Cathy Curtis

I've come to the conclusion that young women today seem to think that all women (or even all educated women) in the late twentieth century took their cue from the books and essays written by 1970s-era feminists. Not true! I say.

 

I was born in the middle of the twentieth century. As a young woman, I read Mademoiselle magazine, which offered interesting short stories (by major writers of the day) as well as tips about dating, diets, and grooming, photographs of smiling models in pretty clothes, and other content appealing to my cohort. Glamour lacked the short stories, but the features were similarly pitched to young women anxious to look like a "Do" instead of a "Don't." I was dimly aware of Ms. magazine, but it never occurred to me that I should read it.

 

Similarly, the notion that there was a problem with studying only the work of "dead white men" had barely penetrated my world. My college studies enshrined their work, and I was thrilled to encounter their ideas. In grad school, I enjoyed learning about the few women artists known to be active in the seventeenth century (my period of specialization), but that did not mean I was less interested in the work of the Great Men.

  

For us, as for our mothers' generation, nervously waiting for a man's call on a landline phone was a near-universal experience, because romantic relationships were so fraught yet so crucial to one's future. Marriage remained an important—for some, the only important—goal. I did not question this or fight against it; it was simply the way of the world.

 

In this social climate, it was not unusual even for an accomplished twentieth-century woman to be indifferent, even hostile, to the new voices of feminism. (Hostile? Consider Joan Didion's essay on the movement, published in The New York Times in 1972: The movement's theorists "had invented a class; now they had only to make that class conscious." The result was writing in which "we have been hearing the wishful voices of . . . perpetual adolescents, the voices of women scarred by resentment, not of their class position as women but at the failure of their childhood expectations and misapprehensions." Didion's conclusion: "the women's movement is no longer a cause but a symptom.")

 

The fact is, women seriously involved with the second wave remained a minority for many, many years. There was no Internet, after all, and no social media—no large-scale way of promulgating feminist beliefs—and mainstream media was most likely to caricature feminist positions Younger editors, academics, and other people whose job is to consider the merits of biographies need to consider that the givens in their lives were not necessarily the givens in ours.

 

© Cathy Curtis 2023

Critics too often complain that a detailed, life-spanning biography with copious firsthand information (from diaries, letters, other published or unpublished writing) has nonetheless failed to make the subject known. I've come to believe that these naysayers lack an understanding of biography as a genre and fail to realize the impossibility of their expectations.

 

Consider your own friends and family. Can you truly say, even if you have known them for many decades, that you fully understand them? An aspect of being human is the essential "unknowableness" of any other person—or even of your own motivations and deepest feelings, desires, etc. The millions of fleeting impressions in a person's brain cannot be fathomed by anyone else. And yet we do claim to know people close to us, in the sense of anticipating what they will say or do and finding that what they have said or done to be in line with our knowledge of them.

 

A biographer who has access to hundreds, even thousands of pieces of firsthand documentation—like Jackie Wullschläger, author of Monet: The Restless Vision, who drew on more than 3,000 of the artist's letters—obviously still cannot access her subject's brain. But it is possible to demonstrate what the person believed, and loved and hated, and failed to understand, and worried about, and hoped to do, and regretted that they had done, and so forth. By illuminating these things, the biographer allows the reader to know the person, insofar as that can be done.

 

However, I do not believe that it is necessary, or even desirable, for a biographer to wrap up all these observations into a tidy conclusion or theory that purports to "explain" her subject. People are so complex that any effort to stuff them into a conceptual box is doomed to failure. I say, let the facts speak for themselves, and allow the reader to form her own notion of who the person was—a form of  "knowing" that actually will be somewhat different for every reader, because each of them will process the information in a way unique to her own power of understanding.

 

In the words of Clare Carlyle, author of the strikingly original new biography, The Marriage Question: The Double Life of George Eliot, "Writing a person's life means living with them intimately, struggling to understand them, wondering how far they can be trusted, dealing with the ways they resist, annoy, disappoint, challenge, and elude you."

 

© Cathy Curtis 2023

 

Two approaches? Of course, there are as many ways to write a biography as there are biographers. I am addressing the broad differences between a literary biography written by an academic who has many spent years studying and forming theories about her subject and a literary biography written by a non-academic (often, a journalist) whose previous engagement with the work is simply as a deeply appreciative reader.

 

The problem is that academics inevitably judge all biographies by their own standards. A biography lacking a strong central theory about the subject is believed to be virtually worthless, and chronological organization is considered far inferior to a topical approach in which chapters each deal with a particular theme.

 

I can't speak for all non-academic biographers, of course, but I never start (or conclude) with a theory or a concept. My books are always the first comprehensive biographies of my subjects; their lives are fascinating new territories to explore. When I begin researching, my mind is open. I am simply collecting data. As I write, I am guided solely by the need to organize the wealth of material I have discovered in a readable form—but without attempting to superimpose some concept of my own. I know that I will tend to support my subject when thorny issues arise, though I will feel free to question any self-reported activities and statements if—and that's a big "if"—I have factual evidence to the contrary. Just because something sounds odd or surprising does not mean it did not happen, especially when dealing with distant times and unique circumstances.

 

As a former journalist, I am primarily interested in reporting the accretion of details about a person that forms a narrative of her life. The only way to do this persuasively is to organize the book chronologically. My objective is to introduce readers to the range of my subject's work and the way it relates to her life, and to present that life in a beguiling way, so that my biography will be nearly as lively as a novel.

 

Since I am not a literary critic, I don't feel that it's my job to pronounce upon each work that I briefly describe—briefly, so as not to bog down the narrative—or to judge which works are her best. When something about a work begs to be criticized or celebrated, I do so; otherwise I quote contemporary reviews to give a sense of the way the book or play was received in its era.

 

It is always important to present a picture as complete as possible of the world the subject lived in, stopping short of including lengthy historical material that would halt the narrative flow—which is always a paramount concern when writing a biography for general readers. (I put some of these details in endnotes, but nowadays readers can easily find additional information online.) As corollary, I believe is a grievous error to expect lives lived at other times to conform to standards of behavior of the twenty-first century. While blatant mistreatment of another human being can never be condoned, we learn much more by trying to understand the past than by condemning it out of hand.

 

© Cathy Curtis 2023

When you think of all the people who have lived on our planet, or even the ones who have achieved some modicum of fame, it may seem that a biographer has a dazzling array of choices. In fact our choices are restricted in a number of ways.

 

Most obviously, there is little point in embarking on a biography of someone who has left few traces. Without a sizable number of surviving documents and news reports it's hard to see how a life can be reconstituted on paper. 

 

Then there are problems of access: the widow won't allow you to read the journals; the bulk of the correspondence is in the attic of someone who can't be bothered to unearth it; the subject's archive has embargoed the papers until 2060; none of the colleagues or relatives are willing to be interviewed. 

 

A biographer also needs to consider whether the life is sufficiently eventful, at least during the period of the subject's major achivements. While a great writer can make sitting in a room and thinking sound fascinating, most of us depend on the ebb and flow of life events—including shifting relationships with lovers, children, friends, and people in power—to make our narratives come alive. 

 

Another roadblock is the tyranny of trends in publishing. If you are writing about an obscure author whose books are out of print, it's highly unlikely that a trade publisher will accept your proposal, though you might have better luck with a university press. But if your forgotten author wrote about women or people of color in ways that are now considered offensive, you will have a hard time convincing an editor that the world needs to read about him—no matter how otherwise significant his books are, or how seriously you intend to discuss his failings.

 

If you choose to write about someone famous, the burden is on you to prove that you have a fresh angle, usually the result of a newly discovered trove of papers. Historical subjects require familiarity with current scholarship; specialized fields such as art demand a working knowledge of the language used by practitioners. 

 

Most discouraging is the roadblock that appears after you already have done a great deal of research but before you have secured a publishing contract: the publication of another book on your subject. Unless you can figure out a way to enlarge your topic or otherwise drastically alter your approach, the only thing you can do is move on.

 

© Cathy Curtis 2023

Granted, there are many ways to approach the writing of a biography. But I am always perplexed when a critic complains about the inclusion of details that I find interesting and relevant. In a new biography of a poet, the author describes the woman going to a cafe for coffee at 10 a.m. and tea at 3 p.m. The review I read complained that this material was extraneous. Yet details about the poet's daily habits are clues to a certain temperament and including them helps to paint the picture of her era and her milieu. 

 

What I look for in biography is the story of a life. I want to be as close as possible to the subject (preferably inside her head, with references to journal entries and correspondence) as she deals with success and failure, love and loss, and all the daily stresses that people must cope with. I want to be alerted to her changes of outlook and mood, and her fluctuating relationships with the people in her orbit. I want to know what her days were like—and her nights, too, if she was that sort of person. I don't want to pick up a biography only to discover that it is really literary or art criticism, organized thematically, rather than a chronological narrative that aims to give us the whole person—the life as well as the work.

 

I recently read a biography that has been widely acclaimed as a riveting account of two artists. Their work is fascinating and in this book it has been amply illustrated and skilfully placed within the context of their epoch and their urban and rural settings. But, no doubt because vital records (letters, mostly) are missing, I looked in vain for a sense of their inner lives, a feature that is all-important to me in biography. I also wanted much, much more about their daily habits and the repercussions of their lives (the man had fled his marriage and much later returned to it; the woman later met and married someone else) on the people in their circle. 

 

When I closed the book, I had learned a lot about the art they made and the homes they lived in. But I didn't know enough about what made these people tick.

 

© Cathy Curtis 2023

As a former arts journalist, I began writing biographies because I wanted to tell the story of an accomplished person in the arts who seemed to have led an eventful life. Rather than starting with a thesis (why close down the possibilities with some arbitrary point of view?), I wanted to keep an open mind as I learned about this person.

 

Accustomed to suddenly being called upon to write about people and situations I knew little about, I was not deterred by having to start from scratch. I was motivated by my need to be the first biographer—the first to share with readers the ways the life and the work intertwine, as they inevitably do.

 

A journalist is a writing machine, expected to be able to corral hundreds of words into readable form in a few hours, if necessary. As a biographer, as soon as I have a few facts to rub together, I'm keen to begin writing; this is the only way I can discover what I still need to know.

 

There is also the matter of style. In the forefront of a journalist's mind is the need to grab fickle readers at the outset. That's why coming up with a catchy lede (the first sentence or paragraph of a story) is so important to us. The prologues of my books are my way of hooking the reader with the most dramatic aspects of my subject's story.

 

I think journalists-turned-biographers are pleased if our books are said to resemble fiction, despite their scrupulous reporting. We know that it is pointless to view any biography as definitive—new facts are likely to be uncovered; new emphases often develop, based on changes in the culture. So it makes sense to omit details that don't fit comfortably in the narrative of the life. The narrative is paramount; it is what makes a book enjoyable to read rather than simply a dumping ground for information.

 

© Cathy Curtis 2022

Most educated American know that the British have different words for everyday things. (Our car "trunk" is their "boot"; our "elevator" is their "lift.") But few of us probably realize how many of those things are known by different words and phrases. This has been brought home to me recently whlie reading novels written by British writers of the postwar period. 

 

For example, "pavement" in British English is the equivalent of "sidewalk" in American English. A "verge" is the grassy area between the pavement and the road. A "plaster" is a Band-Aid. The "first floor" is our second floor (the entry floor is the "ground floor'). An undershirt is a "vest." Women's underpants are "knickers." A "biscuit" is a cookie. "Chips" are fries (and "crisps" are potato chips). Tea is a hot beveage, of course, but it is also a light meal eaten between lunch and supper. In a theatre, the "stalls" are orchestra seats. 

 

Colloqual speech is redolant with local flavor (or "flavour"). Rich people are "toffs." If you're "knackered," you're tired. If you're "pissed" or "legless," you're drunk. If you disparage something as "rubbish," it's the equivalent of "garbage," since that's what the stuff in the bin (not the barrel) is called. If you "knock up" someone, you've simply tried to get them out of bed in the morning.

 

You know the song, "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow"? Well, I've been wondering if the difference between the American version ("which nobody can deny") and the British one ("and so say all of us") reveals a difference in national identity — the Americans, boastful; the British, warmly inclusive.

 

In another vein, it seems to me that American novelists include few British characters in their works, whereas Americans have a way of popping up more often in British novels, at least the ones from earlier decades. The results tend to be hit-or-miss. Most baffling to me is that British writers inevitably fail to realize that Americans (unless they are attempting to appear over-refined) never say "shall." We say, "I'll go there," not, "I shall go there." 

 

© Cathy Curtis 2022

Three of my four published biographies were the first ones about their subject. (The other book was the first to focus on the woman's life rather than only on her marriage to a famous fellow artist.) Perhaps because reviewers are frequently not biographers themselves, I have found that they—and other readers—fail to understand what's involved in making a maiden voyage as a biographer.

 

Many biographies published today are about someone famous who usually has been the subject of multiple books. Because previous biographers bave established the chronology and the facts (as each writer perceived them), the new biographer is free to write in a more experimental way. She can choose to deal only with a certain period of time in the person's life, quarrel with information presented in other books, present a new theory, focus on the work at the expense of the life, or experiment with style.

 

First biographies about people who are not widely known are obliged to hew more closely to the pattern of "traditional" biography. A responsible biographer presenting a subject to the world for the first time must cover the entire stretch of that life in a way that presupposes no prior knowledge on the part of the reader. The first biographer strives to present the subject as completely, truthfully, and seriously as possible, with the fullest possible awareness of the standards and mores of her era.

 

This means restraining the impulse to add fanciful suppositions or strained attempts to be "relevant." It means not writing in a style intended to imitate or compete with the cleverness of the subject, and not allowing a theoretical construct to overshadow the narrative of the life.

 

For these reasons, a first biography may strike members of the coterie already familiar with the subject to contain too many quotidian facts at the expense of theoretical commentary and witty asides. Yet there is still plenty of room for elegant writing, thoughtful conclusions, and the kind of precise descriptions and well-chosen quotations that make the subject come to life for the reader.

 

(c) Cathy Curtis 2022

 

In journalism, there is an old saying, "Follow the money." This is a proven method of tracking malfeasance in politics.

 

I have found that in writing biographies, following the money is important in a different way. Keeping track of how much my subject has made from her work and what she has spent on significant purchases helps to determine the relative smoothness or bumpiness of her life.

 

A biography, as opposed to a literary study or artist's monograph, is about the whole of the person's life, not just The Work. Biographers are concerned with how our subjects lived, which means researching and writing about personal matters, including the ancillary aspects of a career that depended on favorable treatment from publishers or galleries.

 

Few of us are able to conduct our lives without worrying about money, and the people I write about were no different. Financial concerns weighed heavily on them, at times distracting them from their work.

 

Describing money issues, along with my subjects' health, leisure pursuits, relationships, appearance, tastes in clothing and furnishings, and daily irritations and pleasures, makes the people I write about come alive as human beings. They may be towering figures in their fields, but in other ways they are not so very different from us. And it is on that basis that we can best appreciate how they soared above their difficulties to make the work we revere.

 

(c) Cathy Curtis 2022

For a biographer who cannot speak to her subject—because she is no longer alive or unwilling to be interviewed—there is nothing more revealing than this person's journals. If, that is, she kept a journal, if it still exists, if it can be located, and if it can be read. (Often, such private musings are labeled as "restricted" in archives for a certain period of years.)

 

In the absence of a journal, letters to relatives, friends, enemies, and colleagues (often, overlapping categories) are the most intimate traces of a person. Letters are written for many reasons—to praise, to thank, to argue, to demand, to cajol, to ruminate . . . and, most tellingly, to pour out one's heart at a time of trouble.

 

Granted, the letter writer may be bending the truth to appeal to the recipient of the letter. But that possibility can be revelatory in itself: Why is this person being "handled" in this way? What is the writer hoping to gain?

 

Something that has puzzled me in certain reviews of my most recent book is that the dozens of excerpts from my subject's letters were somehow not considered to paint a true portrait. Many of these letters were written when Elizabeth Hardwick was feeling most vulnerable, when she couldn't decide whether to leave her brilliant but mentally ill and unfaithful husband. Others were written earlier, to describe her fractious relationship with her mother and impressions of earlier men in her life, or later, to recount social occasions and other events, and the progress of her writing.

 

These letters were not necessarily written with the same stylistic brilliance as her published writing. Someone who interviewed me wondered about this. But why would they be? Some of them are the anguished cries of a woman at the end of her tether, as opposed to, say, carefully framed remarks about women in the plays of Ibsen. The reason the letters are so vital to an understanding of Hardwick is that they reveal her quandaries, delights, and deeply personal thoughts at diverse moments of her life.

 

I should add, for those who haven't read my book, that I never include the entire letter, which would involve what is known as a block quote—a thicket of verbiage that stands apart from the ongoing narrative. Rather, I pluck out the most telling sentences and let them speak for the whole in order to keep the narrative moving at a good pace.

 

What reviewers wanted, it seems, was more interviews with people who knew my subject, who could report on what she said at a dinner party or while sitting on a literary jury. There are interviews conducted by me in the book, but few are with famous people. The main reason is that these people—notably Robert Silvers, editor of The New York Review of Books—were deceased by the time I began researching the book in 2019. (Some quoted remarks by people no longer living are from interviews conducted by other people during the lifetime of the speaker.)

 

Interviews, if used well, can be a useful feature of a biography—particularly interviews of the subject herself. Interviews with others can give some idea of how the subject was viewed by friends and colleagues. One type of interview that doesn't interest me, however, is with someone who recounts stories the subject told about her earlier life. Why would I trust such second-hand memories—so often actually poorly remembered or distorted by wishful thinking—when I have the letters (or, in some cases, journal pages) that provide on-the-spot documentation? 

 

Some biographers consider interviews as a sort of numbers game, no matter how relevant or meaningful the quoted remark may have been—and no matter whether the quoted person met the subject for ten minutes or knew him for a lifetime. (One author of a fairly recent literary biography even included in his book a long list of every single person he spoke to. Never mind whether all these folks had anything worthwhile to say.) 

 

I actually chose not to include some remarks uttered by people I felt were being unfair—because they had an ax to grind, or because they were not in a position to judge the situation. 

 

My main point is that no interviews with people who knew a subject can ever hope to rival the intense immediacy of her letters and journal entries. This is where we can look for the "window on the soul" that I believe all biographers ultimately hope to capture.