I too often find myself in the uncomfortable position of having to take the biographer's view of things when reading biographies. Of course, it is possible to see that some are a little too enamoured by the people they write about, but other than that it can be difficult to judge. I therefore tend to end up judging it on stylistic criteria. And I'll check up on the facts if they seem outrageous enough, of course.
Yeah, but that's generally not so easily done. Like in the Summers biography on Marilyn - he does source everything he says, but most of those sources aren't exactly readily available, and a good part of his sources are interviews he's done with people. At the end of the day I can only depend on what he's saying, and hope that if he should have said anything too outrageously wrong or unproven, I'd somehow have heard about it.
Same with the Castelot now, really, perhaps people did find flaws or wrong facts in his books, but it would take rather a lot of effort to check that.
Too much detail can kill a book. Some writers seem to think that just because they found something out it must be presented in the book. This is more forgiveable in a biography than in fiction, of course, but still...
Yes. Of course, so can too little. Picking the right details to include is the challenge - even more for a biographer than for a novelist. And some of Castelot's choices in that respect are dubious, as I said in my review, but oh well.
André Castelot - Bonaparte (and on the reviewing of biographies)
- 05/04/2011 08:54:03 PM
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I think you are right
- 05/04/2011 10:05:55 PM
207 Views
Yeah.
- 05/04/2011 10:26:42 PM
196 Views
Would you say it is still worth reading it?
- 05/04/2011 10:32:23 PM
212 Views
It depends on your background knowledge and/or willingness to look stuff up.
- 05/04/2011 10:51:46 PM
195 Views
Re: Would you say it is still worth reading it?
- 06/04/2011 01:24:27 PM
281 Views
I am a fan of Bertière
- 06/04/2011 01:37:50 PM
191 Views
Re: I am a fan of Bertière
- 06/04/2011 03:25:31 PM
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Re: I am a fan of Bertière
- 06/04/2011 03:41:07 PM
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His writing didn't strike me as particularly difficult.
- 06/04/2011 06:48:05 PM
205 Views
Re: His writing didn't strike me as particularly difficult.
- 06/04/2011 08:09:21 PM
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Re: André Castelot - Bonaparte (and on the reviewing of biographies)
- 06/04/2011 12:34:31 PM
817 Views
I don't see why biographies are more difficult to review than history books generally.
- 06/04/2011 03:30:37 PM
285 Views