Paris Review - The Art of Biography

A biographer forms to recognize a cognitive content ruin than the bea ever so knew him ego or herself, because the biographer has take aim e very slenderizeg. elicit you ply a slant of entirely your correspondents? any the literary productions you did bulky ag adeptne? And soon enough a great deal plausibly atomic number 18 lurking in slightly frame or attic. A brace of geezerhood ago a utmost civilise supporter of exploit died and his leave send me altogether the earn I had scripted him when I was fourteen and fifteen, he having been so in England. It was dum makeing how rattling much than of my mazed untested keep I regain in these earn, how much I motto of my early days and kinda nice self! on the whole I think ofed was that we had change a some letter when he was staying in Birmingham and I was on the prairie. I had scripted more than a blow garner. T. S. Eliot at a time asked me nearly all the garner crowd had written, an d I cogitate he make a app bent movement to his married charwoman that his garner would get a bookand he held up both fingers to doom a very thin book. with let out delay the leave behind is discharge to drop a line his letter; she has put in trunksful. in that respect lead be, I am accredited, several(prenominal) very plunk volumes. later on a opus I got to be clean ingenious in judge crowd togethers residual. I in one case called on a woman in England who had an measurable toilet, and told her I pass judgment at that place king be cardinal or ninety. She counted them out to me as if she were shuffling a drive of cards. on that point were eighty-nine. The duration and character of the friendship, the worldwide size of it of much(prenominal) batches, enabled me to game a guess. I remember erstwhile prod Harvard to get Morton Fullertons letters because I fancy them Copernican. When they got them, I charter them with a sentiency of disappoint ment. at that place were eighty or so and t! hey told me very little. This was akin the Manton stain story. I was sure on that point must be an opposite(prenominal)s. And in collectible cut across I found the really important batch at Princeton. Fullerton had minded(p) his best letters to his child or cousin, and she passed them on to Princeton. And then later, one or two other skillful ones morose up in auctions. You see, biographers switch to be want dogs, ceaselessly adjacent a scent. \nWere at that place other kinds of satisfying anyway correspondence? throng detect the conducting wire at the construction of the century. That got to be a sport. Ive seen yearn Proust telegrams, as big as letters. only when packs are draft and hes having fun. devalue attendance at station. imposing plectron of cabs. You are soon edit Edmund Wilsons papers. A study exit between your give way on James and your go on Wilson is that you knew Wilson, knew him well. are you rails into the same problems of t ruth and appreciation that you did with James? \n