Notes on a Suicidal Piece Concerning the Art of Biography

     Recently the Times Literary Supplement featured a piece by a biographer named Craig Brown entitled "Nothing is real: The slippery art of biography." In it, he argues that works of the genre written in a classic mode, following the subject from cradle to grave, guided by the facts, through a coherent narrative, can't be trusted. His reasons: 

Biography can't illuminate the nature of creativity through information. For writers and painters (he doesn't mention musicians but I think he means any artist), facts about them, where they were, who they saw, what they did, won't reveal how the art is made. Brown presumes the reader of biography is in search of the master key to unlocking an artist's work. Actually, my aim is more modest: to get to know the artist better.

Too many details. In constructing a story out of the materials of someone's life, the biographer (or memoirist) has to choose what to include and what to omit. Brown presents examples of writers who chose badly that nevertheless fail to prove definitively that no writer is capable of choosing well, to give insight into the subject without harming narrative flow. Not that it matters, according to his logic, since no one could ever tell the story of a life and get to the start. After all, a truly conscientious biographer would have to begin with an account of family history so far into the past and so microscopically thorough, the biographer would die before completing it. And if such a book were somehow completed, the reader would probably abandon it long before reaching the page on which the subject is born.

Biography can't grant complete access to any life. He stresses: 

While no life can be recaptured in its entirety, not even one single minute of any life could ever be recaptured as a whole, as there is not a minute in the life of the brain that can be isolated from the rest of its life. We live in the present, but we think in the past and in the present and in the future, and often all at the same time. 

Anything short of being William Faulkner, in other words, makes the very idea of biography a fraudulent enterprise. His ideal doesn't lie on the page, with mere language and structures and imagination, but is a kind of mindhacking.

"Biography as a form is necessarily artificial. In the end, all biography is a form of fiction." Labeling a biographical portrait as fiction doesn't indemnify it against inaccuracy.

"The real life of anyone takes place largely in the mind, yet it is only the secondary, external stuff – people met, places visited, opinions expressed, and so forth – that is accessible to the biographer." A criticism related to the first, only more sweeping. Not only is the creation of the art inaccessible, the true essence of a life is inaccessible too.

The blank spaces of any life tempt a biographer to fill them in with speculation. Again: Brown presents examples of biographers who've written groundlessly and absurdly as if transcribing the subject's thoughts and feelings. This is something to hold against those biographies (though it might not be held against a fictional biography). But in my experience reading them and reading opinions about them, the practice isn't so common that the genre may as well be thrown out entirely. Further, one can make an educated guess while informing the reader that it is a guess and, in general, be open in letting readers know the method undertaken to write the book, leaving it to them to judge whether the writer has done the subject justice.

Firsthand accounts can't be trusted. Personal accounts can't be trusted, either.

Memory is slippery. Biographers, too, are slippery.

"Another shortcoming of biography lies in its bias towards coherence. In their drive to create a seamless narrative, biographers are forced to conceal the randomness of life, the contrived nature of 'character' and the unpredictability of human beings." Our lives are chaos. That is precisely why writers search for a form: to give chaos order. This would be true even if biography is fiction. And if imposing order on any work that sets out to contain a life is false, his judgment would extend to any story, invented or not.

Finally, Brown contrasts it with the mode he deems superior, the subjective, to the point of promoting the value of gossip and hearsay. In defense of one writer's free use of anecdotes of dubious veracity, he says: "He may have swapped fairness for laughter, but he always got a terrific exchange rate." Exaggerations and lies are fit to print so long as they entertain - he certainly sounds slippery here, and cheerfully so. One way to guarantee a loss of credibility is blithe disregard for fairness.

"Nothing is real" - provocative title except, after reading Brown's piece, I'm not sure he even believes that. But his position does seem to be that writing "true" biography is impossible so fuck it. His argument for discrediting the classic mode itself is so unyielding, so halfbaked, for a moment I wondered whether the piece was burlesque. Anyway, some of what he says is worth bearing in mind, if not to suddenly incite everyone to fill dumpsters with biographies, then to prompt consideration of what makes for a better biography. Also, he reminds the reader not to be an innocent certain of discovering the last word (or every word) on a whole life. The biographer is no omniscient deity. 

But what really stuns and amuses me about the piece is that Brown leads the reader to an unexpected question that lies beyond what originally drew my click: Who's trustworthy? 

Skepticism is a virtue. Limiting the scope of the question to literature and sources of information for now, I have warranted suspicions about the scrupulousness of writers and publishers, including those that enjoy a veneer of respectability. (I wouldn't recommend reading anything as a total innocent.) I've even written elsewhere about my caution around reading biography and memoir. Yet I've always held on to a hope, I realize, that there is someone out there I can trust to give it to me straight, without relying on tricks and deceit. Isn't that true of anyone who reads, though? Well, maybe not. Brown goes a step further, implying that no one, under any circumstances, can be trusted - not shady biographers, not the subject of biography, not the people around the subject. Facts are dry, all surface, hardly count. His objections can just as easily be hurled at the broader category of history. And if the past can't be brought to the page, our present can't be either. That sounds a lot like the door opening to misinformation and disinformation and conspiracy theory that is among the most infernal problems of our time. If nothing is real, any version of reality is as legitimate as the next, any version of reality can be sold, any version of reality can be decreed the official, lawful version. 

Let's place ourselves on stable ground and mention a couple of things that are in fact real and relevant to our lives today: (1) The ongoing pandemic (2) Trump's ongoing coup attempt. In the face of rightwing propaganda that says spreading a potentially fatal illness is a personal choice and Trump should be in the White House based on no evidence but his word, maintaining a firm grip on what's real is a matter of survival.

The writer I'm looking for, at a minimum, knows this.

Sketch of New York, August 2021 and That's Almost Everything I Can Remember About This Momentous Occasion

     On a recent trip to New York City, my first ever, as it happens, vaccinated months back yet still wearing two masks, I took my place among the masses, the famous New York, New York masses, walking shoulder to shoulder with the masked, the partially (or uselessly) masked, and the unmasked. Looking around, one would have no idea how the US regards the coronavirus, a lingering threat despite the vaccine if not enough people take it or, on a global scale, people don't have access to it. Indifference, confusion, but no palpable fear. Of course, I was out there too, taking a measure of risk for sightseeing purposes and to finally be able to say I'd seen it for myself. My brother Miguel was by my side or, because I walk fast and he walks slow, a few steps behind me, to my right, my left, somewhere nearby. The plan was to journey many blocks on foot, at my insistence, along 7th Avenue to a Whole Foods for discounted lunch products before exploring Central Park. Upon arriving home, I felt somewhat of an obligation to commemorate my first time in the city by writing about it but I must say, without meaning to sound glib and unimpressed, my memory - of faces, scenes, sights - is hazy, almost as if it made little impression somehow. Let's see, tall buildings, the crowd, the homelessness, the clamp of concrete and flesh. Whiff of exhaust here, whiff of garbage there. Starbucks, CVS. I'm familiar with San Francisco. But let's return to Penn Station. Standing in line at the bathroom, the man ahead of me entered a stall and immediately exited, shaking his head. I leaned forward to inspect the damage from a safe and noncommital distance: the toilet water was up to the lip of the bowl. One more flush and it'd flood. I waited and did my business elsewhere. Before leaving, I had to use the mirror to fix my hair. The heat makes it look like I've poked my finger into an electrical socket or as if I'm comically stressed out. I found Miguel and we left. Outside the station, near the top of the stairs, a man pointed a camera at those streaming in and out. To be expected, I thought, although I'm not sure if it was on. We crossed the street. This is the experience much of the world craves: People. Lots of them. Some masks aside, by all appearances doing the usual, pre-pandemic. Crosswalk signals regularly treated as optional, adding another change of rhythm besides differences of pace, stop and go or simply go. Spanish and Portugeuse in the air along with English. On several blocks people stood around wearing laminated signs. I finally studied one for a moment and the man wearing it started laughing. A Hare Krishna handed out beads. A man trailed another, saying, "Thief! He's a thief!" Miguel caught up to warn me about Times Square. He didn't elaborate but I had a vague recollection of its reputation as a tourist trap or worse. The Naked Cowboy posed for pictures. A ferris wheel. A side street: I couldn't escape someone's cigarette smoke, so we stopped to let him get far ahead. Someone asked us to walk around a taped-off area where filming was in progress. A statue of Christopher Columbus. We were in the right place, Miguel assured me, but we couldn't find the store. I took the phone from my backpack and located it nearby in a mall, at basement level. None of the malls I've ever been to on the West Coast have a grocery store in it. So if someone asks me about the difference between the Coasts, I now have a profoundly dull answer handy. A mother pushing a stroller spoke soothing words to a crying child riding next to her on a scooter. Crowded, mazelike store. I decided to have a falafel from a cart outside. After scanning the aisles, Miguel settled on the same. Elevator, street. Certainly not the first woman I noticed but the first that comes clearly to mind is the woman in the running outfit reflected in the stainless steel of the falafel cart - interesting. I took a Coke with my order, thank you. We set off for Central Park. Miguel informed me that the phone, once more stored in my backpack, was continuing to speak, providing directions. I was unprepared for what I found when we got there. An esoteric subject I intend to learn a thing or two about: city planning. An area designated as a park can be nothing more than a field, a bench, and a fountain. And the name "Central Park" doesn't exactly promise an imaginative use of space. Applause for the person or team that designed it: The park retains plenty of space. Enter and the clamp of the avenue is thrown off entirely. As we proceeded we found lengthy forking walking paths, sidewalks, benches, roads, bridges, a baseball diamond, open fields, a body of water, walls of trees for shade, privacy, mystery, music, sheer beauty. Ride a carriage, ride a bike, paddle a boat, run, walk, loll in a patch of grass - everyone, as far as I could tell, used it how they wanted and with plenty of room to do so. An exemplary park, worth the trip alone. And we only covered a fraction of it. Later I encountered a scene in the book I had with me in which a once-famous 19th century novelist goes on a carriage ride through Central Park, "a newly established oasis of calm in the bustling metropolis." Sitting down for lunch, an audacious squirrel took a seat beside me, poised to leap on whatever I left behind. We stared at each other. I shared my water with Miguel. On the move again, we spotted, through the greenery, "Trump" in gold lettering on a building. Miguel whispered of pissing on it. A troubador sang. We walked between a jazz band and the audience. Two friends posed for a selfie in the middle of a crosswalk. Broad smiles. A woman sat on top of a wall with legs outstretched - interesting. When we left the park behind the sun was still up. Back among the masses, this time walking along 8th Avenue. Stuck behind a slow walker, I'd get past her but pause at the crosswalk while she kept going, regaining her head start. Once across, I'd find myself stuck behind her again. This switching of lead position went on for blocks. Glancing over my shoulder at Miguel, I caught her eye and she gave me a hard look. But I was already looking past her at another woman who caught my eye, also going our way - interesting. In a small town, there's a good chance I'll see anyone and everyone within a day or a week. Familiar faces in a quiet environment. Tranquil and cozy. Translation: Sleepy. Predictable. Your movements tracked too closely. Your every facial expression duly noted. (Lichtenberg: "If only people were as little concerned with your affairs as they are with their own.") There are things to appreciate, I'm at home wherever I go, and so on, but I prefer a big city: Noisy. Unpredictable. The anonymity of the crowd. Someone gets suspicious, doesn't like your face, you're gone. So much to see! Maybe my eyes never settled, hindering memory. And with so many people, someone is bound to stand out. Although contact is fleeting. She turns a corner, disappears into the crowd. She steps around you, making nothing of your existence. You leave her in your dust as you move at a perfectly reasonable speed. And you probably won't even have the consolation prize of remembering her face. Such encounters are a pleasure all the same but I can see how the masses can make someone feel lonely and frustrated. A man was carried away on a stretcher. A woman across the street smiled. I can't say with confidence that it was because she found me interesting. (For the record: I found her interesting.) The man standing next to her, who looked like a relative, turned and pretended to lower her shirt to cover her exposed belly button. She laughed. I crossed my arms, adopted a stony demeanor, and turned my attention to traffic, to make clear that I am no ogler, sir. But it crumbled into shoegazing shyness as we passed each other. Nearing Madison Square Garden, I reminded Miguel that the Knicks play the Hawks on Christmas Day. Revenge game. For a moment I shivered in the middle of this heat remembering Ice Trae in the 2021 playoffs. Yo: After the Hawks secured victory in the last game of the series, he took a bow. New York City is a showbiz capital and that's what you do when the show is over, after all. Although our first NBA game in New York, I said again, should be in Brooklyn. ...And somewhere along the way I startled the people around me by suddenly sing-shouting, in R & B style, "ooh!" I do that occasionally throughout the day, sometimes with a snap of my fingers, though usually not in public. Tired and underhydrated. ...We arrived at Penn Station. The woman in front of me on the escalator with a tattoo on her right arm, interesting, a woman with lavender eye contacts? wheeling luggage behind her, interesting, but enough of that! for the rest of this sketch! We read the screen indicating arrivals and departures and not much else, then headed for a system map. Every train passes through our destination, Secaucus. But we were unsure if it'd be so easy. We took a seat on one train only to second-guess ourselves and get up soon after. A station agent appeared before us, standing between cars. In my hurry, thinking about our next move, I squeezed past him to get out without saying anything. So unlike me. "Excuse me," he said. Once on the platform, I lifted a hand and apologized. He shook his head, deeply disgusted by my conduct. We stepped aboard another train. After ten minutes, over the intercom, a few stops were announced. I didn't hear Secaucus station. Miguel stood to ask the station agent what was what. He said this train would be passing through Secaucus without stopping. Then the train doors closed. We ended up in Newark. One agent told Miguel we'd have to ride back to New York and start over. But studying the screen again, I pointed to the black line, New York-Secaucus, track 1. We'd just been burned by such seemingly obvious logic, though. With plenty of time, I headed downstairs to the lobby to confirm at Information. The agent, without hesitation, said head to track 5 or 6 for a train to Secaucus. I hurried back to Miguel. Before climbing the stairs to one of those platforms, he stopped to ask the same station agent at Information the same question I did, to be safe. She directed him to track 1. Back at our original spot, a couple became angry with each other. The woman went one way and the man went the other. The train arrived. We sat facing a woman on her phone, the seats so close I had to sit with my legs to one side. I pulled out my book and fell back into the fascinating story of Charlotte Brontë. I'd already spoken to Miguel, upon starting the book, about biography. How does one get a true sense of how the subject lived? Sometimes it's pure speculation. What's left to tell the story? Who's left? (Assuming anyone even cares to tell the story.) Once in Secaucus, Miguel asked me if I'd heard the conversation on our last train ride. "So boring," he said. "I didn't hear a word of it," I said. "Not a single word." Maybe that's when my day, though spent in thee New York City, began to lose texture. The page had already pulled me into another life.