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the_lady_lily) wrote2009-06-21 09:54 pm
the_lady_lily) wrote2009-06-21 09:54 pm
Entry tags:
Bibliography
Shoot the Widow: Adventures of a Biographer in Search of Her Subject - Meryle Secrest
I'm trying to remember where this came to my attention; I think it must have been in the Chronicle of Higher Education in a feature article on biography writing. Secrest has written biographies of Romaine Brooks, Bernard Berenson, Kenneth Clark, Salvador Dali, Frank Lloyd Wright, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Richard Rogers and Joseph Duveen - note the themes of musical theatre and art there. This book is a bit of an autobiography - a chapter is devoted to the experiences Secrest had researching and writing each book apart from the last, and the author's memories of her own life are woven into the narrative, explaining why each subject had the appeal it did.
The title comes from Justin Kaplan - "the first rule of biography: shoot the widow". Secrest adds "along with his literary executor, his publisher, his agent, his offspring and anyone else you can think of". This may well prove to be valuable advice.
Secrest is an engaging writer, and the way she recounts her learning curves and challenges with researching each subject is fluid and interesting. There are a couple of places where she gets rather repetitive, namely when reminding the reader of things she said in a previous chapter in order to build on them in the current one, but one suspects some of this is down to training as a journalist and the style of 'make sure the reader always has all the information to hand' writing that medium encourages. I did enjoy reading this, especially the chapter on Romaine Brooks, who was in Paris around the same time as Natalie Barney, about whom I am becoming more and more curious. I suspect Secrest's Brooks biography will have to be read eventually.
I read this for insight into what it is like to do biography. I found myself having a rather different reading experience than I was expecting, but none the worse for that. If you have any interest in any of the people that Secrest wrote about, you might well enjoy this.
I'm trying to remember where this came to my attention; I think it must have been in the Chronicle of Higher Education in a feature article on biography writing. Secrest has written biographies of Romaine Brooks, Bernard Berenson, Kenneth Clark, Salvador Dali, Frank Lloyd Wright, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Richard Rogers and Joseph Duveen - note the themes of musical theatre and art there. This book is a bit of an autobiography - a chapter is devoted to the experiences Secrest had researching and writing each book apart from the last, and the author's memories of her own life are woven into the narrative, explaining why each subject had the appeal it did.
The title comes from Justin Kaplan - "the first rule of biography: shoot the widow". Secrest adds "along with his literary executor, his publisher, his agent, his offspring and anyone else you can think of". This may well prove to be valuable advice.
Secrest is an engaging writer, and the way she recounts her learning curves and challenges with researching each subject is fluid and interesting. There are a couple of places where she gets rather repetitive, namely when reminding the reader of things she said in a previous chapter in order to build on them in the current one, but one suspects some of this is down to training as a journalist and the style of 'make sure the reader always has all the information to hand' writing that medium encourages. I did enjoy reading this, especially the chapter on Romaine Brooks, who was in Paris around the same time as Natalie Barney, about whom I am becoming more and more curious. I suspect Secrest's Brooks biography will have to be read eventually.
I read this for insight into what it is like to do biography. I found myself having a rather different reading experience than I was expecting, but none the worse for that. If you have any interest in any of the people that Secrest wrote about, you might well enjoy this.