A Life in Biography
Carl Rollyson
Talks and interviews about the life of biography as experienced by a biographer over forty years and fourteen biographies, dealing with subjects ranging from Sylvia Plath to William Faulkner, Marilyn Monroe to Susan Sontag, and much more.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Nov 7, 2020 • 53min
How I became an outlaw biographer
Working on Lillian Hellman, Martha Gellhorn, Norman Mailer, Rebecca West, Susan Sontag, Jill Craigie, Michael Foot, Dana Andrews, Walter Brennan, Amy Lowell, Sylvia Plath, William Faulkner.
Oct 31, 2020 • 38min
Episode 30: The Biographical Novel: Who Cares?
I discuss novels about Marilyn Monroe, Walt Disney, Martha Gellhorn, H. G. Wells and mull over a universe in which biography and biographical novels can co-exist.
Oct 24, 2020 • 36min
Episode 29: The Biography Police
An account of the campaigns orchestrated against biographers, using as examples biographies of T. E. Lawrence and Susan Sontag.
Oct 17, 2020 • 27min
Reading and Writing Biography: A Primer
The sorry state of reviewing biography as reviewers turns in what amounts to book reports, letting down the genre of biography and those who practice it.
Oct 10, 2020 • 51min
What a biographer knows.
I read and discuss a section from The Life of William Faulkner, pointing out my use of evidence, and concluding that I am my own best evidence.
Oct 3, 2020 • 49min
What is a definitive biography?
I consider the question in the light of biographies of Sylvia Plath, William Faulkner, Olson Welles, John F. Kennedy, and others.
Sep 26, 2020 • 27min
The Cruelty of Biography
A wide ranging discussion of the anathemas against biography perpetuated by modern writers, including Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Somerset Maugham, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Anthony Powell.
Sep 19, 2020 • 19min
Episode 24: Psychologizing Biography
What does Psychologizing biography mean? How I have used it.
Sep 12, 2020 • 21min
Reviewing Biography: The Case of Sylvia Plath
I read a review of my book, The Last Days of Sylvia Plath, in order to discuss the methodology of biography and of the reviewer.
Sep 5, 2020 • 16min
Episode 22: The Case Against Biography
What to say about the epistemology of biography and why it is sometimes better to not have been there, but to see it all from afar and yet in closeup, as the past is recreated in the biographer’s imagination.
