Why biography is different

"Of making many books there is no end." Ecclesiastes 12:12.

For my benefit and perhaps also for yours I’m writing about the process of writing a biography. Here’s a little more protein for the plate.

I’ve written various books, and edited a bunch of others, down the years, and of course I’ve started one or two more that (tragically; who will ever know) never saw the light of day. It’s a rather personal thing, to write a book. That’s partly because you generally get up all alone at a ridiculously early time to find peace, quiet, and all those hours you will need (it’s like painting a house in that regard; all those hours) (and yes, I was at my desk just after 4.00 this morning…). Partly as the rest of the time it’s running in your head anyway as you engage with family, colleagues and friends, forcing you into a kind of double life (kind of?). Partly as despite the argy-bargy it takes to find a publisher and the arm-wrestling that may be needed to get your editor where you want him or her this thing that results will be yours and no-one else’s to all eternity. Whatever the acknowledgements and exculpations and it-takes-a-village explications, it’ll be tied round your legs when you go down to swim with the fishes.

And then we come to biography, and in particular the biography of someone only recently departed; it’s a book on steroids. I guess you could set out to write about Julius Caesar as you would write any other tome of ancient history, though you might sometimes dream about what lies behind the limpid Latin of the De Bello Gallico and the degree to which Shakespeare captures him or fails as he lies on Pompey’s basis, but unless you’ve got the Witch of Endor in your network that will be it. Sticking with the Gallic theme, Napoleon would certainly be more complex; still haunting the French psyche pretty deep down, despite all that Liberté, égalité, whatnot. The vicious dictator and Hitleresque conqueror is still glaring down from the Nelson’s column-type column up the road from our house in Boulogne-sur-Mer, from which he had planned to invade Britain (he dug out a whole new harbor, the Bassin Napoleon, still in use, to, well, harbor his invasion fleet). But our contemporaries are just different.

There’s something peaceable about writing-a-book-in-general. It sits there, first in your head and then on your desk and in your little slice of the cloud, ever your creature, your very own, ready at all times to do your bidding. Not so biography, o no. It’s alive, and if your subject has only lately been eaten by worms he or she will surely haunt you every day, and likely every night too. Like the cat which insists on grabbing your attention when you’re trying to do something, your subject won’t let you do anything else. And that’s partly because unlike Caesar your subject’s people are still all around. You’ve been speaking with them, or at least with those of them prepared to speak with you and who still have pulses. You’ve been seeking to establish your credibility as one fit to present your subject to posterity, as you’ve culled away at cullable memories. And in the process you’ve been getting to know people, new people, people who were close to your subject, some even as friends, who with remarkable trust will share things amusing, serious, very private - many things about X, or as in my case K, Dr. K. You fast become the steward of those memories that remain, and you daily reflect on the awesome responsibility involved when one human (you) is shaping the memory of another (him or her) for the years to come. You realize that it should be small surprise that families rarely enthuse about biographies (the recent flap over Christopher Hitchens’ offers a good illustration). Yet, of course, if your person is sufficiently “notable,” to use that deadly Wikipedia criterion, then those close to him or her can’t really claim the moral right to shut you down. Once you become notable, you belong to the ages. Or at least to a biographer.

It’s comforting to recall that my subject once brushed away a mini-biography written somewhat to his displeasure while he was still very much hale and hearty by saying it was like Kitty Kelley in reverse: the guy was just much too nice about him. Also that when he deposited much of his lifetime’s archive with the National Library of Medicine he took enormous pains to make it useful to historians by dictating a commentary - sometimes a few lines, sometimes pages - on those items he considered most significant. Nearly three hundred of them. Now, that’s a lot of work for quite an elderly gentleman. He was expecting someone to follow in his footsteps; and here I am.

So biography can never be peaceable exercise, the book that’s just there, that awaits you in the morning like a puppy, and romps with you where you choose to romp. It’s less romping than wrestling, start to finish. Wrestling with your subject, the shade that haunts you, like Jacob of old wrestling with God himself. And wrestling with his people, dozens, scores, perhaps hundreds of them, the people who knew your subject and are trusting you with what they know and how they knew him or her as you set yourself to this effort at resurrection. At four o’clock in the morning.

It’s actually been a rather good day, today. Found an unlikely source online through some rather imaginative googling (my chosen word combo got precisely two hits). Also wrote three thousand words of draft. Now, that doesn’t happen every day.

And a very Merry Christmas! Or whatever is your preferred seasonal greeting in these troubled times, when hope can seem a tall order, but when there is nothing more human than to pray for peace on earth or more divine than to expect it in 2023.