Subject: Re: Alexander's Salinger Biography
From: Louise Z. Brooks (invertedforest@angelfire.com)
Date: Sun Feb 27 2000 - 19:41:38 EST
I found Alexander's biography to be a real stealth-job. By this, I mean quite the opposite of the recent trend for inside-out biographies such as the recent one on Ronald Regan, in which the biographer steps boldly out from between the lines and asserts the fact that he or she does have an opinion, cannot be impartial, and will not resign themselves to being a footnote to a footnote in their subject's own history. The Ian Hamilton Salinger biography is an exemplar of this, and I think this `They will never again mention the name Salinger without mentioning the name Ian Hamilton' approach is a rather repugnant and presumptuous one.
However, I found Alexander's in some way worse. In common with his poor biography of Sylvia Plath, he felt free to editorialize, to make artistic and personal assumptions on Salinger, and worst of all, to distort facts to tailor them to his own view. He has already been accused of similar transgressions with the earlier work on Plath, and I found his approach to Salinger embodied no less.
Strangely though, I found a much more human Salinger emerged from his pages. Odd, that.
--- Louise Z. Brooks "Invention my dear friends is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation and 2% butterscotch ripple." - Willy WonkaOn Fri, 25 Feb 2000 23:54:13 Paul Miller wrote: >I have finished Alexander's "Salinger". > This seems to be a real rush job on Alexander's part. He didn't slow down >to get the facts straight. > > He says that Teddy pushed Booper into the swimming pool killing her. He has >Sergeant X shooting the cat in Esme instead of Corporal Z. It's usually a >good idea to read the corpus of an author you are writing a book on. > >The book flowed on pretty well and was easy enough reading. I just got the >impression he wouldn't be bothered to make a complete job of it. Also he >seems sure that Salinger is a pedophile of some sort. > >Paul > >- >* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message >* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH >
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