A Life in Biography: Recent Episodes
Carl Rollyson
Talks and interviews about the life of biography as experienced by a biographer over forty years and fourteen biographies, dealing with subjects ranging from Sylvia Plath to William Faulkner, Marilyn Monroe to Susan Sontag, and much more.
An important Faulkner critic and biographer introduces us to new way of understanding Faulkner, his fiction, and his life
How does a biographer deal with the world of pornography and so-called porn stars. Jared Stearns knows how in his biography, Pure: The Sexual Revolutions of Marilyn Chambers.
Why Roger Lewis decided to write about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in a biography that refuses to be chronological.
Ray Boomhower talks about what it is like to be a journalist in Vietnam and about what it is like writing biographies of journalists.
Lois Banner, biographer of Marilyn Monroe, turns to Garbo, learns Swedish, and discovers all sorts of important sources not to be found in previous biographies.
Mary Dearborn does a valiant job of dealing with my interruptions in our discussion of her splendid biography of Carson McCullers.
You might want to read Plath’s poem “Mirror” as I explain my reactions to it as a biographer.
How Rebecca Rego Barry discovered Carolyn Wells, and why she wrote a biography of a forgotten literary figure, and how she did it.
Paul Alexander talks about his new state of the art biography of Billie Holiday. I listened and I learned.
A talk with the delightful Marian Janssen who describes her career as a biographer and why she chose to write about the American poet Carolyn Kizer.
I explain what happened when I became part of the lives of my two subjects while researching and writing To Be a Woman: The Life of Jill Craigie and A Private Life of Michael Foot
Al Christie: Hollywood’s Forgotten Film Pioneer by Mark Kearney. A wide ranging discussion of a pioneer Hollywood filmmaker, how to write his biography, and what implications there are for biographers of film figures.
Tim Christian describes the process of doing an audiobook, with some very specific advice and technical specifications.
Cherie Quarters: The Place and People That Inspire Ernest J. Gaines: biography, memoir, history, and an evocation of the material world out of which a great American writer fashioned his fiction.
A talk with Henry Schlesinger about his book on Honey Traps and the biographies of alluring spies.
What happens when the biographer becomes part of the story? Chris Wallace shows us in her unique book, Political Lives.
A discussion of a unique book by Chris Wallace, a journalist turned scholar, and how biographers interact with their subjects.
Join David Fantle and Tom Johnson for a lively discussion of the backstory and performances and production of the MGM musical, Summer Stock
How to deal with a figure so involved with conspiracy theories: What does a biography have to add to history?
What happens when a biographer turns from the themes of his biography to a series of novels that are biographical and then some.
A conversation with Karen Christensen about her edition of Writing The Great Tom as well as her own work on a biography of Valerie Eliot.
Listen to a fascinating discussion of how biographers deal with success and suicide and what happens when you discover details that fundamentally alter what is known about your subject.
Why is it that some important actors are remembered and not others? Find out by listening to this discussion about Dan Van Neste’s biography of Warner Baxter.
Movie making in Hollywood’s heyday, but also much that applies to today, to Netflix, Amazon, and the world of streaming
Two biographers who befriended their subject and lived to tell an inspiring tale of a life well lived and a biography well written.
Sexologist, gerontologist, novelist, poet, anarchist—just some of the work that Alex Comfort accomplished, the subject of a brilliant new biography.
A podcast that reflects on how I got started on studying Sylvia Plath and why I’ve written so many books about her.
Rachel Shteir takes us inside of making of her Jewish Lives biography of the author of The Feminine Mystique
Forthcoming podcasts on new biographies of Betty Friedan, Warner Baxter, Alex Comfort, Eleanor Powell, Jack Ruby, T. S. Eliot and my working in progress on presidential biography
My conversation with neurologist Steven Lomazow about his revelatory book about FDR and the impact of his health on biographies of Roosevelt
My talk with Marsha Gordon about her sensational new biography of an important writer you probably have never heard of.
Knowing your subject may mean knowing his or her discourse, and the same can be said of reading biographies when considering the voices of biographer and subject.
How I go about each day as a biographer, the sources I use, as I assemble my own archive and write my biography—in this case the one I’m working on now: Ronald Colman: Hollywood’s Gentleman Hero
A wide ranging discussion of how to write about science and medicine in a biographical narrative, with some talk of other biographers including Kai Bird and Hermione Lee
A continuation of the previous podcast about the variables in understanding a writer and his world.
Samuel R. Delany presents the writer as biographical subject and what it is the biographer needs to know about literary world and how reputations are made. But first a discussion of a movie, The Wife
What does it mean to be powerful in the literary world, and in what sense should the biographer take it seriously?
The correspondence with Samuel R. Delany continues, with many digressions, but all of them pertaining to biography and the work it can accomplish
The seventh part of what is turning out to be a saga—listened to its entirety it amounts to a class on biography that you can take for free.
A talk about Ed O’Shea’s recent book and what matters about Seamus Heaney’s experience in America
An intervention by the New York Times and the story of a club of unauthorized biographers
I continue the debate with Samuel R. Delany, reading from our correspondence and talking about it. In this episode, Sontag has her say.
Samuel R. Delany continues to point out the error of my ways, and I respond with my own letters and commentary.
I continue to read and comment on my correspondence with Samuel R. Delany concerning the proper behavior of a biographer.
The correspondence of Carl Rollyson and Samuel R. Delany, a latter day version of Oscar’s Wilde’s The Critic as Artist, in the form reminiscent of a Platonic dialogue.
The ethics of biography apply not only to the biographer but also to those who choose to cooperate with a biographer and those who do not.
Pay attention to the subtitle of Finding Jackie: A Life Reinvented. How Oline Eaton deals with the making and unmaking and making of a fascinating life.
We celebrate the late Marion Meade, novelist and biographer of Dorothy Parker, Buster Keaton, Woody Allen, and others by her fellow biographers and friends.
Some penetrating questions and comments on my practice as a biography in an interview with Karen Christensen
My resident Pacific Islands historian/biographer, Doug Munro,, discusses the successes and failures with sources, in the archives and in person, and I respond with my own tales of horror and deliverance
Part 2 of a conversation with Pacific Islands historian/biographer, Doug Munro, about the cross overs between history and biography, and on the polarization in Australia and here.
Historical archeologist Jack Elliott explains why we need a new biography of Faulkner’s great-grandfather. Listen to an authentic Mississippi voice!
A conversation about why history was not enough for Doug Munro, and why he turned to biography, which is also quite not enough
My conversation with J. Michael Lennon, Mailer biographer and interlocutor reflecting on a lifetime with his subject.
Richard Selzer inspired the work of a generation of doctor/writers. Listen to how he did it, and how his biography is shaping up.
I talk with Norman Lock about his American novel series, and why it should matter to biographers. This is my longest, most searching podcast.
How a biographer begins with nothing—no contacts, no track record—and is successful anyway, writing biographies of Faron Young and Marty Robbins. And wait until you hear about her newsletter!
Are you the same person you were when you were a child? How this question pertains to biography—the one you are writing and mine.
A conversation with Kathleen Wickham about her book, James Meredith: Breaking the Barrier” and her other work dealing with journalists who covered the 1962 riot at Ole Miss
Elsie Robinson had 20 millions readers but no archive. How two biographers set about reconstructing her life.
The first biography of the adult film star and how a biographer goes about the research, finding an agent and publisher.
We range over the many places and people of an erotic and intellectual life spanning Europe, the U.S., and Israel with Susan Sontag, Gershom Scholem, Herbert Marcuse, and many more radical thinkers.
How do you become a biographer? Hear one story about it and Beverly Gray’s adventures with Roger Corman and Ron Howard
Listen to Danny Fingeroth speak from an undisclosed location about his work in progress.
LIsten to Aaron Sachs talk about his new book, Up From the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times. I call it a palimpsest of biography in my New York Sun Review.
A talk with Wylie McLallen about Hemingway and the rise of modern literature, publishers of biography, and much else.
Polar exploration and Warren Harding as explained from an Amtrak platform in Charleston, West Virginia
85 year old Jim Dougherty’s compelling saga about a great biography that was almost not published.
Biographer Andrew Wilson talks about his work in fiction and fact, biographies and novels.
A wide ranging discussion of an artist interned during World War I and what he made of his life and art coming out of that trauma.
What happens when a novelist reads, writes like his subject, and puts that subject in a novel?
We delve deeply into a kind of time capsule of 1956, when Marilyn met the Queen and so much else
A follow up to my New York Sun review of Lee Kravetz’s marvelously inventive novel about Sylvia Plath and the conditions of her life and her creativity.
What goes into an audiobook: the commitment, the performance, the technical details and equipment, and why, in this case, it matters that we hear Faulkner’s voice.
A conversation with Timothy Christian, who provides new insight into the Hemingway marriage, and into the way biographies are constructed and managed between biographers and their sources.
Learn how Kathleen Brady did Plutarch proud and managed, as well, to write a biography for our times.
The Recovered Life of Isaac Anderson, a well composed biography by Alicia K. Jackson, published by University Press of Mississippi.
A wide ranging talk about Hillerman and Morris’s other subjects and how they fit into his conception of biography.
A biography of the first Black archeologist that tells us a good deal not only about Black history but about the enticements of biography.
A talk with prolific biographer and psychoanalyst, Jay Martin, about exile, displaced peoples, and why it should matter to you.
We range from speaking about the importance of place in memoir and biography to the real and imaginary landscapes of writers, and much more.
A discussion with David Veltman and Kerstin Maria Pahl about their contributions to a new book about biography, Fear of Theory.
From Kansas City to medieval alchemy and a lot in between, the life of Evan S. Connell and what it took for a biographer to cover the interstices of this important writer.
What happens when Frederick Douglass and Andrew Johnson track one another in a Plutarchian biography of parallel lives in the throes of Reconstruction?
A conversation with Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and Peter K. Steinberg about their edition of The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill
Join a conversation in progress about what Plutarch means to us and how to make poetry of Plutarch and biography.
My take on a new book, Fear of Theory, and why biographers are reluctant to theorize. Also, a preview of coming attractions.
Cathy Curtis gets into the nitty gritty of biography, explaining how she does her work, why she chose Elizabeth Hardwick, and why her next subject is Edna O’Brien
A deep dive into the life of one of America’s greatest poets and how a biographer goes about her work. Don’t miss Holladay’s concluding remarks about how to approach the poet.
How a biography of a war correspondent gets done with a veteran biographer of war correspondents, Ray Boomhower.
Faulkner’s performance of gayness, why it was important, how it enters his work, and why a book such as Gay Faulkner destablizes biography is a good thing.
Why write another biography of? Three biographers answer the question for Robert E. Lee, Oliver Cromwell, and Winston Churchill
Part of a continuing series on the biographical novel and the way it contributes to our understanding of biographical subjects—this time with Dina Davis who does justice to Assia Wevill
A wide-ranging discussion with Karen Christensen, publisher and biographer, about libel, indemnity clauses, the widow Eliot and others widows and wives.
A wide ranging discussion of how biographers treat the issue of interpretation, how much to comment as opposed to just telling the story.
I explain why in terms of my own experience researching and writing about the life of Sylvia Plath
A wide-ranging discussion of Billy Wilder’s career, why McBride decided to do a biographical/critical study of the director, and the different objectives of biographical and critical studies in view of McBride’s own work on Frank Capra, John Ford, Steven Spielberg, Orson Welles, and others.
A talk about a great figure in the Civil Rights movement, Fannie Lou Hamer, with a master biographer, Kate Clifford Larson
Introductions to five new biographies of miscreants and saints: Louis Lorax, Mary Todd Lincoln, Robert Maxwell, Simone Weil, and Queen Victoria
Brief forays into six biographies of Monica Jones and Philip Larkin, D. H. Lawrence, Alfred Hitchcock, Helen Frankenthaler, William Blake, and Napoleon
More interviews with biographers, biographical novelists, discussions of issues that concern biographers and readers, and my take on several new biographies published in 2021.
Part 5 of a long-running series about the principles, practices, and mechanics of biography. This episode concentrates on the business of biography.
Part 4 of a discussion of the principles, practices, and mechanics of biography with Tim Christian, biographer of Mary Hemingway, and Carol Sklenicka, biographer of Raymond Carver and Alice Adams
Susan Ronald explains why FDR chose Joseph Kennedy, a man without diplomatic skills, to be ambassador to Great Britain between 1938 and 1940
Talking with Connie Palmen about her biographical novel written in the voice of Ted Hughes: Your Story, My Story. We discuss the principles, practices, and mechanics of biographical fiction.
Think there is a sharp dividing line between biography and biographical fiction? Jerome Charyn disagrees.
A special treat in this episode: Tim Christian reads from his forthcoming biography of Mary Hemingway.
More with Tim Christian & Carol Sklenicka about the principles, practices & mechanics of biography with examples from our work
Episode 66: Talking with Tim Christian (biographer of Mary Hemingway) and Carol Sklenicka (biographers of Raymond Carver and Alice Adams) about the principles and practices of biography.
What it means to circle around your subject in a biography and how that circling is hermeneutical. I draw on my biography of Lillian Hellman for examples.
My encounters with Janet Malcolm’s assault on biography, beginning in 1994 and continuing through several books of mine in the new millennium.
The biographer of Raymond Carver explains what drew her to Alice Adams and the history of the generation that came into its own after World War II
A wide-ranging discussion of why Ethel Rosenberg matters, what is new in her story, and why American writers continue to be obsessed with her life.
I draw on my experience of writing biographies of William Faulkner, Michael Foot, and Amy Lowell, to explain why biographies have to be about the whole person, notwithstanding the charge of literary prurience.
My view of what has happened to Bailey’s biography of Roth, how reviewers and readers have responded, and why what I’ve seen so far is inadequate.
What goes into a dual biography, and what a sociologist can bring to the study of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.
A wide-ranging interview about how biography gets done, both authorized and unauthorized, with Nadel’s subjects, Leonard Cohen & Philip Roth, and more.
What happens during and after interviews, with examples drawn from my biographies of Lillian Hellman, Rebecca West, Susan Sontag, Jill Craigie, and Michael Foot.
What happens during and after interviews with subjects ranging from Walter Matthau to Ellen Burstyn to Richard Wilbur.
Mike Peros describes how he became a biographer, how he researched his biographies of José Ferrer and Dan Duryea, and much more.
Through the examples of Marilyn Monroe, Amy Lowell, William Faulkner, and Sylvia Plath, I explain why so many biographies of the same subject are published.
A conversation with Bob Batchelor about his work from John Updike to Stan Lee and much more about biography and its place in the world and in our imaginations.
A wide ranging discussion of the choices a biographer makes and how John Matteson put together his group of figures present at the battle of Frederickburg
A wide ranging of discussion of a great character actress, active in both silent and sound film, her relationships with Ronald Colman and Bette Davis, and her career as a writer of novels and memoirs.
What it takes to write a biography of the Mankiewicz brothers and other issues biographers encounter.
A wide ranging discussion of Iris Jamahl Dunkle’s new biography, including reflections on the biographer as villain and how biography can be an act of restitution.
I speak with Richard Bradford about how he became a biographer, the role biography should play in literary study, and why he chose to write about Ernest Hemingway, Patricia Highsmith and others.
All things biographical and how Faulkner, the man and the writer, approached the Civil War.
How does a biographer recreate the past the milieu of a subject’s life. I draw on my own experience in biographies of William Faulkner, Lillian Hellman, Rebecca West, Michael Foot, and others.
William Souder explains his attraction to Steinbeck, what it takes to do a biography, the audience you can expect to reach as a biographer, and much much more.
A wide ranging discussion of Larry Wells’s memories of the Faulkner family, of Faulkner biographers, Joseph Blotner and Carvel Collins, and what it takes to research and write biography, which often feels like a Henry James story.
We talk about how Heather Clark became interested in Plath, how she came to write the biography, how biography is a product of its age, and much more.
A wide-ranging discussion of biography, how to work on literary figures Melville’s “black consciousness” and much more.
Slavery, capitalism, what went into the making of Washington’s life and those of his contemporaries—plus Alexis Coe puts THE BIG QUESTION to me.
A wide ranging discussion of presidential biography and why Alexis Coe decided on what has been called a “historiographical intervention.”
My experience over 40 years of contacting sources and how they responded, and how I got them to respond.
Much talk about Emily’s book, Loving Sylvia Plath, how students and other readers react to Plath, and the role biography plays in the mixed reactions to her work.
Discussing my experience and Faulkner’s in Hollywood and how all that gets on the page.
Describing my experience and Faulkner’s in Hollywood and how it all gets onto the page.
A conversation about Frida Kahlo and her three years in America with a great cast of characters, including Henry Ford, the Rockefeller’s, Georgia O’Keefee, Louis Nevelson and much, much more.
We discuss the first full-length biography of Jimmy Carter, his achievements and failures, his rise from the bottom third to the top third of U.S. presidents, and much more about what a biography can accomplish.
Working on Lillian Hellman, Martha Gellhorn, Norman Mailer, Rebecca West, Susan Sontag, Jill Craigie, Michael Foot, Dana Andrews, Walter Brennan, Amy Lowell, Sylvia Plath, William Faulkner.
I discuss novels about Marilyn Monroe, Walt Disney, Martha Gellhorn, H. G. Wells and mull over a universe in which biography and biographical novels can co-exist.
An account of the campaigns orchestrated against biographers, using as examples biographies of T. E. Lawrence and Susan Sontag.
The sorry state of reviewing biography as reviewers turns in what amounts to book reports, letting down the genre of biography and those who practice it.
I read and discuss a section from The Life of William Faulkner, pointing out my use of evidence, and concluding that I am my own best evidence.
I consider the question in the light of biographies of Sylvia Plath, William Faulkner, Olson Welles, John F. Kennedy, and others.
A wide ranging discussion of the anathemas against biography perpetuated by modern writers, including Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Somerset Maugham, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Anthony Powell.
I read a review of my book, The Last Days of Sylvia Plath, in order to discuss the methodology of biography and of the reviewer.
What to say about the epistemology of biography and why it is sometimes better to not have been there, but to see it all from afar and yet in closeup, as the past is recreated in the biographer’s imagination.
- Is the subject worthy of a biography. 2. Is the subject too small? 3. Why another biography of?
Why it is important to do a proposal? Why not just write the book? This podcast tells you why.
When does it make sense to use the present tense in a biography? Examples from the work of Noel Riley Fitch, William Faulkner, and yours truly.
Biography is its own form of knowledge, a view that many readers and reviewers of biography are reluctant to acknowledge, or do not even consider.
Listeners who want to know how to navigate the varied access to sources with different subjects, or how to present a new vision without new sources.
What to do when not all parts of your biographical subject’s life are equal, when the first part of the life seems the most exciting, for example, or when interest only really builds in the last part of the subject’s life.
The answer to who deserves a biography is everyone, or anyone. It all depends on the materials you have, if the story moves you, and you know how to tell it.
My tribute to one of the great biographers of our time and why her work matters, and why biography matters.
My account for forty years of dealing with fair use, biographical subjects, and publishers.
How dating all the days of a life provide a different way of approaching what is left out in other biographies.
I look at how biographers have begun their biographies and the merits of different kinds of openings and why biography has been called factitious.
I read from the last paragraphs of Plath biographies, commenting on them, and explain my own choices in writing American Isis: The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath and The Last Days of Sylvia Plath.
I give a sense of the interplay between Faulkner the man, his fiction, and his film writing.
I explore why it is that Sylvia Plath never seemed to be aware of Rebecca West, a world class writer, who still has so much to say to the readers of Plath and of modern literature.
Why I wrote these two books and what in the world Plath and Faulkner have to do with the world around us.
How I began my work on Faulkner; what I mean by an intertextual biography; why Joan Crawford matters in a Faulkner biography; Faulkner as diplomat; what Faulkner to read first.
In about twelve minutes I talk about what it was like in the last days of Sylvia Plath, how people have reacted to her death, and why I think it wasn’t all just sad.