Tag Archives: Sojourner Truth

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Do Biographies Shrink their Subjects?

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Maybe it is enough to revel in the miraculous achievements of a larger-than-life figure.

Biographer Nell Painter remembers working on a study of the former slave and abolitionist, Sojourner Truth, who led a remarkable life of advocacy over a period spanning the mid-1800s. But several years ago Painter told a C-Span interviewer that her “closeness to me receded” as she worked her way deeper into Sojourner’s life. She respected her subject to the end, but finally doubted they would connect in a conversation. Sometimes the great and good are better left to be appreciated for works in their time.  Pick the right moments from our own lives and we can all look a little strange to future generations.

If this happens with even a pivotal and influential leader, I wonder if there is a general pattern that dictates that a hero who triggers the writing or reading of a full biography will look a little less amazing after sustained attention.

Over many years of reading I’ve sensed this effect, sometimes because of documented lapses of judgment that began to accumulate. More or less honest chronicles of another life are bound to bring even the most lauded subject back to earth. Clearly, biographies ‘humanize’ their subjects.

Reading about another’s life can rise from the simplest of motives. We want to know more about how someone pieced together an exemplary existence. What luck or brilliance worked to their benefit?  What friends or associates were influential, or lucky to have them in their lives? These kinds of questions lead me to books written by or about Joan Didion, Griffin Dunne, Frank Sinatra, Woodrow Wilson, Steve Jobs, Riccardo Muti, Dimitri Shostakovich, Oliver Sacks, Jim Henson and many others. Even at the hands of a first-rate biographer, and perhaps because of the writer, some luminaries can lose their luster. In a few cases I’ve encountered enough documented boorishness to happily put the book aside. In our current moment we probably don’t learn as much from someone’s character faults. We have Donald Trump for that. I take the fickle reader’s option of moving onto something that is likely to be more affirming.

It is easy to see why some distance opened up between Painter and her subject, or why I never made it to the final pages of biographical details of Elon Musk, Frank Lloyd Wright or Griffin Dunne. It is certainly not just the subject’s fault that chapters of their documented existence show a person that might be a bore, even if we had the chance to share a lunch with them. We all have our stories. Even so, it can be a long slog to follow a narcissist through a 500-page history of their personal and professional experiences.

There is also the very real chance that a biographer is a bad match for their subject, incapable of doing justice to the life they sought to illuminate. Think of Kitty Kelley’s unauthorized and widely criticized biography of Frank Sinatra (1986).  In sharp contrast, David Maraniss seemed to be a good match for his biography of the younger Bill Clinton, First in His Class (1996). Maraniss marveled at how this quick study was able to so easily connect with others. The documentation of these instances was compelling enough to shape my research for several years, growing into a  book-length study (The Rhetorical Personality, 2010).

Maybe it is enough that figures like Didion or Sinatra had such miraculous talents that their work is reason enough to be an admirer. When life happens, its myriad details can easily get messy.

There is another issue that may arise more from the reader than the original writer. We live in an age when many of us are living through episodes of what is sometimes called “moral injury.”  This occurs when a person is forced to witness physical or psychological atrocities. Writing about political influence was most of my life’s work, possibly leading to the development of a habit of quitting a study about a political leader who exhibited massive failures of character. I seemed to have had my fill. Perhaps a more analytic reader than I would persevere and be the better for it.

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Lunch Anyone?

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I’m always interested in the response of my friends to a simple question. If they could conjure up anybody from the past or present, who would they like to have a leisurely lunch with? 

Sometimes we could use some new conversation-starters.  In my circle the usual topics run all the way from A to B, from the cool and wet summer, to the latest norm-violating behavior of our President. There are also some local issues that are good for a few minutes of hand-wringing, including plans to build an unwanted pipeline through our valley, or the always-good-for-a-comment angst about our state’s high property taxes.

But sometimes it’s worth taking a leap into the unknown, or even the frankly impossible. I’m always interested in an acquaintance’s response to a simple question:  if they could conjure up a meeting with anybody, who would they like to join for a leisurely lunch? A meal can not only satisfy an appetite, but ruminations with a good conversationalist can stay with us a long time.

All of us come into contact with remarkable people, friends or strangers with wonderful stories to tell or experiences that extend well beyond our own. It is usually just an intellectual exercise to imagine what it might be like to spend time over lunch with a famous person. But people we already know can be just as interesting. Think of the conversations with familiar companions that bubble up in Louis Malle’s My Dinner with Andre (1981) or Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight (2013).

To be sure, it sometimes works out that someone with intimate knowledge of a notable achiever may come away from a meeting chastened. More than a few writers have admitted that their living or deceased subjects remained interesting, but not necessarily as candidates for a fantasized social outing.  Biographer Nell Painter remembers working on a study of the famous slave preacher, Sojourner Truth.  But several years ago Painter told a C-Span interviewer that her “closeness to me receded” as she worked her way deeper into Sojourner’s life.  She respected her subject to the end, but finally doubted they would connect in a conversation. Sometimes a little distance keeps the great and good on a pedestal where we want them.

In a recent dinner with friends the question drew various responses.  Singer-songwriter Paul Simon came  up as  a good lunch companion.  He  has been a stream-of-consciousness poet for several generations.  And some of those enigmatic lyrics in Graceland: what do they mean?  Another liked the idea of sharing a meal with Jesus, and  it’s hard to quarrel with that choice.  But the guest of honor would probably make me a nervous eater. Did I order to much? Should I have shared it? Why didn’t I suppress the joke about turning my water into wine? Another mentioned Barack Obama.  He’s articulate and sometimes funny.  And his off-the-record perspective in this political moment would be fascinating  to hear.  Would he make us feel better about where the nation is headed?

Another person suggested the African-American blues musician, Daryl Davis. Davis seems to have a knack for drawing in listeners, including KKK members.  He told an NPR interviewer that in some cases he was the first black American these white men had spoken to socially. One measure of his success is that he has a pile of KKK robes that his newly sensitized friends have sent him after they renounced their membership in the Klan. Think of what he might teach us about the subtleties of face to face conciliation.

American culture exists most vividly when we focus on agents of insight or change.

My choice tends to change by the week.  But right now I’d love to have lunch with the arranger, musician and producer, Quincy Jones. He is in his 80’s, with a career that spans playing trumpet in several great 50’s bands, to arranging and conducting some of the best performances caught on record: everything from Sinatra at the Sands, (1966) to Michael Jackson’s Thriller (1982). He’s a walking history of American music: big-band Jazz, R&B, Pop and Funk. In interviews and a growing list of tributes (including 26 Grammys) Jones is unfailingly generous and interesting. Can a person still be hungry when sitting next to a national treasure?

There’s a useful point to this exercise. It’s a reminder that American culture exists most vividly when we focus on agents of insight or change. They may be famous or obscure.  But more than we think are close by,  their lives are testimony to the value of pluralizing our world beyond the shallow celebrities that sometimes narrow rather than broaden our horizons.

Since the fantasy lunch with the fantasy check is on me, who would you choose?