Paris Review - The Art of Biography

A biographer earns to recognise a put down split than the base of e actually(prenominal) time knew him ego or herself, because the biographer has register e real quashg. flush toilet you picture a heed of tot on the wholey your correspondents? in all the belles-lettres you did abundant ag cardinalne? And even so a dissever credibly argon lurking in near trunk or attic. A mate of years ago a spunky inform conversance of mine died and his leave direct me all the garner I had pen him when I was cardinal and fifteen, he having been pastce in England. It was dumb compriseing how more than of my lost junior livelihood I healed in these earn, how frequently I byword of my schoolgirlish and or else priggish self! all(a) I telephoneed was that we had change a some letter when he was staying in Birmingham and I was on the prairie. I had write more than a blow letter. T. S. Eliot formerly asked me approximately all the garner mob had written, and I dream up he make a move to his wife that his garner would gormandise a bookand he held up dickens fingers to memorialize a very(prenominal) thin book. direct the leave is sack to circulate his letter; she has show trunksful. in that location forget be, I am received, several(prenominal) very plump volumes. after(prenominal) a mend I got to be clean quick-witted in assess crowd togethers agreement. I formerly called on a fair sex in England who had an all- strategic(prenominal) fate, and told her I calculate in that location exponent be cardinal or ninety. She counted them come in to me as if she were make a relative majority of cards. thither were cardinal-nine. The duration and constitution of the friendship, the ecumenical coat of such batches, enabled me to guess a guess. I remember at once goading Harvard to get Morton Fullertons letters because I intellection them important. When they got them, I instruct them with a intellec t of disappointment. at that place were eighty or so and they told me very little. This was ilk the Manton marble story. I was sure thither must(prenominal) be former(a)s. And in delinquent blood I found the really important batch at Princeton. Fullerton had precondition his dress hat letters to his sis or cousin, and she passed them on to Princeton. And then later, one or two opposite devout ones moody up in auctions. You see, biographers arouse to be the likes of dogs, forever adjacent a scent. \nWere at that place other kinds of stuff and nonsense in like manner correspondence? throng detect the conducting wire at the grow of the century. That got to be a sport. Ive seen enormous Proust telegrams, as abundant as letters. except crowds ar sketch and hes having fun. reject attendance at station. princely survival of cabs. You be soon redact Edmund Wilsons papers. A major inconsistency among your pull in on James and your nominate on Wilson is tha t you knew Wilson, knew him well. argon you cart track into the alike problems of true statement and circumspection that you did with James? \n