A destination in other people’s maps

One particular genre of books that I have become increasingly drawn to over the past few years is biographies of artists. Usually writers, though that’s more because I know writers more than I know other artists. I’m happy to read about people who made any sort of art. Usually women, and that’s more deliberate, as I am a woman, but again, I’m happy to read about any people who made art. (And yes, I get that this is a somewhat hypocritical love, as I want my own papers destroyed. We contain multitudes, and sometimes those multitudes contradict each other.)

I recently read an interesting essay from Craig Brown, where he discusses the literary biography, and – among other things – the fact that these can sometimes get bogged down in the details. Here is an example he gives:

Describing [John] Richardson’s biography, reviewers would regularly use the adjective “exhaustive”, which is often a euphemism for “exhausting.” Certainly, his Life of Picasso tells you all you need to know, and perhaps rather more than you need to know, about the exterior circumstances of the life of Picasso. It will tell you, for instance, the exact day he checked into the Savoy Hotel in 1919 (May 25th) and the number of his room (574) and the number to which it has since been changed (536) and the person who booked it for him (Sergei Diaghilev), and so on and so forth.

I don’t, generally, read for the exhaustive detail. I might well have, when I started writing, thinking along the lines of Oh, well, if I just wake up at exactly 5:07am, and write precisely 333 words at a sitting, I too will write deathless prose. I exaggerate, a bit, here, but when I was starting out, all I wanted was guidance, and rules, and a way to know whether I was doing things correctly, and looking to those who had achieved success would have been a way to give myself that.