Biographies and Autobiographies

I have read biographies most of my life, but for the past few years have read none. This is not the same as autobiographical novels, such as Tropic of Capricorn, which I read every several years.
One biography I had a great deal of trouble with was Tolstoy's. This man's most egregious faults I saw in myself and as a result I became uncomfortable enough to suspend reading.
One year I read an autobiography by Manny Robinson (Edward G. Robinson, Jr.). He had a great deal of conflict with his father and remained in constant trouble. But by book's end he claimed to be reformed and on a good track. Shortly after the book appeared he and his father appeared in a story on T.V.'s GE Playhouse. They were burying the hatchet in doing this. But, after that Manny seemed to disappear. I found out years later he was dead, but could never learn the circumstances.
I am currently planning to get a relatively new biography of James Joyce.

Let me strongly recomment R.E. LEE, by Douglas Southhall Freeman. This four volumn work won the Pulitzer Prize for good reason. R.E. Lee is regarded by many as the definitive biography of one of the nation's most important and beloved soldiers. The books are extremely well written and draw the reader along nicely. Be prepared to set your readinglist aside until finishing this monumental work, because it will totally involve you. Though Freeman clearly loved his subject, his research and documentation is so good, that he might be forgiven that little bias. R.E. Lee is a winner on two counts; first, it is one of the finest American biographies ever written (O.K. Grant's Autobiography is also way up there), and second, this work will give the reader detailed insight on virtually every important Civil War fought in the major theater of operations.

Freeman also authored Lee's Lieutenants, another essential for anyone interested in learning about the Late Unpleasantness.

Thanks asherman. I have beautiful old editions of both sets, Lee and Lee's Generals, but have read only one volume of each so far. Still looking for a nice old edition of Grant's autobiography - its available online, but thats cheating. Saw a recent paperback edition on the wonderful Commonreader.com. William McFeely's biography of Grant is considered very good too, but I think you know this subject area better than me!

Self Portrait by Man Ray.

Sadly, I don't read all that many biographies or autobiographies. Well, some, such as Nualo O'Faolain's autobiographical 'Are You Somebody?', and I am just starting the second part, while not having read the first, of Kenneth Clark's autobiography. Picked that up for 50cents, and I must say I am enjoying it immensely.

I've read a lot of episodes of people lives, if not full autobiographies. Tim Parks' Italian Education. and his Italian Neighbors, which was first. I've also read a whole batch of his fiction; in a way the autobiographical episode books illuminate the others.

A memorable biography I did read several years ago was about Lucretia Borgia, a revisionist take by Rosalind Bernier. Perhaps by morning I will remember the title. I thought it would make a good movie and could interest no screenwriter associates in it. I have a faint memory of something being done on the subject by some british film group.

Talking about this will remind me of more. I've read several hundred books on Italy, rather a bath of information for pleasure, and some of them were bios and autobios.

Recently, Penguin Books started publishing its Penguin Lives Series. They are small books, easy to read, but by some pretty good writers and historians. I have Leonardo da Vinci here, by Sherwin Nuland. Others:

Mary Gordon on Joan of Arc
Louis Auchincloss on Woodrow Wilson
Jonathan Spence on Mao Zedong
Edna O'Brien on James Joyce
Edmund White on Marcel Proust
Nigel Nicolson on Virginia Woolf
Carol Shields on Jane Austen
Francine du Plessix Gray on Simone Weil
Elizabeth Hardwick on Herman Melville
Douglas Brinkley on Rosa Parks
Larry McMurtry on Crazy Horse
Peter Gay on Mozart
Garry Wills on Saint Augustine
Karen Armstrong on Buddha
R.W.B. Lewis on Dante
Wayne Koestenbaum on Andy Warhol

I've also seen ones on the pope, MLK Jr., and Napoleon. I don't think all have been published yet.

Washington: The Indispensable Man
by James Thomas Flexner

A most interesting book that made me admire George Washington much more than I had before. I highly recommend it.

There are a lot of great biographies. The father of them all, and still of one of the greatest, is Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, one of the most wonderful English books.

Two of come to mind one is a biography about Phillip Guston called "Night Studio" written by Musa Mayer, his daughter.

The other is a little known book by a woman names Erma J. Fisk called Parrots Wood. In her 70's, Mrs. Fisk was an amateur ornitholigist who traveled to Belize to map the bird population. She reflects on her life, her marriage (husband died when she was in her 50's) etc. It was a beautiful and reflective little book.

Osso, I read "Are You Somebody" a few years ago, thought it was interesting but a downer just the same. I was turned-off by what a true-to-life jerk Clement Greenberg (sp) was.

Oh, and another truly enjoyable read was the David McColough biography on John Adams- A great love story between he and his wife Abigail, and it chronicles the early days of America struggling for independence from Britain.

Right now I'm reading "Random Family" by Adrian LeBlanc and it is truly one of the most amazing pieces of journalism I've ever read.

The author chronicles 10 years in the life of a family from the Bronx so I suppose it could fall into the biography category. This book has exposed me to a whole new contemporary American experience - one I knew existed but was unaware of it's texture.

Thanks boomer, I'll have to check that one out at the library. Sounds worth a look.

Thanks too, to gala, larry, osso, satt and piffka for your recommendations. Why can't I read faster?

Oh, that's easy, you like to savor what you read, if not always, often.

boomerang, I'm going to look into the Adrian Leblanc book. I've read some of her other writing and always thought she was exploiting her subjects too much. She wrote a story called Trine and Trine some years ago. It was about a drug addicted teenager who was hooking and homeless. For the time Leblanc collected information on her she welcomed Trine into her life, after that she dropped her and moved on to her next subject.

A truly great series of short biographies is Plutarch's Lives of The Grreeks and Romans, classic condensed biographies that have inspired writers from Shakespeare to Lincoln and Nietzsche.

You're welcome Larry, I'll bet you like the book even though I did find myself nodding to Gala's dead-on comment.

There are parts of the book that I've thought "now, how could she know this?" and parts were I've question the omission of details that are included in similar parts of the book and wondered about how close she got to these subjects and how much she intervened in the day to day life of her subjects.

I have reminded myself that she is a journalist and not a social worker more than a few times.

Still, I think it's a great read.

Interesting, thanks both of you. And larry too for Lives . . .

boomerang, Leblanc's approach is controversial in the world of Literary Journalism. Credibility and objectivity are at the root of the controversy. In the case of Leblanc, she does not remain objective, and for this reason her writing makes for a great read.

In Leblanc's Trine and Trine story she had the balls to compare her relatively stable life with Trines. She invited Trine to her house for sleep-overs, and to parties.

Another enjoyable read was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which was considered to be "hack" work by journalists over the credibility issue. Apparently, the author (forget his name) embellished and altered the facts. His name is mud in the literary world. Still, it was a good escape book. It seems the author has yet to produce another book.

Larry, I don't get your last comment: "And larry too for Lives..."