150
PARTISAN REVIEW
One thing I think a good deal of is my affection for a certain kind of
biography. This is not a kind that has been taken for granted up
to
this
point at this conference. Most of the biographies which have been
referred
to
have been large works, biographies which offer
to
be deci–
sive, if not definitive. The validity of that kind of book seems
to
me
to
have been taken for granted at this conference. I have an affection for
what used
to
be called a brief life which might not be more than fifty
pages, and in which a biographer would give her sense of feeling in rela–
tion
to
the subject of the biography.
I'm encouraged
to
remember that consideration mainly by an argu–
ment put forward several years ago, vigorously indeed, by Hugh Ken–
ner, when he reviewed Richard Ellmann's hig biography of .lames joyce.
Kenner said that these big biographies are planned not just
to
throw
light upon their subjects, but
to
dislodge their subjects, or rather that
they arc planned to dislodge the works in favor of the life,
to
make peo–
ple feel, when they've read Ellmann's life of
.loyce,
that they have
encompassed Joyce, they don't need
to
do anything further. Yeats said
that the intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life or of
the work, and W. H. Auden replied that it's not a choice, since perfec–
tion is impossible in both categories. But the work is the thing. It's
joyce's books that count; it would be almost vicious for a biographer to
give the impression that hy writing a comprehensive hiography rich
with detail the books themselves are subsumed within the biography. I
imagine that jeffrey Meyers might have something to say about that.
Finally, there is one aspect of biography, autobiographical writing,
and memoirs, which we haven't touched upon, and that is the notion of
these things as writing. The real motive of autobiographical writing may
not have as much to do with memory and the past, and making sense of
our lives, or finding the sense of other people's lives made for them by
biographers. It could be argued that the purpose of biographies and
autobiographies is the production of further writing. The stitching and
unstitching that Yeats referred
to
in "Adam's Curse" could have as its
main motive the production of further sentences, paragraphs, and
books. It could be maintained that all of these forms, biography and
autobiography, belong to the history of sty le. We shou ld hring life-writ–
ing back to the considerations that apply to all literature-the notion of
performance, productivity, production of sentences, the question of tone
and form.
Joanna S. Rose :
Thank you. I think you will all agree that we have now
covered many aspects of autobiography, biography, and memoir. Would
