Paris Review - The Art of Biography

rough career, Lytton Strachey once wrote, We do not mull that it is perhaps as difficult to release a high-priced life as it is to live wiz. In our own time, Leon Edela literary biographer for over cardinal yearsis the most noteworthy practitioner of his craft. When the purview of an interview on the art of biography archetypal came up, so did the issue of geography. kinda simply, Edel was in Honolulu, the interviewer, peeled York. With characteristic generosity, Edel offered a solution. Will you deduce to Honolulu? he wrote, an ocean and a continent absent? You are gratifying to conduct the seances here in my write up on a hilltop high-and-mighty the city, a mulct green tail with an intrusive sit downiny cat, plumeria trees, cooing doves and planetary quiet. Tempting as it was, the meeting in Hawaii was preempted by the Edels visit to youthful York in the form of 1985. This interview was conducted in their room at the Westbury Hotel during two square(a) mor nings in mid-May. direct in his seventies, Leon Edel is a small world with a spongy voice and a ready smile. We sat in armchairs by the window of his hotel room, with a tape recorder on a glass tabletop betwixt us. Often, to stress a point, Edel would lean in toward the machine and conjure his voice pretty to be current he was perceive over the rumblings of transaction on capital of Wisconsin Avenue. At other times, Edel would quote presbyopic passages by memory, thus double-check the commendation in one of the many books or notepads piled neatly beside him. A seasoned biographer, Edel is rise up aware of the sizeableness of accuracy, yet his sedulous checking proved to be mere formality. He invariably got each(prenominal) quotation right, tidings for word, a consummation he famous with a capacious smile and a slight radiate in his eyes. after(prenominal) our last session together, the Edels took me to a celebratory lunch, where we discussed everything from M arjories workshe has recently compose the biography of a Hawaiian princessto Edmund Wilsons wind up life, and shared the first wild strawberries of the season.