Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-01-25
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

/ of publicity which has been focused on
biography, search around in great haste
to find something vastly different" in
the new methods, and profess to find
there new and mystic qualities, ranging
all the way from soul revelation to re-
versed processes.
J They take an old-time biography.
such as Sparks washington" and
! compare it with one of the new school,
much to the disadvantage of the for
mer, forgetting that Sparks sad effu-
sion was no more typical of the better
biographical style in his day than it is
in line with the new biography"
They concentrate feelingly on man.
nerisms and tricks of style of the
writer's of the new school, hunting so
determinedly for differences that they
incline to the mistake of calling some
thing new" which Is essentially old.
Or. worse, they take some distinct man.
nerism of one writer and blithely at
tribute 1t to all modern biographical
writer's.
A careful reader will find, for in
| stance, that by no means all of the
modern writer's of biography use the
present verb lenses, as does Emil Lud-
wig. He will discover that by no means
all of our recent biographers frown
upon the tried and tested method of
allowing his character to be born, to
grow up and to die.
AS matter Of cold fact-as cold as
ice-some of the most successful of
these adherents of the new type of
biography are almost old-faShioned in
their methods. Take Ludwig. He has
by no means dropped the normal way
of narrating the life of a man. His
NAPOLEON is born. goes to school, has
his early struggles. becomes general,
consul. emperor, makes the mistake of
attempting to conquer Russia. falls, Is
banished to St Helena and dies.
thousand biographies of Napoleon
|>Bonaparte have been written upon ex-
actly the same basis. What distin-
cuisines LudWig's from the remainder Is
that his truly great biography succeeds
IN putting on paper not the conqueror,
but the man back of the conqueror::
not just the general but the soul, mind
and heart back of the Strategist. Meet
Gen. Grant," a recent biography. shows
by its title that its author wanted you
to meet the whole man, not just one
phase of him, not just one side, or even
his sides at all, but rather his "insides."
Modern biography Is modern psychol-
ogy in action. The pioneer work of
Prof. Freud and other psychoanalysts
NLic AlO" tllC 1iIuIlkS
of DR.. Watson threatens to wreck it,
has resulted in new outlook upon the
lives of great men, and it is this, and
this thing alone, which gives it its right
to the use of the much abused adjective.
AS much as one may deprecate such
nonchalant, rather strutting titles, such
as This Man Adams" and Meet Gen.
Grant" one is forced to confess that
their writer's were, even If In poor taste,
squaring their shoulders to the new out
look upon men and things. No matter
what the future may reveal, or how
lopsided, after all, this aspect of life and
living may be, 1t now Is the prevailing
outlook. One must either look through
such a microscope or be behind the
times Cor ahead of it,.
1t is interesting to note that Ludwig's
fine works use for titles almost ex-
clusively the name of the subject. Mat
thew JosephSon'S "zola and His Time"
is in the best traditional manner. al
though suffused with the better qualities
Of the newer methods. Another popular
biography put out at Christmas had the
simple title "Voltaire"
No one need feel afraid, therefore, of
the new biography" Its writer's have
simply taken tip from journalism, and
tried, before all, to make their writing
and their characters interesting. They
have tried to show the man, not his
trappings. Biography Is still biography.