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[CCBC-Net] Biography
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From: jomalley at caruspub.com <jomalley>
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 09:30:00 -0600
Okay, I get to exonerate myself for my missent message last week, which was in my attempts to keep Marc Aronson apprized of this fascination while he's trekking back and forth across half the country by sharing his thoughts with the list:
Dear folks at CCBC-net, I apologize for joining in late. Ever since I've moved to Carus Publishing I've been too busy to be a regular member of any listservs and have had to rely on Judy O'Malley an dothe rfriends to keep me up to date. It seems ot me that there are basically two different appeals in either writing or reading a biography. One is the hope to find out something new about a person you are interested in. This newness ranges from hot gossip, such as in many adult "tall all" bios about whom that person slept with, or hated, or schemed against -- all the fun stuff Roger alluded to -- to some fresh insight about that person's character. For example, I wanted to read Mornings on Horseback because it explained Theodore Roosevelt's character in a new way, linking his asthma with his relationship with his father. I enjoy reading about Roosevelt, so it was a treat to have a new set of tools to use in making sense of him. The second kind of appeal in biography is encapsulated in that old phrase,
"the ife and times of . . . " No life makes sense unless you understand its context, so to write a good biography you are often impelled to consider the entire world in which the person lived and acted. Otherwise, his or her actions are merely odd, or objectionable, or mythic. Certainly, that is what I felt about Ralegh--he seemed to offer a window into his times.
I suspect that teachers are drawn to biography for both reasons. They hope students will find individuals in the past interesting b/c of the quirky, or moving, or romantic details of those lives biographers are careful to include in their works. That serves a reading goal--kids like the bios and read them, which makes teachers feel good. Then they hope reading about the individuals gets kids into the periods in which the bios are set, which serves a social studies purpose. The problem I have with this is somewhat different from Maia's objection -- afterall, all writing about the past, or the present for that matter, includes biographical information, it would seem artificial to say that you could write a narrative about, say, the Napoleonic Period, but not about Napoleon, or about the Revolution, but not Washington -- it is, rather, that beating behind teacher's love affair with biography and historical fiction is the idea that the way to get kids interested in the past is through identification. Read about someone like you in another time and you will come to care about that time.
The problem with that is that folks in the past were not like you, they had very different assumptions -- that is the pastness of the past. That is why writing by the person him or herself is useful as primary evidence, but is not a complete biography. So if we read the diary of a soldier involved in the Indian Wars, we need a biographer to explain his beliefs about the Indians he is fighting. If we read the diary of a nineteenth century New England girl, we need a biographer to explain why her hopes are organized around marriage.
A biography offers a double entry into the past: the life of the individual, and the guiding hand of the biographer to put that life in its context. That seems like two good reasons to write, and to read, a book.
Marc Aronson
Received on Mon 06 Nov 2000 09:30:00 AM CST
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 09:30:00 -0600
Okay, I get to exonerate myself for my missent message last week, which was in my attempts to keep Marc Aronson apprized of this fascination while he's trekking back and forth across half the country by sharing his thoughts with the list:
Dear folks at CCBC-net, I apologize for joining in late. Ever since I've moved to Carus Publishing I've been too busy to be a regular member of any listservs and have had to rely on Judy O'Malley an dothe rfriends to keep me up to date. It seems ot me that there are basically two different appeals in either writing or reading a biography. One is the hope to find out something new about a person you are interested in. This newness ranges from hot gossip, such as in many adult "tall all" bios about whom that person slept with, or hated, or schemed against -- all the fun stuff Roger alluded to -- to some fresh insight about that person's character. For example, I wanted to read Mornings on Horseback because it explained Theodore Roosevelt's character in a new way, linking his asthma with his relationship with his father. I enjoy reading about Roosevelt, so it was a treat to have a new set of tools to use in making sense of him. The second kind of appeal in biography is encapsulated in that old phrase,
"the ife and times of . . . " No life makes sense unless you understand its context, so to write a good biography you are often impelled to consider the entire world in which the person lived and acted. Otherwise, his or her actions are merely odd, or objectionable, or mythic. Certainly, that is what I felt about Ralegh--he seemed to offer a window into his times.
I suspect that teachers are drawn to biography for both reasons. They hope students will find individuals in the past interesting b/c of the quirky, or moving, or romantic details of those lives biographers are careful to include in their works. That serves a reading goal--kids like the bios and read them, which makes teachers feel good. Then they hope reading about the individuals gets kids into the periods in which the bios are set, which serves a social studies purpose. The problem I have with this is somewhat different from Maia's objection -- afterall, all writing about the past, or the present for that matter, includes biographical information, it would seem artificial to say that you could write a narrative about, say, the Napoleonic Period, but not about Napoleon, or about the Revolution, but not Washington -- it is, rather, that beating behind teacher's love affair with biography and historical fiction is the idea that the way to get kids interested in the past is through identification. Read about someone like you in another time and you will come to care about that time.
The problem with that is that folks in the past were not like you, they had very different assumptions -- that is the pastness of the past. That is why writing by the person him or herself is useful as primary evidence, but is not a complete biography. So if we read the diary of a soldier involved in the Indian Wars, we need a biographer to explain his beliefs about the Indians he is fighting. If we read the diary of a nineteenth century New England girl, we need a biographer to explain why her hopes are organized around marriage.
A biography offers a double entry into the past: the life of the individual, and the guiding hand of the biographer to put that life in its context. That seems like two good reasons to write, and to read, a book.
Marc Aronson
Received on Mon 06 Nov 2000 09:30:00 AM CST
