biography
-
Joan Didion: Conservative to Liberal
How exactly did Joan Didion go from writing for conservative weekly the National Review to serving as a leading voice for the left? The New Yorker offers an answer: What changed was her understanding of where dropouts come from, of why people turn…
-
The Rumpus Interview with Banning Eyre
Producer, senior editor, Afropop expert, and author Banning Eyre talks about his new book, Lion Songs, a 15-years-in-the-making biography of Zimbabwe’s legendary musician Thomas Mapfumo.
-
An American Writer from Russia
At the New Yorker, John Colapinto explores Nabokov’s quintessentially American classic, Lolita, and just how a Russian-born writer could so perfectly capture American culture as an emigre, working specifically with Robert Roper’s new biography on the great writer, Nabokov in…
-
Figure Drawing, Or, The Posthumous Persona Of David Foster Wallace
On the eve of a new biopic and on the long tail of posthumous publishing and popularization—Christian Lorentzen takes a long, compassionate, critical look at David Foster Wallace and on the ways in which a prolific writer gets written into the public…
-
The Ways of Hemingway’s Heart
A new account of Hemingway’s love life—which famously spanned four marriages and could be said to include complex relationships with a number of male confidants—is forthcoming from A.E. Hochner, one of Hemingway’s dear friends in the last years of his…
-
Orson Welles’s Century
If we want to mistake success in Hollywood for a state of grace, then Welles is our Lucifer — the archangel closest to the Almighty whose beastly arrogance is to blame for whatever hell he woke up in. But what…
-
Trolloping through Modern Life
Adam Gopnik on Anthony Trollope and his relevance to modern life: Trollope, quite uncynically, understands both what’s necessary to make the world go round and which way the world ought to be made to turn. The Palliser books have a…
-
In the Batcave with Robert Moses
If you’ve been curious about Robert Moses but put off by the sheer heft of volumes like The Power Broker, a forthcoming comic book rendering of the master builder’s reign is a fun new option. The book, titled Robert Moses,…
-
Bellow’s Back
Simultaneously divisive and overlooked, Saul Bellow’s work has produced both fervent supporters and detractors while alienating many younger readers. This spring, a new biography by Zachary Leader will bring the late author back into the conversation. Vulture‘s Lee Siegel reflects…
-
A Biography of the Biography
For literary biography to survive as a genre, it ought to take its lead from literature and go even further. For the Guardian, Stuart Kelly looks at the history of biographies and argues that the form should catch up with…
-
The Rumpus Interview with Debra Dean
Author Debra Dean discusses the thin line between fiction and autobiography and how she became a writer after a career onstage.
