FACTS AND FICTIONS IN ALL THREE GENRES
161
refines and intensifies the effort, and the biographer who is both the
agglutinating accumulator of dumb facts is like everybody else intensely
engaged in that battle. I just wanted
to
throw that out
to
you, Denis,
since you invoked the problem.
Joanna S. Rose:
Would you like
to
comment on that statement, Denis?
Denis Donoghue:
Millicent has stated it well.
Jay Martin: I
want
to
tell a little story that will confirm something Denis
talked about. When I was starting to write my biography of Henry
Miller, we talked about it over Ping-Pong, in a friend ly way. We'd play
and talk, and perhaps have a drink. After a while, Henry wou ld say
to
me, "Well, you found that out, but you won't find this out and that
out." Henry started
to
in vent things he hadn't done. He said
to
me,
"Jay, you arc my greatest enemy. I've spent my life writing all these
books about my li fe, and I sti ll haven't completed it, and you are going
to
get there before I do. They will read your book, and they won't read
mine." This was the fear of the author. When you reflect on the idea that
the biographer will take over the author's life,
I
think you are speaking
as an author, not as a biographer. The biographer is better represented
by a comment in a much forgotten biography of John Keats that Amy
Lowell wrote (I think) in
1923.
Lowell asked: why is it that we write
about, and the audience wants
to
hear about, these biographical sub–
jects? Why do we want
to
write about Keats and tell his life? Lowell's
answer was a simp le but profound one that goes in the other direction
from what Denis said, focusing on form. She said we learn how close we
are to such creative people. Not that there isn't a gulf between us, but
as Denis said, with just a sli ght ly different twist we might have been that
creative, or that insightful.
In
this se nse Lowell was saying biography
isn't about form.
It
gives its form
to
something; it itself has a form, but
it's also about the hope of the biographer representing an audience.
Therefore biography is about hope and community, the hope that we
are all, in some sense, a lmost like these creators, and that they were in
some sense, when they were at breakfast, much like us. Biography
expresses human hope in the imagination and its possibilities. Biogra–
phy evokes the hope of the commun ity
to
bring the artist close
to
us.
Joanna S. Rose:
That's a wonderful note on which
to
end. Thank you,
thank you a ll .
