If you’re the sort of person who can’t get enough of literary biography then you’re spoilt for choice this autumn. Our bookshops – what’s left of them – are bursting with writerly lives and letters.
Here’s what the critics made of the ten most-talked-about titles:
Martin Amis: The Biography by Richard Bradford
This sympathetic biography has got some pretty dreadful reviews, as you’ll know if you’ve read the Spectator’s Briefing Note.
David Sexton’s hatchet job in the Evening Standard was the most brutal.
‘His book is unreadably poor. He can’t write for toffee … What can Martin Amis feel now, to discover that such a dimwit should be fated to be his biographer, forever first in his bibliography?’
Some critics have been more generous. Writing in the Independent, DJ Taylor thought the book had three redeeming features:
‘The first is the rambunctious presence of Christopher Hitchens, who dishes the dirt on everything from the sexual shenanigans to the early 1980s research trip to a New York “hand-job parlour” while researching Money. The second is Bradford’s skill at re-animating the cultural circles in which Mart flourished during his early London period, in particular the Anthony Howard-era New Statesman. The third is his provocative readings of many of the novels.’
Verdict: Don’t bother.
The Inner Man: The Life of JG Ballard by John Baxter
John Baxter crossed paths with Ballard in the 1960s and now claims to have written the definitive biography. The critics, however, found the book unkind and ill-informed, with John Gray’s New Statesman review being representative:
‘…it is clear that Baxter did not talk to Ballard’s family, nor to his partner, nor to hardly anyone who met him in recent years. His own contact with his subject seems to have been tenuous and sporadic, and it occurred mainly in the 1960s. One wonders what he imagined he was doing in taking on this book. Demystifying literary biography can be illuminating, but what Baxter gives us is something quite different — a Burroughs-like cut-up in which a fictitious ogre is constructed from irrelevant facts, scraps of gossip and random inferences.’
Verdict: Read Ballard’s memoirs instead.
The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume II, edited by Martha Dow Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck
Reviewers ran out of superlatives to describe this mammoth collection of letters, the middle of three volumes and spanning 1941-56 (so yes, it covers Waiting for Godot).
Here’s what Edmund Gordon in the Sunday Times (£) had to say:
‘Some of the letters — a 10-word telegram to the director Alan Schneider, for instance, wishing him luck for the American premiere of Waiting for Godot — are strictly for the Beckett nerd. But there is enough evidence of his character in these pages to keep the most casual reader absorbed … When it is complete, if the standard of the first two volumes is maintained, this project should constitute one of the most valuable feats of literary scholarship to appear in the past 50 years.’
The one quibble came from the Economist – of all places – who were concerned the editors had excluded some letters that showed Beckett’s lighter, humorous side.
Verdict: Definitive.
Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin
Tomalin’s life of Dickens has been out a month and is already the favourite for the Costa Book Awards. It got mostly very good reviews.
William Boyd, Observer:
‘… what is so valuable about this biography is the palpable sense of the man himself that emerges. Tomalin doesn’t hesitate to condemn Dickens when his behaviour demands it, yet she writes throughout with great sympathy and unrivalled knowledge in the most limpid and stylish prose. She has the gift of being able to set a scene and a time with compelling vividness. This is a superb biography of a great writer…’
Most critical was the Independent review by Tom Sperlinger (no, I’m not sure who he is either). He thought Tomalin’s book was
‘[an] essentially conservative biography. There are few fresh insights into Dickens’s work and this is a less radical interpretation of the life than Tomalin achieved in her earlier book on Ternan.’
Verdict: Readable and reliable, Tomalin’s book is bound to be sitting under at least half the nation’s Christmas trees this year.
Just One Catch: The Passionate Life of Joseph Heller by Tracy Daugherty
This has to win the prize for the most painfully titled biography ever. Reviews have not redeemed it.
Janet Maslin, New York Times:
‘Mr. Daugherty writes in a thoroughgoing academic style, cherry-picks an unconscionable amount of material from Heller’s own memoirs, paraphrases dreadfully (with … shock[ingly] heavy use of … b[rackets] and ellipses … and parentheses) and does not show signs of assurance until he has occasion to analyze Heller’s writing career — at which point “Just One Catch” gets a lot better.’
Jeffrey Meyers, Literary Review:
‘…this dutiful and dogged book is too long and too detailed, has a ponderous style and confusing shifts in narrative, and lacks critical insight.’
Verdict: Wait for a better biography to come along. Also, in case you were wondering, Tracy Daugherty is a man.
Part 2 to follow…
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