I invited Carl Rollyson to talk about the idea that every biography is an autobiography because I was curious about his latest endeavors. They range so widely that it’s hard to imagine how the subjects would appeal to the same biographer: Hollywood actors, American presidents, and the author of Moby Dick, and a number of writers including Sylvia Plath. He is now finishing a biography of Eve Arden, who played career women but considered her most important role to be wife and mother.
PS: After this was recorded, Carl wrote more on the subject at the Hedgehog Reivew. His review of a Netflix series is “The Beastly Biographer: Every biography is also an autobiography.”
Given how much we hear today about the need for politicians to be “authentic,” I found it instructive to hear how Carl’s subjects took on different roles at different stages of their lives, and how we write, and read, biography in order to live vicariously, to experience other possible lives.
We also discussed Carl’s forthcoming book about presidential biography, from the University of Virginia Press, in which he writes about everyone from George Washington to Donald Trump--and finds a startling parallel in the lives of two men whom one might think came from different planets. He calls them “providential presidents,” in the sense that many of their followers believe them to have been sent by providence—or God. Carl’s comparison is fascinating and persuasive, and useful in the context of the slogan “No Kings.” What if 30% of Americans still want to have a king?
We wrapped with a few words about Carl’s next project, a biography of Herman Melville, who wrote Moby Dick here in the Berkshire Hills, and was the subject of Lewis Mumford’s only biography. (Melville and Mumford are the subjects of Aaron Sachs’s terrific biography Up from the Depths, which shows the relevance of both writers to challenges we face today.)
Of course some biographies choose their subjects for commercial reasons, and in some cases get into big dollar battles. This legal battle is one of them, and is certainly enough to make one curious about the US publisher’s cancellation.
Show Notes
