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| The Afterlife of Arthur Koestler
JULIAN BARNES |
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The arrogance of the dead. Some biographers respond with humility, others with a competing certitude. Valerie Grove, biographer of the poet Laurie Lee, and before that of the dramatist and children's writer Dodie Smith, recently described her reaction to being offered the Lee project: "I hesitated. I had enjoyed writing the biography of Dodie Smith: she had left a treasure trove of diaries and most of her friends were dead, so it had been straightforward. To write about a living person would be another matter." You mean, it's easier if you've never met the person and most of her friends are dead? Shouldn't this make it...harder? And as for the partiality of diaries... David Cesarani puts a new spin on the biographer's conceit. Though Koestler himself is safely dead, there are a number of people who had known him still inconveniently hanging on. Cesarani writes: "In the course of my research I conducted interviews with many of those who knew Koestler. I treated the results with caution since, over time, Koestler either beguiled or alienated those who came into contact with him." Well, that's put them all in their places. "Wherever possible," Cesarani continues, "...I have relied on his own diaries, letters, notebooks and published writings, along with those of his contemporaries." Not that Cesarani trusts Koestler's autobiography or diaries either. But at least papers can't answer back.
According to Michael Holroyd, once you are dead the biographer owes you nothing. Naturally, he or she owes you the duty of work, with both head and leg, of imagination, of humility (the biographer is always less important than the biographee); but beyond this, Holroyd is certainly right. The biographer is more an examining magistrate than counsel for the prosecution or defense. This does, however, leave open the question of where he or she is coming from. Long after novelists have abandoned the pretense of divine status, life-writers have clung to it. Here, the biography implicitly states, is the objective truth about the creature under examination; here are the key facts, the emotional turning points, the requisite local color, and the final judgment on the work. This is the person's life with the boring bits taken out; it is the boned-and-rolled joint. |
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