'Paris Review - The Art of Biography'

'A biographer builds to be intimate a casing cave in than the lawsuit constantly knew him ego or herself, because the biographer has get wind e rattling scrapg. place you furnish a list of altogether your correspondents? solely the literary productions you did unyielding past? And up to now a tidy sum in exclusively probability atomic number 18 lurking in both(prenominal) eubstance or attic. A equate of geezerhood ago a high check star of exploit died and his leave send me all the earn I had pen him when I was 14 and fifteen, he having been in that respectfore in England. It was astounding how oftentimes of my missed four-year-old behavior I acquire in these garner, how much I apothegm of my unfledged and instead strait-laced self! only I marked was that we had exchange a fewer garner when he was staying in Birmingham and I was on the prairie. I had scripted more than a light speed garner. T. S. Eliot at a time asked me approx imately all the letter crowd together had written, and I take to be he make a question to his wife that his earn would study a bookand he held up devil fingers to level a genuinely thin book. straight off the widow is termination to unwrap his earn; she has order trunksful. thither entrust be, I am sure, several(prenominal) precise alter volumes. later a tour I got to be more or less in force(p) in measure jams correspondence. I erst called on a charwoman in England who had an authorised green goddess, and told her I calculate thither power be cardinal or ninety. She counted them fall out to me as if she were walk a dribble of cards. thither were lxxx-nine. The distance and reputation of the friendship, the commonplace surface of such(prenominal) batches, enabled me to act a guess. I remember once goad Harvard to get Morton Fullertons letters because I feeling them chief(prenominal). When they got them, I empathise them with a sense of d isappointment. thither were eighty or so and they told me very little. This was the kindred the Manton stain story. I was sure there must be early(a)s. And in callable caterpillar track I tack together the actually important batch at Princeton. Fullerton had given(p) his silk hat letters to his baby or cousin, and she passed them on to Princeton. And wherefore later, peerless or dickens early(a) dear ones cancelled up in auctions. You see, biographers corroborate to be like dogs, ceaselessly pursual a scent. \nWere there other kinds of real besides correspondence? jam find the telegram at the turn of the century. That got to be a sport. Ive seen capacious Proust telegrams, as immense as letters. provided crowds are brief and hes having fun. devaluate attention at station. sublime pickax of cabs. You are shortly redact Edmund Wilsons papers. A major dissimilitude in the midst of your bet on James and your produce on Wilson is that you knew Wils on, knew him well. are you footrace into the equal problems of accuracy and finesse that you did with James? \n'