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
Jun 21, 2020 • 32min
Fair Use Biography: Forget about the Don’ts in Most Cases. Just go ahead.
My account for forty years of dealing with fair use, biographical subjects, and publishers.
Jun 14, 2020 • 10min
The Whys and Wherefores of Documentary Biography
How dating all the days of a life provide a different way of approaching what is left out in other biographies.
Jun 6, 2020 • 22min
Episode 9: How To Begin a Biography: The Case of William Faulkner
I look at how biographers have begun their biographies and the merits of different kinds of openings and why biography has been called factitious.
May 30, 2020 • 22min
Episode 8: How to End a Biography, The Case of Sylvia Plath
I read from the last paragraphs of Plath biographies, commenting on them, and explain my own choices in writing American Isis: The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath and The Last Days of Sylvia Plath.
May 24, 2020 • 28min
Episode 7: Prefaces to Biography
Who is the biographer? And why does it matter?
May 16, 2020 • 24min
Building a Better Biography: How to Capture the Whole Man
I give a sense of the interplay between Faulkner the man, his fiction, and his film writing.
May 10, 2020 • 7min
Sylvia Plath, Meet Rebecca West
I explore why it is that Sylvia Plath never seemed to be aware of Rebecca West, a world class writer, who still has so much to say to the readers of Plath and of modern literature.
May 2, 2020 • 49min
A Tale of Two Biographies: The Last Days of Sylvia Plath and The Life of William Faulkner
Why I wrote these two books and what in the world Plath and Faulkner have to do with the world around us.
Apr 25, 2020 • 16min
Episode 3: Faulkner Preludes
How I began my work on Faulkner; what I mean by an intertextual biography; why Joan Crawford matters in a Faulkner biography; Faulkner as diplomat; what Faulkner to read first.
Apr 17, 2020 • 19min
A Life in Biography: Episode 2: Why Care About William Faulkner?
A two-minute podcast. Call it “The Elevator Pitch.”
