6 PARTISAN REVIEW
turned to distinctly modern purposes. Their immense popularity at this
moment does, however, raise the question of "Why now?" Is it that we
suffer from, as Christopher Lasch memorably phrased it, a culture of
narcissism? I wouldn't rule out some element of fatuousness and self–
aggrandizement in some contemporary autobiography and memoir, bur
I think that explanation clearly does not bear on the current popularity,
say, of extravagantly long and detailed biography, particularly of liter–
ary figures. I suspect rather that the explosion in biography reflects a
kind of longing for a human center that the reading public finds miss–
ing in many other genres these days. The under-imagined solipsistic
novel, the literary critic infatuated with his own domain and oblivious
to the strivings of the original, the work that underlies the criticism, the
works of history decentered into accounts of farm tools and anonymous
masses have left, I conjecture, a great unanswered need . We turn to
biography now in great part to understand how real men and women
lived their lives by confronting hard choices and making important deci–
sions. So, along with the popularity of biography, we have interestingly
an undercurrent of academic disdain for it. Some academicians whose
self-infatuation has taken the form of transforming every other subject
into a species of disguised autobiography rather resent the success of
biography plain and simple. But I offer these thoughts merely as open–
ing conjectures. Today and tomorrow we are going to be hearing from
a really remarkable group of original biographers and autobiographers
reflecting on their own craft. It should be a couple of days that are rich
in substance and rewarding to attend. I welcome you all most heartily.
Edith KurzweiI: I
am Edith Kurzweil, the editor of
Partisan Reuiew.
First of all, I want to thank Jon Westling, not only for the wonderful
introduction, but also for being so hospitable to the magazine and coop–
erating with us for all these years.
In
addition to BU, I want especially
to thank Joanna and Dan Rose for supporting this conference and so
many other events we have had. Also, thanks to the staff, small as it is,
who have worked diligently. Welcome to all of you, and to the panelists
in the audience whom you arc going
to
meet up here for what promises
to be another memorable conference.
Before we begin, I want to bring you greetings from William Phillips,
who is terribly sorry he couldn't join us; he has difficulty traveling.
Moreover, and sadly, Saul Bellow isn't here. He wanted me to tell you
all that he was in the hospital last weekend, and is recuperating. It's not
serioLls, but it's tedious. We are all sorry.
