This is great -- I love posts that unearth and appreciate some mostly-unknown or forgotten book. Also, I like in-depth, last-word-on-the-subject biographies like this. I think that biographies should either take this approach or be much shorter (40k words or so). I don't need anything in between.
My favourite kind of literary biography is the kind where the author is visible in glimpses behind the text, but never eclipses their subject or even draws into the foreground in the first place.
There’s a recent biography of Malaparte I inhaled over the course of like two Shabbosim that I’m thinking of re-reading that has that quality also — it has the feeling of a conversation one’s having with a specific person about a third party. I read those kinds of literary biographies even when I have zero intention of reading the work of the subject. After I read the Malaparte biography, I went out and got … Folio Society editions of Primo Levi, instead. But the biography itself affected me on a level nonfiction rarely does.
"She couldn’t afford to write a book that’d just be a reference book; it wasn’t the starting point for future efforts." This was exactly my situation in writing my biography of Virginia Faulkner. No one is going to delve further into her work or even document the fiction she did write. Unlike Keefe, though, I put the "biography" ahead of the "literary" in "literary biography." Based on my sales, I suspect it was the wrong choice. Readers want a hook to hang their time on.
I read Blake Bailey’s Cheever immediately after reading artist biographies of the painter Walter Sickert and the poet Delmore Schwarz. Unless you want darkness to become your friend, I'd recommend against a steady diet of artist biographies.
I am impressed by Benson's 10 engagements! This reminded me of a very funny line from a profile of Margaret Mitchell that appeared in the New Yorker, written by the excellent Claudia Roth Pierpont. Mitchell wrote to a friend who chastened her for being engaged to five men at once, "You can say all you please about my being an unscrupulous flirt, but I’m here to state that I haven’t lied to those five men—nor have I misled them in any way.” That one quote made me feel that I knew her.
"My favorite was: “EXTREMELY rude to the girls in our class, it was truly uncalled for, for a NUN!”
Getting my first lol of the day at 4:30 PM seemed too late, but in this case, not too little. I was, like, "Waddya MEAN, 'for a NUN'??"
Maybe it's because I had my knuckles rapped with rulers by nuns at the School of the Madeleine from an early age.
But I've since decided to love nuns anyway, to the point where the protag of my novel-in-nth-draft is a devoutly Catholic asexual woman, as close to a nun as I think I can write.
Learning that Benson was foundational for Cheever is eye-opening. The man wasn't exactly an ideal human being, as I know from a portrait of him drawn by his daughter, in a slim but fascinating Cheever bio-slice (fairly epistolary)--
--which I read when it came out. His life? I feel no further interest in the sordid details. But I've always admired his style and his stories, and if Benson was somehow formative for him, that matters to me as a writer. In what ways, exactly? To what limits that he needed to go beyond?
Fascinating. While as an editor my first thought was, I wonder it'd be worth doing a collection of Benson's stories? my second thought was, How hard would it be to find out who owns the rights? Probably nigh on impossible.
She has a daughter! And U Chicago Press is reissuing one of her collections, so obviously it’s possible to work with the estate. She had these breakout books that were quite sentimental, and the one they’re reissuing is one of those—the stories of hers that I like better are a lot darker and sharper.
One of Benson's short stories online. "The Overcoat". 1938--a year when hopes of swift recovery from the Great Depression were dashed. Perhaps inspired by Gogol's story of the same title.
This is great -- I love posts that unearth and appreciate some mostly-unknown or forgotten book. Also, I like in-depth, last-word-on-the-subject biographies like this. I think that biographies should either take this approach or be much shorter (40k words or so). I don't need anything in between.
My favourite kind of literary biography is the kind where the author is visible in glimpses behind the text, but never eclipses their subject or even draws into the foreground in the first place.
There’s a recent biography of Malaparte I inhaled over the course of like two Shabbosim that I’m thinking of re-reading that has that quality also — it has the feeling of a conversation one’s having with a specific person about a third party. I read those kinds of literary biographies even when I have zero intention of reading the work of the subject. After I read the Malaparte biography, I went out and got … Folio Society editions of Primo Levi, instead. But the biography itself affected me on a level nonfiction rarely does.
Dizzying in the best way. It's hard to fathom the ground you've covered but somehow made it back to report the adventure. Thanks for the work!
"She couldn’t afford to write a book that’d just be a reference book; it wasn’t the starting point for future efforts." This was exactly my situation in writing my biography of Virginia Faulkner. No one is going to delve further into her work or even document the fiction she did write. Unlike Keefe, though, I put the "biography" ahead of the "literary" in "literary biography." Based on my sales, I suspect it was the wrong choice. Readers want a hook to hang their time on.
Yes I was thinking of your book too when I wrote this! Hope to get to it soon.
Thanks. There's no obligation past page 10, but if you *must* keep going, who am I to object?
I read Blake Bailey’s Cheever immediately after reading artist biographies of the painter Walter Sickert and the poet Delmore Schwarz. Unless you want darkness to become your friend, I'd recommend against a steady diet of artist biographies.
I am impressed by Benson's 10 engagements! This reminded me of a very funny line from a profile of Margaret Mitchell that appeared in the New Yorker, written by the excellent Claudia Roth Pierpont. Mitchell wrote to a friend who chastened her for being engaged to five men at once, "You can say all you please about my being an unscrupulous flirt, but I’m here to state that I haven’t lied to those five men—nor have I misled them in any way.” That one quote made me feel that I knew her.
Now all I wanna do is research her Hollywood years! In addition to Meet Me in St. Louis, she wrote Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt. Amazing!
Yes her Hollywood career actually seems pretty successful!
"My favorite was: “EXTREMELY rude to the girls in our class, it was truly uncalled for, for a NUN!”
Getting my first lol of the day at 4:30 PM seemed too late, but in this case, not too little. I was, like, "Waddya MEAN, 'for a NUN'??"
Maybe it's because I had my knuckles rapped with rulers by nuns at the School of the Madeleine from an early age.
But I've since decided to love nuns anyway, to the point where the protag of my novel-in-nth-draft is a devoutly Catholic asexual woman, as close to a nun as I think I can write.
Learning that Benson was foundational for Cheever is eye-opening. The man wasn't exactly an ideal human being, as I know from a portrait of him drawn by his daughter, in a slim but fascinating Cheever bio-slice (fairly epistolary)--
https://www.susancheever.com/home_before_dark_87512.htm
--which I read when it came out. His life? I feel no further interest in the sordid details. But I've always admired his style and his stories, and if Benson was somehow formative for him, that matters to me as a writer. In what ways, exactly? To what limits that he needed to go beyond?
Fascinating. While as an editor my first thought was, I wonder it'd be worth doing a collection of Benson's stories? my second thought was, How hard would it be to find out who owns the rights? Probably nigh on impossible.
She has a daughter! And U Chicago Press is reissuing one of her collections, so obviously it’s possible to work with the estate. She had these breakout books that were quite sentimental, and the one they’re reissuing is one of those—the stories of hers that I like better are a lot darker and sharper.
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo279768671.html
One of Benson's short stories online. "The Overcoat". 1938--a year when hopes of swift recovery from the Great Depression were dashed. Perhaps inspired by Gogol's story of the same title.
https://cdn.prexams.com/10538/The%20Overcoat%20by%20Benson.pdf
Yeah, that's dark alright. I'm reminded a little of Edith Wharton's House of Mirth.
That's great to hear!