It has been only recently that I’ve started reading biographies and autobiographies, but I’ve noticed a real trend in them. They make the person out to be loco in the cabesa! The sanest figures I’ve read about are St. Paul and Bill Clinton. Per their biographers; all of Emma Goldman’s philosophical ideas are attempts to compensate for her personal life, Tolkien created his world to regress to a point in his life when he was with his mom in the English countryside (an idealic place to be I might add), Jung and Freud were both just plain nuts and anti-semetic and anti-aryian respectively, and Rousseau by his own admission was a pervert.
In short I’m seriously asking is that the point of the genre of biography to prove that someone is nuts? Or is it more the case that the biographer wants to say something new? Or is it just that if one analyses the totality of someone else’s life their inconsistencies are quite glaring? Or even are all great people, all those who seriously impact the world, a little off kilter?
Peace,
Chris
2 comments:
I've noticed that too. It would also seem, from the point of view of biographers, that everyone is gay -- or at least everyone interesting.
I have to say that psychoanalysis is the bugbear of biography. And yet I can see where it would be nearly irresistable. Historians and biographers can't simply say what happened. Their task is to say why it happened. And so, they try to get inside people's minds.
But good historians and biographers do resist this. I recently read a biography of Joseph Smith by Robert Remini, and I was absolutely shocked that Remini didn't say that Smith was insane. He said, here's what we know happened; here's what Smith said happened; here are some obviously related things that were happening at the time. And then he leaves it to the reader to judge whether or not Smith was nuts.
Can I write your biography? I promise to make you sound extra nuts (twisted nut story included) in order to sell [more] copies. :D
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