The Biographer – A Nosey Parker?

Cue (NZERS), Issue 17, 15 February 1945, Page 28

The Biographer - A Nosey Parker?

IS the writing of biography immoral? This was the question discussed at a. recent informal brains trust" in a New Zealand camp somewhere in Italy. The learned men took the question to mean: is the story of the life of a man, alive or dead, his own private property? Or does the fact that man is a social being—whether he likes it or not — him open tp written comment from all and sundry? The general opinion of the "trust" was that living people are protected by our laws of libel; with that safeguard, there is no reason why a man •who makes a mark on society and has himself talked about should be able to stop people from writing about him, whether in a newspaper story or in a full-dress book. And dead people well, they are very dead. Unless they were important , and interesting, no serious writer is likely to resurrect them for the reading world. ; -

Thus the immorality charge is dismissed on grounds of public interest. As long as people are talked about, they will be written about. The secrets laid * bare, the controversies started by the biographer’s dissecting knife can make fascinating reading. And if a person wants to be his own dissector and write an autobiography, the millions of readers who have enjoyed some of the witty and revealing autobiographies of our day would be the last to complain. Moreover, the personal angle on history in the making, from the person who has livgd events, is often more valuable than the account of the lookers on.

Vera Brittain’s ’’Testament of Youth," for example, tells us more about the last war generation than could any social survey. Again from sensitive Germans, like Klaus Mann ("The Turning Point") and Otto Zarek ("Splendour and Shame"), we get an intimate picture of what Hitler’s rise to power meant in people’s ‘lives.

Who would, be more prone to writing the stories of their own lives than writers themselves? Tastes here vary; if you read Linklater’s novels, you will read his ’’The Man on My Back"; if you are interested in Eric Gill or Havelock Ellis, you will read their autobiographies.

There is always a demand for the life; stories of men of the day, but they tend to be fulsome "build-ups” or longwinded insults, according to the axe the writer is grinding. There are biographies of Churchill ("Battle” by Hugh Martin,. "Mr. Churchill” by Philip Guedalla, ’’Winston Churchill” by Rene Kraus), Cripps —Advocate and Rebel” by Patricia Straus), Halifax, Stalin, Maisky, Dewey, and Roosevelt. People of. royal blood are never left alone. Research and discovery of .documents, not to mention imagination, give the modern writer his chance to bring alive again for us the rulers of the past —Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and in our own royal line, Queen Elizabeth, James 11, William of Orange and Queen Victoria—" The Windsor Tapestry’* by Compton Mackenzie, bringing the list up-to-date. ’ Writers of to-day . have the qualifications to study the lives and works of the famous writers of yesterday, and the do .us a service 'in increasing our understanding of the men whose great works we still readßlake, Keats, Vol-/ taire, Rabelais, Ibsen, Goethe, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. ' . j ' The above books are now available, for issue on loan through. the~ERS Book Request Service. Those who use the service are asked to give alternative requests in case the book they want has already been issued; to acknowledge receipt promptly; to return the book as soon as possible; and to look after f carefully.