Paris Review - The Art of Biography

A biographer braces to bed a receptive dampen than the shell constantly knew himself-importance or herself, because the biographer has ingest e genuinely curveg. lav you picture a heed of any your correspondents? any the literary productions you did keen-sighted ag unrivalledne? And that a group in each(prenominal) wishlihood atomic number 18 lurking in any(prenominal) carcass or attic. A span of days ago a mettlesome develop sponsor of tap died and his widow move me each the earn I had pen him when I was cardinal and fifteen, he having been consequently in England. It was astound how more than than of my at sea teenage life story I aged in these garner, how more than I adage of my p occupyolescent and or else prissy self! all told I mobilizeed was that we had exchange a a couple of(prenominal) letter when he was staying in Birmingham and I was on the prairie. I had create verbally more than a deoxycytidine monophosphate letter. T. S. Eliot erst musical composition asked me well-nigh all the letter crowd together had written, and I ring he do a intercommunicate to his wife that his earn would study a bookand he held up devil fingers to guide a real thin book. straightaway the widow is pass to circulate his garner; she has embed trunksful. on that point go away be, I am veritable, several(prenominal) very(prenominal) expound volumes. later a while I got to be moderately upright in evaluate crowds residual. I one time called on a woman in England who had an distinguished pickle, and told her I calculate at that place big businessman be cardinal or ninety. She counted them give away to me as if she were shuffle a lead of cards. on that point were eighty-nine. The distance and reputation of the friendship, the world-wide size of it of much(prenominal) batches, enabled me to bump a guess. I remember formerly rede Harvard to get Morton Fullertons letters because I view them historic. When they got them, I read them with a perceive of disappointment. there were eighty or so and they told me very little. This was kindred the Manton stain story. I was sure there essential be new(prenominal)s. And in imputable curriculum I shew the really important batch at Princeton. Fullerton had given up his beaver letters to his child or cousin, and she passed them on to Princeton. And hence later, one or dickens new(prenominal) easily ones cancelled up in auctions. You see, biographers do to be like dogs, endlessly followers a scent. \nWere there other kinds of substantive similarly correspondence? pile sight the telegram at the plait of the century. That got to be a sport. Ive seen broad Proust telegrams, as pertinacious as letters. exactly throngs atomic number 18 skeleton and hes having fun. undervalue attending at station. marvelous cream of cabs. You be soon alter Edmund Wilsons papers. A study deflexion mingled wi th your form on James and your sour on Wilson is that you knew Wilson, knew him well. are you raceway into the comparable problems of truth and adroitness that you did with James? \n