July 1st, 2010 / 11:47 pm
Snippets
Snippets
Kristen Iskandrian—
What’s your favorite biography? Autobiography?
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Meta
I Am Alive and You Are Dead by Emmanuel Carrere
Flush — the biography Virginia Woolf wrote of Elizabeth Barrett-Browning’s cocker-spaniel. For real.
If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor by Bruce Campbell
I have high hopes for the Twain autobiography finally coming out this year.
Any biography by Hermione Lee (Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather) is well worth the read. Also really enjoyed Dorothy Parker’s biography by Marion Meade until the part where Parker gets happy. Not so interesting when she’s not drinking shoe polish.
Also have a thing for celebrity biographies/memoirs. Most don’t have any literary merit, but are quite entertaining regardless.
I loved Tina Tuner’s autobiography.
Cellini: Autobiography
Life of Johnson: Biography
Klaus Kinski: Kinski Uncut
Martin Amis: Experience
James Salter: Burning the Days
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Heavier than Heaven (bio of Kurt Cobain)
Ingmar Bergman’s autobiography “Magic Lantern” is amazing.
Imperial San Francisco, biography of a city
Sedaris
Thomas Bernhard: Gathering Evidence
Malcolm X, yo.
I Am Alive and You Are Dead by Emmanuel Carrere
Flush — the biography Virginia Woolf wrote of Elizabeth Barrett-Browning’s cocker-spaniel. For real.
If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor by Bruce Campbell
I have high hopes for the Twain autobiography finally coming out this year.
Any biography by Hermione Lee (Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather) is well worth the read. Also really enjoyed Dorothy Parker’s biography by Marion Meade until the part where Parker gets happy. Not so interesting when she’s not drinking shoe polish.
Also have a thing for celebrity biographies/memoirs. Most don’t have any literary merit, but are quite entertaining regardless.
I loved Tina Tuner’s autobiography.
Cellini: Autobiography
Life of Johnson: Biography
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Moab is my Washpot by Stephen Fry
On the subject of Mr. El-Shabazz, there’s a great joint biography of him and MLK by Louis E. Lomax. It’s called ‘To Kill a Black Man’.
Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist by Alexander Berkman is pretty good, if you’re into that sort of thing. Also, Man is Wolf to Man, Janusz Bardach.
Klaus Kinski: Kinski Uncut
Martin Amis: Experience
James Salter: Burning the Days
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Heavier than Heaven (bio of Kurt Cobain)
Ingmar Bergman’s autobiography “Magic Lantern” is amazing.
Imperial San Francisco, biography of a city
Sedaris
Thomas Bernhard: Gathering Evidence
The bestest auto-bios ever:
Malraux’s Anti-Memoirs. Amazing. Lives up to its title.
Robert Graves’ Goodbye To All That (the earlier, unpolished version)
Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet, if that counts.
Word.
Malcolm X, yo.
Oh, fuck. And Before Night Falls. One of the best books, period.
I like Greg Johnson’s biography of Joyce Carol Oates (Invisible Woman), which pays more attention to the stories and novels than most biographies do.
John Adams by David McCullough. Some historians hate McCullough. He has an almost novelistic approach: he makes imaginative assumptions, takes lengthy cracks at interiority (based on craploads of reasearch, sure, but still– in some cases, maybe even most cases, there’s just no way to know).
But I guess that’s why I like his work so much. It has a fictiony flavor.
The Story of Tatiana by Jacques Baynac
Robert Graves’ Goodbye To All That, Roxana Robinson’s Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life, and Susan Compo’s Warren Oates: A Wild Life. Full disclosure: Compo is a friend of mine.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Moab is my Washpot by Stephen Fry
On the subject of Mr. El-Shabazz, there’s a great joint biography of him and MLK by Louis E. Lomax. It’s called ‘To Kill a Black Man’.
Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist by Alexander Berkman is pretty good, if you’re into that sort of thing. Also, Man is Wolf to Man, Janusz Bardach.
You Can’t Win by Jack Black
Anybody ever read Casanova’s History of My Life? It’s something like 4000 pages long. Someday I’ll get to it.
Black Sun: a biography of Harry Crosby by Geoffrey Wolfe.
Crosby’s life was an example we should all follow. Up until he shot his mistress and then himself.
I liked the Charles Schultz biography. It’s the only one I’ve ever read though.
Miles: The Autobiography.
if you like miles davis, and you like the word “motherfucker,” there cannot possibly be a better book.
Biographies:
James Joyce by Richard Ellmann
Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk
Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist by Anthony Cronin
Beethoven by Maynard Solomon
The Color of Truth by Kai Bird
Herman Melville by Newton Arvin
Herman Melville: His World and Work by Andrew Delbanco
Henry Adams by Ernest Samuels
Gore Vidal by Fred Kaplan
Autobiographies:
The Education of Henry Adams
Speak, Memory
The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell
Probably there’re more but I can’t think of any.
Rimbaud in Abyssinia by Alain Borer
The bestest auto-bios ever:
Malraux’s Anti-Memoirs. Amazing. Lives up to its title.
Robert Graves’ Goodbye To All That (the earlier, unpolished version)
Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet, if that counts.
Word.
Oh, fuck. And Before Night Falls. One of the best books, period.
I like Greg Johnson’s biography of Joyce Carol Oates (Invisible Woman), which pays more attention to the stories and novels than most biographies do.
Julius Caesar biography by Adrian Goldsworthy
Marcel Proust: A Life by Jean-Yves Tadie
Keepers of the Flame: Literary Estates and the Rise of Biography by Ian Hamilton
Diane Middlebrook’s bio of Anne Sexton.
Robert Caro: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
Edmund White: Genet.
John Richardson: A Life of Picasso, Volumes 1-3. Volume 4 forthcoming. I hope. Please don’t die old man.
Because I Was Flesh by Edward Dahlberg
John Adams by David McCullough. Some historians hate McCullough. He has an almost novelistic approach: he makes imaginative assumptions, takes lengthy cracks at interiority (based on craploads of reasearch, sure, but still– in some cases, maybe even most cases, there’s just no way to know).
But I guess that’s why I like his work so much. It has a fictiony flavor.
The three volume Richard Nixon bios by Stephen Ambrose
A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates by Blake Bailey
He’s a damn good story writer too, Kyle, if you’ve not happened to have seen his work. Never in stores anymore, but worth the effort to find.
Beneath the Underdog by Mingus. J. Parini’s Robert Frost, and not just because he’s my homeboy.
I read Volume I and it was great. I have Volume 2 and haven’t read it yet.
Yes, the Mingus autobiography is incredible.
The Devil and Sonny Liston and Hellfire by Nick Tosches.
@ jon– I second you, man. And knowing that Miles Davis died shortly after the publication of that book makes the last chapter so sad. If I remember right, he says something like, “I feel stronger now than I ever have in my entire life.” One too many speedballs, I guess.
Yeah, it’s a great book, though for my money, Mingus’ best prose is his treatise on rhythm in the liner notes to ‘Black Saint and the Sinner Lady.’ Or his essay about teaching your cat to use the toilet…
The Story of Tatiana by Jacques Baynac
2am. That man started signing copies of that book at 7pm, and was still signing until 2am. And I was flapping books for him the whole time.
2am.
With Kurt Loder!
(The place we rented at AWP was full—FULL—of celebrity biographies.)
Robert Graves’ Goodbye To All That, Roxana Robinson’s Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life, and Susan Compo’s Warren Oates: A Wild Life. Full disclosure: Compo is a friend of mine.
You Can’t Win by Jack Black
Anybody ever read Casanova’s History of My Life? It’s something like 4000 pages long. Someday I’ll get to it.
Dino is great, too. I was half as interested in Dean Martin as Jerry Lee Lewis, and Dino is about twice as long, but I liked it almost as much as Hellfire.
I wish Stanley Booth would publish his Gram Parsons bio.
Harpo Speaks
Black Sun: a biography of Harry Crosby by Geoffrey Wolfe.
Crosby’s life was an example we should all follow. Up until he shot his mistress and then himself.
I liked the Charles Schultz biography. It’s the only one I’ve ever read though.
Miles: The Autobiography.
if you like miles davis, and you like the word “motherfucker,” there cannot possibly be a better book.
Biographies:
James Joyce by Richard Ellmann
Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk
Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist by Anthony Cronin
Beethoven by Maynard Solomon
The Color of Truth by Kai Bird
Herman Melville by Newton Arvin
Herman Melville: His World and Work by Andrew Delbanco
Henry Adams by Ernest Samuels
Gore Vidal by Fred Kaplan
Autobiographies:
The Education of Henry Adams
Speak, Memory
The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell
Probably there’re more but I can’t think of any.
Rimbaud in Abyssinia by Alain Borer
Julius Caesar biography by Adrian Goldsworthy
Marcel Proust: A Life by Jean-Yves Tadie
Keepers of the Flame: Literary Estates and the Rise of Biography by Ian Hamilton
Diane Middlebrook’s bio of Anne Sexton.
Robert Caro: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
Edmund White: Genet.
John Richardson: A Life of Picasso, Volumes 1-3. Volume 4 forthcoming. I hope. Please don’t die old man.
Because I Was Flesh by Edward Dahlberg
The three volume Richard Nixon bios by Stephen Ambrose
A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates by Blake Bailey
He’s a damn good story writer too, Kyle, if you’ve not happened to have seen his work. Never in stores anymore, but worth the effort to find.
Beneath the Underdog by Mingus. J. Parini’s Robert Frost, and not just because he’s my homeboy.
I read Volume I and it was great. I have Volume 2 and haven’t read it yet.
Yes, the Mingus autobiography is incredible.
The Devil and Sonny Liston and Hellfire by Nick Tosches.
@ jon– I second you, man. And knowing that Miles Davis died shortly after the publication of that book makes the last chapter so sad. If I remember right, he says something like, “I feel stronger now than I ever have in my entire life.” One too many speedballs, I guess.
Yeah, it’s a great book, though for my money, Mingus’ best prose is his treatise on rhythm in the liner notes to ‘Black Saint and the Sinner Lady.’ Or his essay about teaching your cat to use the toilet…
That is a good one. It’s in a newish edition from NYRB, too.
Caro’s Robert Moses is kick-ass, too.
2am. That man started signing copies of that book at 7pm, and was still signing until 2am. And I was flapping books for him the whole time.
2am.
With Kurt Loder!
(The place we rented at AWP was full—FULL—of celebrity biographies.)
Dino is great, too. I was half as interested in Dean Martin as Jerry Lee Lewis, and Dino is about twice as long, but I liked it almost as much as Hellfire.
I wish Stanley Booth would publish his Gram Parsons bio.
Harpo Speaks
Wondrous Strange (about Glenn Gould)
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (by Andy Warhol)
Also:
Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball, Donald Hall
Robert Penn Warren, Joseph Blotner
I like some snarky ones, too, like Bellow, by James Atlas
Good call.
I’ll check out Dino at some point. Thanks.
Amen. I want to change my answer above. I’ll go with the Tosches as well.
That is a good one. It’s in a newish edition from NYRB, too.
Caro’s Robert Moses is kick-ass, too.
Wondrous Strange (about Glenn Gould)
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (by Andy Warhol)
Also:
Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball, Donald Hall
Robert Penn Warren, Joseph Blotner
I like some snarky ones, too, like Bellow, by James Atlas
Good call.
I’ll check out Dino at some point. Thanks.
YES! What an incredible book, dear Lord!
Amen. I want to change my answer above. I’ll go with the Tosches as well.
Pretty sure it’ll be Twain’s autobiography that comes out later this year. Described by the publisher as “400 pages of bile.”
YES! What an incredible book, dear Lord!
Pretty sure it’ll be Twain’s autobiography that comes out later this year. Described by the publisher as “400 pages of bile.”
A Tragic Honesty by Blake Bailey (Richard Yates’ bio)
Seriously can. not. wai.t.
A Tragic Honesty by Blake Bailey (Richard Yates’ bio)
Seriously can. not. wai.t.