Evening star., 1945-12-02
BY Marquis James


on the ground that they lead
lazy. pleasant lives as the dar-
lings Of fortune. the good-time
Charles of the writing business,
whereas we biographers and his
torians are the bowed-down toll
ers earning our bread by the
sweat of our faces. This view is oc-
casionally strengthened by advice
receive. Some years ago a thought
ful friend, and literate person, had
seen the lights burning late into the
nights in the little shack I used to
work in back of the house. She had
sometimes been inside that shack
and seen the monumental litter of
papers and books all around. This
is what she said to me:
You need a rest. Why don't you
write a novel-go to Florida and
write novel?"
Wasn't it a natural thing to sug-
gest Florida as a place to write
novel as a means of Tending off
boredom during the course of rest
cure? Everybody has seen pictures.
in the papers of successful nOvelists
basking in the sunshine of Florida
or California. But whoever saw a
picture of biographer taking it
easy that way?
Biographical Shortcomings
Even publisher, within the year
past, tried to tell me was the very
man to take crack at a historical
novel. the idea for which had come
to him in q sort of fash. In ways
he reminded me Of biographers
hear pass left-handed compliments
on novels, as If reading them con-
stituted a reflection on the public's
taste
I am inclined to think the superior
popularity of novels a reflection on
the biographers. Most people turn
to novels for agreeable or plausible
representations Of character and of
human behavior in general, and shy
away from biographies because OF
their deficiency in those qualities.
What biography have you read
that presents a figure as real as
Huckleberry Finn, Becky Sharp,
Tom Jones, George Babbitt or q
dozen of Dickens people? What
biography takes its people through
incidents and situations that seem
As real. as plausible and as enter
tanning as those encountered in the
last good novel you read?
A Task of Recreation
Now a biographer may argue that
his task is technically more difficult,
and, to a certain point, I will 60
along with him. He may point out
that a novelist merely has to invent
or create or to set down what he
knows, either by having lived
through it, observed it, Or acquired
it by what biographers call re-
search. A biographer's work on the
other hand is that of recreation,
and the recreation of not just any
person who will do to meet the re-
quirements of the story, but of q
particular person and nobody else.
A palaeontologist's is also work
Of recreation, but in different
way. He can take a shin bone of an
extinct animal and reconstruct the
complete skeleton, but this will not
be the skeleton of the particular
animal whose shin bone was found
but of an average representative of
the species. From the shin bone of
an extinct person biographer cam
not reconstruct that particular per-
son. He has to find the other bones.
He can hardly ever find them all.
Suppose you are writing the life of
q soldier or statesman or a man
of science. The facts of military
campaigns, of a career in statecraft
or the attainments of a career in
science are the easiest thing in the
world to lay hold of. But they do
not constitute the whole of mans
life. The soldier, the statesman or
the scientist doesn't work at his
profession more than half the time.
The rest of the time he is just a
human being, guy with hobbies
and pastimes and friends; lover,
husband and father: man
with little human mannerismS,
habits and weaknesses, like sticking
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