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Which authors' lives have you investigated and why?

novella

novella

Active Member
I have done research--on my own, not as part of a course--on particular authors when their writing has aroused my curiousity about their personal lives.

Some of these are John LeCarre, Salinger, (Joan Didion-John Gregory Dunne-Dominick Dunne), Edward St. Aubyn.

I don't know exactly what distinguished these writers from other writers, whose work I just accept as a standalone creation. Of course, LeCarre often talks about his autobiographical connections to his subject matter, especially the spy crowd. And Salinger is a recluse, which invites investigation.

The others I feel akin to for other, personal reasons.

What is your take on this kind of thing? Is it just the hounding of celebrity or does it have legitimacy as "research"?
 
I think the only 2 writers that I have felt interested to know more about are Hemingway and Marquez. Normally I just want what art or entertainment they have created. Who actually created it means nothing to me.
 
SillyWabbit said:
I think the only 2 writers that I have felt interested to know more about are Hemingway and Marquez. Normally I just want what art or entertainment they have created. Who actually created it means nothing to me.
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What about the Why part? I bet Hemingway is often the subject of readers' curiosity, but why Marquez? Did you learn anything surprising?
 
I feel it's important to find a little something out about every author. I used to teach English lit, and always emphasized the events in the writer's life that were significant with his/her style.

Since you brought up Hemingway, for example, it's important to know that he volunteered to drive ambulance in WWI: His bad eye kept him out of the army, but he just had to be where the action was. Papa's prose owes its terse style to the fact that he began writing as a war journalist, forced to compress as much information as possible into the least amount of column inches.

Later, he would explain his writing as the tip of an unseen iceberg: "The grace of the movement of an iceberg," I paraphrase, "is due to the fact that it is seven-eighths underwater."
 
I have looked at general information about authors such as Nicci French (husband and wife team, actually), my beloved Stephen King and Christopher Fowler and for my book club, I researched the life of Charles Dickens (he once had to do hard labour as a child because of his father's incarceration).

Etc.
 
If I find a book I really like I will inevitably look up the author. i.e read Andy McNab after reading Firewall and got a whole new insight and range of books.
 
I haven't really tried investigating a author but I would like to know from those who have, why do you do it? Do you get more out of the writing?
 
Some of the authors that I've actively researched on my own include Alexander Pope, Virginia Woolf, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Anthony Burgess. Although not essential, I feel that having extra information on writers allows me to enjoy their work better; like a join the dots process that allows you to see the "whole" picture. And this is especially important for writings from previous periods which are very much contextual. So whenever I do carry out research, it is to see if I can place the influences that go into an author's sentence, so to speak.
 
Novella, interesting that you should start this thread.

I recently finished reading "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy. Yesterday my son plopped the book "The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with Arundhati Roy" on my desk with the comment, "I think you'll like this." He knew I'd read "The God of Small Things" and was under the impression that it was a non-fiction book because the only things he's read by Roy were her various political essays. I, on the other hand, only knew of her because of TGOST. I started reading The Check & the Cruise Missile at lunch today, and now have a much deeper understanding and different perspective on her novel. This is a case where researching an author definitely helps your understanding of their writing.
 
Ell said:
Novella, interesting that you should start this thread.

I recently finished reading "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy. Yesterday my son plopped the book "The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with Arundhati Roy" on my desk with the comment, "I think you'll like this." He knew I'd read "The God of Small Things" and was under the impression that it was a non-fiction book because the only things he's read by Roy were her various political essays. I, on the other hand, only knew of her because of TGOST. I started reading The Check & the Cruise Missile at lunch today, and now have a much deeper understanding and different perspective on her novel. This is a case where researching an author definitely helps your understanding of their writing.
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Ell, I had a similar experience with Roy. I knew a lot about God of Small Things and had bought it to read, when I then heard her give a long talk on Alternative Radio about the global dominance of the US or something along those lines, focused on India's traditional structures and economy. I had no idea she was an activist of that stature. (I wonder if she was before the Booker or if that gave her a platform?)
 
After I read "On Writing" by Stephen King, I wanted to find out more about some of the challenges (well, okay -- "vices") he mentioned in the book, so I went reading about him. The only other was more of an "assignment" than a curiosity. I had to study the life of Sylvia Plath and become an "expert" on her and be quizzed by the rest of my AP English class in high school as part of my final grade.
 
I stumbled over Sylvia Plath last year (her name was mentioned in some US sitcom). I looked her books up at amazon and found some great reviews. Her suicide got mentioned and I was fascinated by her short but unbelievably productive life as a writer. I read The Bell Jar and it was awesome.

That woman was a genius.
 
Rogue said:
I stumbled over Sylvia Plath last year (her name was mentioned in some US sitcom). I looked her books up at amazon and found some great reviews. Her suicide got mentioned and I was fascinated by her short but unbelievably productive life as a writer. I read The Bell Jar and it was awesome.

That woman was a genius.
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Plath is an interesting case because it IS her life and death that seem to inspire a following, with her books being just a part of that. Her suicide and her marriage and career AND her writing add up to something that a lot of young people, especially girls, empathize with. I wonder sometimes if she had lived whether her books would have the same popularity today. If she was sitting around pumping out novels and looking middle-aged and complacent, would anyone see The Bell Jar the same way?

Her husband now maintains that antidepressants may have put her in a suicidal frame of mind. Possible, I guess.

I think looking at any author's life closely can give one insights, but also can give one false insights.

For instance, if you know that a certain writer was taught by another writer (Robert Lowell/Plath), you would look for ways the relationship manifests itself in the writing. And if you observe that the student diverges markedly from the teacher, you might read that as reactionary, when it easily might not be.

I think I prefer to know something about my favorite writers (how can you read Woolf, Strachey, and Lawrence without knowing about the Bloomsbury group?) because their lives inform their points of view in every way. This is truer of satirical writers than straightforward novelists.

For instance, no one is ever taught Huckleberry Finn without being taught something about Mark Twain's life and politics, because of the potential for misreading HF.

But one can easily be taught To Kill a Mockingbird without knowing anything about Harper Lee, because that book is not satirical and is largely WYSIWYG in its social themes.
 
novella said:
What about the Why part? I bet Hemingway is often the subject of readers' curiosity, but why Marquez? Did you learn anything surprising?
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Why? haha, funny question. A flower is a flower and it's simply beautiful. So entranced with the why.

Oh... did you ask me a question? :D Sorry, I was rambling!

Why... I was tempted to look because the writing of both authors really stunned me. It was so beautiful I wanted to know what kind of heart could conceive of something so beautiful a that.
 
I'm researching Murakami a bit. I've just ordered Jay Rubin's "Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words" in an effort to find out a bit more about him. I would have read it already, but there's a bit of a backlog at Amazon, apparently. Anyway...

SillyWabbit said:
Why... I was tempted to look because the writing of both authors really stunned me. It was so beautiful I wanted to know what kind of heart could conceive of something so beautiful a that.
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Exactly the reason I'm inspired to find out more.

L2
 
SillyWabbit said:
Why? haha, funny question. A flower is a flower and it's simply beautiful. So entranced with the why.

.
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Golly, Big Ears, without WHY we wouldn't have lightbulbs, we wouldn't have electricity, we wouldn't be able to cure or prevent diseases, we wouldn't have birth control, we wouldn't have agriculture.

Asking why is what makes us human. But then you wouldn't know that, being a small-brained furry thing that lives in a hole.
 
I wrote a paper on Edna St. Vincent Millay and ended up reading her letters. They didn't inform my paper any but were wonderful to read. I don't know why I don't seek out more collections of letters, I really enjoyed Jane Austen's also. I saw the movie about Sylvia Plath and was quite impressed, and I've read a few biographies here and there - Truman Capote's comes to mind, as well as Dorothy Parker, but they were both known more for their lives than the works on some levels. Writing is such a solitary act, I don't know that the life of an author always impacts their work in a way that can be more usefully communicated in a biography than in reading their works themselves.

But then, I'm not a fan of biographies, generally. The most important parts of a person are often unable to be communciated by a recitation of facts about them.
 
novella said:
Ell, I had a similar experience with Roy. I knew a lot about God of Small Things and had bought it to read, when I then heard her give a long talk on Alternative Radio about the global dominance of the US or something along those lines, focused on India's traditional structures and economy. I had no idea she was an activist of that stature. (I wonder if she was before the Booker or if that gave her a platform?)
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She says she's been an activist since she was 21 yrs old. She'd already had several political essays published before The God of Small Things came out. After she won the Booker in 1997, she just became better known to a wider audience.
 
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