he was doing. Like walking home sniffing his fingers after having sex, or what he did up to and including the moment he stuck a shotgun beneath his chin.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Matt Ridley's Francis Crick biography is at times quite an exhilarating read. The race between various labs to find a model for the structure of DNA makes a great centrepiece and the smaller, less well known details are often quite surprising. The details of his role during WWII, calculating the power of magnetic fields used by German minesweepers to detonate mines is a particular highlight.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Caro's biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson are incredible—at least, the volumes I've read of them. (In my defense, they're several-thousand pages in full, and I'm only 27.) It's wild to read something that has both a great deal of primary research and an incredibly amount of care in how it was written, since the latter are usually synthetic works from existing academic tracts. Edmund Morris' trilogy on Teddy Roosevelt is also pretty highly acclaimed, but I haven't read it myself yet.

Really great biographies are hard to come by, since the documentary evidence can be so tough to gather unless they're a really influential person. And there's always the pull—the worst in The Devil in the White City—to try and show the person's inner life, which can very easily come off as very very stupid. There are some great ones that use the central character as a lens for bigger topics—see Nixonland by Rick Perlstein—but it's hard to call them bios, really. But I have an odd paucity of biographies on my shelves, so I'm probably not the most representative reader.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Really great biographies are hard to come by, since the documentary evidence can be so tough to gather unless they're a really influential person. And there's always the pull—the worst in The Devil in the White City—to try and show the person's inner life, which can very easily come off as very very stupid. There are some great ones that use the central character as a lens for bigger topics—see Nixonland by Rick Perlstein—but it's hard to call them bios, really. But I have an odd paucity of biographies on my shelves, so I'm probably not the most representative reader.

I have heard so many good things about Nixonland, maybe I will finally get around to reading it in my search for a 'satisfying' bio.

Also, I kind of enjoyed Devil in the White City. I never believed what I was reading had any basis in reality, I saw it purely as fiction with a few historical details sprinkled in. Maybe that's why I was able to like it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I really enjoyed all of the architectural stuff in Devil in the White City, but all of the Holmes stuff with made-up interiority drove me nuts. I don't think I would have minded if it had been written as an actual historical novel like Wolf Hall, which is firmly situated in historical events but is clearly fiction; as it stands, I thought the quality of the fiction-like prose was really poor and the author definitely presented it as historical. I guess a lot of that is just how one chooses to interpret the book; I couldn't get away from that interpretation.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thank heaven that the fad of historical psychology has died down over the past few years, it was brutal reading any purportedly historical work, for fear it might indulge in some noodly speculation about a figure's personal thoughts.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Edmund Morris' trilogy on Teddy Roosevelt is also pretty highly acclaimed, but I haven't read it myself yet.

Came here to suggest this. I would also recommend The River of Doubt by Candice Millard, which is a breezily-paced (especially compared to Morris' admittedly sometimes ponderous work) account of Roosevelt and bros exploring an uncharted Amazon tributary.

Basically, what I'm saying is Roosevelt owns.

And there's always the pull—the worst in The Devil in the White City—to try and show the person's inner life, which can very easily come off as very very stupid. There are some great ones that use the central character as a lens for bigger topics—see Nixonland by Rick Perlstein—but it's hard to call them bios, really.

From what I've heard, this is exactly the trap that Morris falls into with his biography of Ronald Reagan, so I guess people should avoid that one.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I really enjoyed all of the architectural stuff in Devil in the White City, but all of the Holmes stuff with made-up interiority drove me nuts. I don't think I would have minded if it had been written as an actual historical novel like Wolf Hall, which is firmly situated in historical events but is clearly fiction; as it stands, I thought the quality of the fiction-like prose was really poor and the author definitely presented it as historical. I guess a lot of that is just how one chooses to interpret the book; I couldn't get away from that interpretation.

But Devil in the White City has a charming serial killer, America loves charming serial killers! You don't need to worry about pesky things like 'facts' or 'historical accuracy' because, murder!

As an aside, I just want to say Wolf Hall was great, Mantel managed to make the overplayed Henry VIII story actually seem fresh and interesting. Even though I can recognize it as fiction, I desperately want to believe that Mantel's Cromwell is the same as the actual, historical Cromwell. Clearly, writing pseudo-biographies of famous British figures is working out really well for her.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

As an aside, I just want to say Wolf Hall was great, Mantel managed to make the overplayed Henry VIII story actually seem fresh and interesting. Even though I can recognize it as fiction, I desperately want to believe that Mantel's Cromwell is the same as the actual, historical Cromwell. Clearly, writing pseudo-biographies of famous British figures is working out really well for her.

Yeah, her Cromwell was amazing. I also think it's probably worthwhile even just from a historical perspective to have a more sympathetic portrayal of the man floating out there in the culture, not because I necessarily think it's more "correct," but just because popular perspectives on a figure like Cromwell are already so influenced by existing negative fictional portrayals (like A Man for All Seasons, which I admit comprised most of my knowledge of him) which are unlikely to be overwhelmingly more historical than Wolf Hall anyway. I guess I just feel like it's pretty uncommon for any human being to b entirely capricious, and so if you're going to have an opinion of someone that is not the result of firsthand observation or true rigorous historical research, it's probably a decent policy to try and understand that human's actions through an ultimately sympathetic lens that frames those actions in the context of their era, society, and environment. Even if that lens is a fictional one.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

To your very eloquent statement on the complex nature of humanity and our inability to ever really contextualize or understand the inner workings of long dead individuals and the fact that no matter much we know about a person we can never really know them, I would just like to add that Thomas More sure seemed like a big ole jerk.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah, her Cromwell was amazing. I also think it's probably worthwhile even just from a historical perspective to have a more sympathetic portrayal of the man floating out there in the culture, not because I necessarily think it's more "correct," but just because popular perspectives on a figure like Cromwell are already so influenced by existing negative fictional portrayals (like A Man for All Seasons, which I admit comprised most of my knowledge of him) which are unlikely to be overwhelmingly more historical than Wolf Hall anyway.

I don't think Cromwell's image is negative, whenever I did Tudors at school, and for most school children after going by my younger brothers and sisters, you pretty much learn him as 'cool guy that was best buds with Henry, then the king gets angry and kills him - immediately regrets it.'

Though I've not seen A Man for All Seasons, so maybe I'm not aware of how much impact has. (or read Wolf Hall for that matter)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't think Cromwell's image is negative, whenever I did Tudors at school, and for most school children after going by my younger brothers and sisters, you pretty much learn him as 'cool guy that was best buds with Henry, then the king gets angry and kills him - immediately regrets it.'

Though I've not seen A Man for All Seasons, so maybe I'm not aware of how much impact has. (or read Wolf Hall for that matter)

I'm nearly positive that, should you ask ten people on the street about Thomas Cromwell, six will not know who he was, three will say he was a bastard, and one will say he was misunderstood. A popular drama piece that sets him in opposition to the world's most ethical man, along with a general impression of him as the enabler of Henry VIII's excesses, takes a lot of rehabilitation to efface, and I'm not aware of many people taking up that cause.

It's like how most people I know think of Henry II as an immature lout, if they've seen Becket, or an impotent old man, if they've seen The Lion in Winter, rather than as perhaps the second most important English king of the Middle Ages, after William the Conqueror. Subtle, complex characters just don't make for good drama, essentialism does.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm nearly positive that, should you ask ten people on the street about Thomas Cromwell, six will not know who he was, three will say he was a bastard, and one will say he was misunderstood. A popular drama piece that sets him in opposition to the world's most ethical man, along with a general impression of him as the enabler of Henry VIII's excesses, takes a lot of rehabilitation to efface, and I'm not aware of many people taking up that cause.

It's like how most people I know think of Henry II as an immature lout, if they've seen Becket, or an impotent old man, if they've seen The Lion in Winter, rather than as perhaps the second most important English king of the Middle Ages, after William the Conqueror. Subtle, complex characters just don't make for good drama, essentialism does.

Maybe my perspective on him is less common then I thought then. As I said having done pretty much no reading on him, or seen films about him, all I remember when I hear his name is what I (vaguely) remember from school, against enclosures, poor act, good with crown's money (?maybe? can't remember this one) executed via conspiring at court against him, king regrets his death. Having a few brothers and sisters go through the same-ish curriculum and seeing the same stuff come up then, I was just assuming most people have the same sort of perspective.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Maybe my perspective on him is less common then I thought then. As I said having done pretty much no reading on him, or seen films about him, all I remember when I hear his name is what I (vaguely) remember from school, against enclosures, poor act, good with crown's money (?maybe? can't remember this one) executed via conspiring at court against him, king regrets his death. Having a few brothers and sisters go through the same-ish curriculum and seeing the same stuff come up then, I was just assuming most people have the same sort of perspective.

Honestly, if I were to put on my historian hat, I would say that it's probably the tendency to blame bad kings (or more tellingly, the bad parts of good kings) on their advisors. A king cannot fail his people unless his people fail him, etc. Whoever taught you and your siblings must have done a good job focusing on what Cromwell did, and not what he failed to do, but that's certainly not the impression I've gotten in my time teaching college students.

Although... What were you taught about More? Maybe he was the bad guy in your curriculum, if not Henry VIII himself? There must be a "bad guy" somewhere, my job would be way too easy if there weren't.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Honestly, if I were to put on my historian hat, I would say that it's probably the tendency to blame bad kings (or more tellingly, the bad parts of good kings) on their advisors. A king cannot fail his people unless his people fail him, etc. Whoever taught you and your siblings must have done a good job focusing on what Cromwell did, and not what he failed to do, but that's certainly not the impression I've gotten in my time teaching college students.

Although... What were you taught about More? Maybe he was the bad guy in your curriculum, if not Henry VIII himself?

I should point out that this is gcse and earlier education I'm talking about, not college, I'm trying to think about what I learnt then because its probably the last time most people are taught history, and so going back to the starting point, what most peoples knowledge of Tommy Cromwell would be. Trying to remember stuff that far back probably produces a more generalized and simple version of what I was actually taught.

Saying that, I don't really remember More appearing that much, aside from as a guy that wouldn't have anything to do with the annulment and Cromwell trying to talk him into it. What I remember him most from is reading Utopia on my (English Lit) degree. I don't think there was ever an out and out bad guy, in fact, throughout the entire Tudor (reign? Lineage? whatever you call it) that I was taught, I only remember Mary as being particularly vilified.

What this conversation has mainly made me realise is how little I actually know. It's one of those area's of history that's so repeatedly taught in schools that as soon as I had the option I wanted nothing to do with it, I guess I sort of want to go back to it now. Maybe a good historical biography is in order...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
What this conversation has mainly made me realise is how little I actually know. It's one of those area's of history that's so repeatedly taught in schools that as soon as I had the option I wanted nothing to do with it, I guess I sort of want to go back to it now. Maybe a good historical biography is in order...

I never reflected over that tea isn't native to England, but rather an import and trend started by the whole Asian enterprise. Then when I figured that out I felt retarded to never have questioned tea.

The Duty of Genius about Ludwig Wittgenstein by some English philosophy professor is probably the most engaging biography I ever read. The author, Ray Monk, walks through Wittgenstein's life and thinking with efficiency but ultimately it is the subjects insanity that makes the book interesting.

He'll soon release a magistral biography of Oppenheimer which I've been looking forward to for a while now.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this