Quote of the Day (Margaret Forster, on the Burden and Satisfaction of Writing a Biography)

“With biography, you’re really weighted down with responsibility all the time. You’re fretting about, is this true? Is it fair? And then on top of that, am I making it readable? You know, you’re juggling so many things with biography. It’s a real sweat, a real grind. But on the other hand, it’s immensely satisfying. When you get to the end of it and you’ve done the job, then you feel—I feel—quite differently from a novel, when I think, ‘Okay, so I enjoyed it,  but after all, what is it?’”—English novelist, biographer, memoirist, historian and critic Margaret Forster (1938-2016), interview with Sue Lawley on Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4, Dec. 9, 1994

I came across a podcast featuring this quote after watching the famous adaptation of one of the novels of Margaret Forster, Georgy Girl, last week. I had known nothing about the author, so I was surprised to find out not only that she had written so much, but that a considerable body of her work consisted of biographies.

As co-author (with my friend Rob Polner) of a biography myself (An Irish Passion for Justice: The Life of Rebel New York Attorney Paul O’Dwyer), I identified completely with Ms. Forster’s anxiety about bringing a biography to the level she desired.

And I also could relate to a dilemma she mentioned in her interview with Sue Lawley: the fear of a discovery late in the project that could significantly alter or even delay publication. This occurred with Ms. Forster when working on her acclaimed, path-breaking biography of Rebecca novelist Daphne du Maurier.

While astonishingly prolific (25 novels and 14 works of nonfiction), Ms. Forster remains far better known in her native Britain than in the U.S. (In my local county library system, for instance, I could find only eight of her works.) But she sounds like an author whose works invite reading and whose dedication encourages imitation.

(For a warm and affectionate appreciation of the very private Ms. Forster, see Kathleen Jones’s 2016 post on her “A Writer’s Life” blog.)

Quote of the Day (Peter Davison, on Criteria for ‘The Perfect Biographer’)

“If there were a perfect biographer, he or she would be the following: a real writer, one who understands how to construct and recount a labile and sensuous narrative; a master of research, in both documents and interviews; a person who is tactful in dealings with relatives, librarians, lovers, executors, children, parents, and editors; one who is so cannily devoted to the personality of the biographical subject as to pursue every true lead and abandon every false one; one who cares so deeply about the precision of the text as to check every fact again and again, every document, every photograph, every rumor. But, beyond the conscientious practice of these skills, the biographer's genius lies in having the sympathy and imagination to create the story of a life about which the subject’s ghost would say, ‘That’s as close to me as anybody else could be expected to get.’ The biographer’s worst temptation is to transform the subject into someone preferable to the original.”—American poet and editor Peter Davison (1928–2004), “To Edit a Life,” The Atlantic Monthly, October 1992

As a lifelong reader of biographies—and, now, a biographer myself—I read this passage by Davison with great interest, knowing just how difficult it is to meet all the qualities he mentions.

But, when I think of a biographer who changes how his subject is perceived, rendering him in all his complexity and in the context of his times, I think of Ron Chernow (pictured). 

He has made his greatest mark on American culture with a biography of Alexander Hamilton that helped inspire the long-running Broadway musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and has won the Pulitzer Prize for his life of Washington.

But even before that, I had been enthralled by Titan, his account of John D. Rockefeller, which built on his background as a financial journalist. In the process, he pierced the membrane of what he called “silence, mystery and evasion” surrounding this paradoxical billionaire.

(The image accompanying this post of Chernow was taken Sept. 13, 2004, by the U.S. Department of the Treasury—the institution founded by his subject Alexander Hamilton.)