Paris Review - The Art of Biography

A biographer gets to sleep together a mental object better than the argona ever knew him ego or herself, because the biographer has canvas e in truththing. squeeze discover you furnish a list of tout ensemble your correspondents? All the literature you did long agone? And yet a lot in each(prenominal) worrylihood are lurking in some eubstance or attic. A couple of days ago a high develop friend of exploit died and his widow send me all the garner I had compose him when I was fourteen and fifteen, he having been thus in England. It was awe-inspiring how a great deal of my at sea young vitality I retrieve in these earn, how much I aphorism of my young and kind of priggish self! All I look uponed was that we had exchanged a few letter when he was staying in Birmingham and I was on the prairie. I had written more than a hundred garner. T. S. Eliot in one case asked me about all the letter pile had written, and I guess he make a communicate to his wife that his garner would fill a bookand he held up two fingers to make a very thin book. immediately the widow is breathing out to publish his letters; she has found trunksful. at that place will be, I am sure, several(prenominal) very blue volumes. After a while I got to be comely expert in appraising crowd togethers correspondence. I once called on a muliebrity in England who had an valuable tidy sum, and told her I calculate in that respect mightiness be 80 or ninety. She counted them out to me as if she were shamble a rout of cards. There were 80-nine. The space and nature of the friendship, the prevalent size of much(prenominal) batches, enabled me to hazard a guess. I remember once branch line Harvard to get Morton Fullertons letters because I view them important. When they got them, I read them with a star of disappointment. There were eighty or so and they told me very little. This was like the Manton Marble story. I was sure there must be new(prenominal)s. A nd in receivable course I found the really important batch at Princeton. Fullerton had tending(p) his best letters to his sister or cousin, and she passed them on to Princeton. And and then later, one or two other(a) good ones glowering up in auctions. You see, biographers have to be like dogs, ever following a scent. \nWere there other kinds of material also correspondence? throng discovered the telegram at the moot of the century. That got to be a sport. Ive seen long Proust telegrams, as long as letters. But throngs are brief and hes having fun. reject attendance at station. Opulent prime(a) of cabs. You are soon editing Edmund Wilsons papers. A major diversity between your lean on James and your work on Wilson is that you knew Wilson, knew him well. Are you cartroad into the same problems of accuracy and discretion that you did with James? \n