Literature, Literary Politics and Writers' Lives:The Case of Eudora WeltyTwo misfortunes have beset literary biography: Victorianism and Modernism.Here is Thomas Carlyle’s 1837 comment on Lockhart’s life of Scott:One thing we hear greatly blamed in Mr. Lockhart: that he has been toocommunicative, indiscreet, and has recorded much that ought to have lainsuppressed. Persons are mentioned, and circumstances, not always of anornamental sort. It would appear there is far less reticence than was lookedfor! Various persons, name and surname, have ‘received pain’: nay, thevery Hero of the Biography is rendered unheroic; unornamental facts of him, and of those he had to do with, being set forth in plain English: hence‘personality,’ ‘indiscretion,’ or worse, ‘sanctities of private life,’ etc., etc.How delicate, decent is English Biography, bless its mealy mouth! ADamocles’ sword of Respectability hangs forever over the poor EnglishLife-writer (as it does over poor English Life in general), and reduces himto the verge of paralysis.By the 1870s, the reticence Carlyle deplored was, if anything, even more extreme,reaching perhaps its epitome in Forster’s life of Charles Dickens, a narrative predicatedon the confidence Dickens placed in him. Forster made much of his long friendship withDickens and their agreement that Forster should write Dickens’s biography. Forster assured readers that Dickens had “never withdrawn the wish at this early time stronglyexpressed, or the confidences, not only then, but to the very eve of his death reposed inme, that were to enable me to fulfil it [the biography].” Equally important was Forster’s
desire not to upset anyone: “One social and very novel experience he had in his hotel . . .which may be told . . . for it could hardly now offend any one even if the names weregiven,” the obsequious biographer assured his easily ruffled readers.Modernism, especially in its New Criticism phase, reserved no place at all for biography, since it was the work not the writer that counted. Echoes of that bias against biography resound in the familiar cant of current reviewers, who deplore revelationsabout a writer’s personal life if they do not contribute to an understanding of the writer’swork. Joyce Carol Oates perfected the modernist’s disgust with biography by coiningthe term “pathography,” which is now in dictionary.com:A style of biography that overemphasizes the negative aspects of a person's life and work, such as failure, unhappiness, illness, and tragedy."[It] falls into pathography's technique of emphasizing the sensationalunderside of its subject's life." (Joyce Carol Oates)Oates took care of her own biography by doing a Dickens, that is, anointing her chosenamanuensis—as did Norman Mailer, William Styron, and Gore Vidal, although Vidal wasnot very happy with the result.How far we have strayed from Samuel Johnson’s view of writers’ lives. In his lifeof the poet Richard Savage, he made the biographer’s business an all-encompassingenterprise by insisting writers’ lives have an intrinsic worthiness and interest beyond
anything
they have written: “The heroes of literary as well as civil history have beenvery often no less remarkable for what they have suffered than for what they haveachieved.” And in his famous
Rambler
essay on biography, he was unapologetic abouthis favorite genre: “If there is a regard due to the memory of the dead, there is yet more
respect to be paid to knowledge, to virtue, and to truth.”After Johnson died, by the way, the race was on to produce biographies of him.He would have understood this haste, for he also noted in his
Rambler
essay:If a life [the writing of a life] be delayed till all interest and envy are at anend, and all motive to calumny or flattery are suppressed, we may hope for impartiality, but must expect little intelligence, for the incidents are of avolatile and evanescent kind, such as soon escape the memory, and arerarely transmitted by tradition.Boswell was by no means the first biographer to publish a life of Johnson after his greatfriend’s death, but he was certainly the most industrious of the lot, scurrying acrossLondon to gather letters and conduct interviews, in the process making a nuisance of himself, Johnson’s friends complained. Boswell was so indiscreet about broadcasting thestories he collected that Edmund Burke and others clammed up whenever the biographer approached. Not much has changed since Boswell’s day. The literary figure’s friends andfamily form a circle around which a busy biographer rotates, hoping for an opening. AnnWaldron, an acclaimed biographer of Caroline Gordon and Hodding Carter, acted withoutWelty’s imprimatur and found the circle virtually impenetrable.I had encouraged Waldron, a friend of mine, to pursue the biography anyway,knowing—indeed predicting--that Welty confidants would spurn the biographer. Why?Because I have always disliked coteries and prefer unauthorized biographies. Manyyears ago the poet Richard Wilbur taught me a valuable lesson. I was interviewing himfor a biography of Lillian Hellman. Wilbur, a close friend of Hellman’s, deplored her
of 00
Weltybio
A review of the two Eudora Welty biographies and the strengths and limitations of authorized and unauthorized biographies as viewed by a professional biographer.
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WHY I LIVE AT...BARUCH (w/apologies to Eudora Welty) Here's a little mystery for you. Why would Carl Rollyson get on Scribd solely to anonymously post this mean-spirited little article just because his friend's biography wasn't as successful as Marrs'? Answer: academic-itis. You know what they say about The Groves: "the politics are the most vicious where the stakes are most low."
WHY I LIVE AT...BARUCH (w/apologies to Eudora Welty) Here's a little mystery for you. Why would Carl Rollyson get on Scribd solely to anonymously post this mean-spirited little article just because his friend's biography wasn't as successful as Marrs'? Answer: academic-itis. You know what they say about The Groves: "the politics are the most vicious where the stakes are most low."