The Wednesday Web Browser: Point/Counterpoint on the Well-Being of Biography
Within a span of a few mouse clicks, I ran across and read these two pieces on the Web:
On the one hand, Kathryn Hughes’s warning about “the death of life writing”: “Seen close up, and with an eye to proper detail, biography appears in rather a bad way. ‘Crisis’ would probably be putting it too strongly, not least because it suggests a certain convulsive energy. ‘Sclerosis’ might be nearer.”
And on the other, the latest issue of The Biographer’s Craft, suggesting that the vigorous state of the field might warrant the establishment of an “American Organization of Biographers.”
I must say I was impressed by the quite dramatic differences in opinion. What say you, practicing writers?