Evening star., 1928-12-20

"The novel is outworn," fatty de-
clared Matthew Josephson. author OF
"Zola and His Time" in an interview
in the New York World last week
Biography, the transcription of human
lives, is the unrivaled literary medium
of the present day"
Well, many people will not agree with
you, Mr.. Josephson. Despite the in
crease in the number of popular biog-
raphies pouring from the publishers
presses the novel is holding its own
pretty well, thank you!
What we object to, sir, in all the pow
WOW that has been made about biog-
raphy during the past half decade is
the naive belief on the part of the prac-
titioners that biography is something
new under the sun.
To read the blurbs on the Jackets of
some of the fat volumes playing up the
lives of great. near-great and merely
notorious persons, the unsuspecting
might think that biography was never
known before, that it never existed
prior to these same fat volumes at SIS
each. more or less.
The only thing that has happened
to biography, always a standard dlVl-
sion of letters, is that biographers have
taken plain tip from newspaper men.
Biography has deftly turned to jour-
nalism for a bit of pep" verve, human
interest-call it what you will.
A modern biographer plays up" his
subject better than the old-style bio
graphical writer did He understands
propaganda, its theory and practice.
and applies it in the interest of his
subject.
If you will take any of the new popu
lar biographies. the chances are 10 to
l that you will find that the author,
instead of beginning with the birth of
the hero. boldly plunges into the very
life of him. To aid him. he has the
benefit of profusion of interesting pic
lures, etc.
In addition--and no doubt this is the
great merit of modern biography-the
biographer tries his hest to see "the
man." to show the reader who he was,
and why he acted as he did If this
results in "debunking" the hero, all the
better The writer pines to show the
reader the real man" .,.
There is a great deal to be said in
favor of this method. Readers do, in
deed, crave the souls" of their heroes.
If biographer can show us the mans
soul, he is q better biographer, every
thing taken into consideration, than
the writer who merely passes in review
series of we'll authenticated facts.
What irks one bit is the evident be-
lief on the part of most of the writer's
in "the unrivaled literary medium of
the present day" that this style of bio
graphy is something entirely new.
AS matter of fact, Plutarch some
1000 years ago specialized on miniature
biographies which were surprisingly
modern" in spirit and treatment. The
novel had not yet been born. so it could
not have been deemed "outworn" by
him or any one else. Plutarch's bio
graphieS Were--and are--full of pep"
simply because the old fellow was a
gossipy. garrulous man who was inter-
ested in everything he could find out
about his subjects. He wasn't satisfied
with the battles alone; he had moral
istic leaning which made him pry into
the private affairs dove affairs, today
of his Greek and Roman heroes. He
wanted to discover the souls" of his
subjects. How we'll he succeeded is
shown by the fact that his Parallel
Lives" are popular throughout the
world hundreds of years after they were
written. How many of the modern"