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PARTISAN REVIEW
nature. What happened in Matisse's case was not that his life remained
a blank page, but that the page was filled lip with misconceptions, dis–
tortions, and outright inventions. Insofar as anybody knows or has any
view of Matisse's character, that is all they have to go on. But it is almost
the reverse of the truth, and that is why I brought garbage disposal into
my closing account of biography-not that I think that that is all biog–
raphers are there to do, but it is one function, a humble but crucial one.
And in this particular case, what I have been trying to do is reverse the
legend. Whether it is actually possible, I don't know-we shall see.
Many deductions have been made by art historians on, I think, ludi–
crously inadequate evidence, which have then obscured their view of
Matisse's art. They've misdated pictures, they've left out crucial influ–
ences, they 've misundersrood very often what Matisse was doing
because of a simple lack of attention
to
chronology. In my particular
case, I spend a lot of time disposing of garbage. I am attempting to rear
another structure, which may well in due course become garbage itself.
I am not making any great case for biographies as deathless works of
art. Indeed, they cannot be; they must of their nature be superceded. But
each generation, for that very reason, needs
to
attempt it afresh.
Denis Donoghue:
I find the motif of the family portrait, the family like–
ness, interesting. I think the aspect of the big biography which is not just
regrettable but corrupt is loose speculation. I am thinking of Michael
Holroyd's biography of Lytton Strachey. It includes pages of speculation
as to what he felt when he sawa ll those beautiful boys, and so on; it is
oppressive speculation.
Chantal Zabus:
I am from the University of Paris XII I, and I have a gen–
eral question for the panel, more specifically about gender. I was won–
dering whether the three genres we have been discussing were not genres
that have been inexorably gendered for and by Western males. Maybe
Hilary could digress on the comforts and the discomforts of being a
female biographer approaching the life of a man, and maybe Francine
cou ld talk about the letter as a feminine genre.
Francine du Plessix Gray:
Well, I think women biographers tend to look
for the crevices which men biographers have taken for granted. I'm
thinking right now of Claire Tomalin's book on Dickens's mistress,
whom no male biographer had ever fully included-this is a very central
drama in Dickens's life. No one had ever done justice
to
it until Claire
Tomalin came along. I think there
is
such a thing as gendered reading, I
