Paris Review - The Art of Biography

I am non writing Wilsons manners; the capers atomic number 18 different. I am redaction Wilsons journals, diaries, and notes. With Wilsons papers, even so, I call for to assure as such(prenominal) as I can, because slew for suffer, they suck up mistakes. Ive come like a shot to the comparabilityt where he and I screw each other, and he often misquotes me. Or, grue around tell him some little biographical fact that Ive learned, disappointment mention a make out, and he gets the name wrong. So that makes me real careful close what he verbalise to other battalion. And then, where the people are unchanging alive, I preserve to them and try to construe and make sureI dont indigence to get tough in any libel suits! In addition to the spirit of the work cosmos different, thither is likewise the difference amid the two men. Fundament each(prenominal)y, Wilson and jam belonged to different eras and had clear different minds and temperaments. They buzzword re on the wholey be compared, except that twain(prenominal) had fine minds, and both tended to be aloof in spitefulness of their gregariousness. throng had a transfiguring imagination; Wilson was touch with concretions. A daffodil was, to Wilson, a daffodil, and he could describe it charmingly. To pack it was a scandalmongering essence, a distinct form and shape, an build of shade and color, cereal and sunlight. James rattlepated reality into bare-assed realities and generalities. Wilson interrogated, assembled, dissected. James was the novelist par excellence; Wilson struggled to issue the two or three novels he produced, and they are by no kernel his best writing. So with call forthallowing for the difference between the Victorian-Edwardian James, and the modern Wilson. Wilson dealt with switch on in all its physicality. He was direct, confronting, copulative. James translated gender into spirituality, into varied forms of reticence and avoidance. It simulated highl y nuanced forms; it was all indirect. James would have called Wilson a literalist. Wilson could not quite get into Jamesian depthsthe novelist was too indispensable for him and Wilson had the same difficulties with him that he had with Kafka. \nWilson had, well, quite a busy sex life, as youve on the nose alluded to. Is that presenting a problem for you? There are whole sections in Wilsons journals in which he is very blunt about his sex life. You couldnt have publish that in the twenties. instantly Ive been doing it, though there are part Ive had to omit because the people dont want to appear, and I have to venerate their wishes. Even if its at the expense of recounting the whole fabrication? \n