The Story

Biographers Share Secrets on Themselves and Other Writers

Oct. 10, 2009 | By Danny Mosier, DSJ News Editor

Sponsored by the Patrick Hayes Endowment and the English Department, the first event in the Patrick Hayes Writer’s Series brought three writers to Ewell Hall to discuss their past and current work in authoring biographies on modern fiction writers.

Scott Donaldson is a retired William and Mary English Professor who has become distinguished through his numerous biographies on such noted writers as Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and E.A. Robinson. Blake Bailey is the current writer-in-residence at the College and has recently published highly acclaimed biographies on Richard Yates and John Cheever. While she doesn’t have a direct connection with the College, Carol Sklenicka is an award winning fiction writer who is about to publish a biography of Raymond Carver.

Sklenicka was the first of the evening to speak, immediately discussing the difficulty of focusing a biography on American short story writer and poet Raymond Carver, who was as known for his chronic alcoholism as he was for his fiction.

�"When I decided to write about Raymond Carver,” said Sklenicka, �"There was already a mythology about his life.”

Sklenicka then read from the introduction of her biography, beginning by describing the turbulent life Carver went as his seemingly indestructible addiction with alcohol drove him further and further over the edge. When his first short story collection, Will you Please Be Quiet, Please?, was nominated for a National Book Award he attempted to get sober, but it wasn’t until he was offered a large advance on a book he had not written yet was he finally able to quit drinking. While his personality did not change at all, he was able to get his writing career on track and make a name of himself again.

Blake Bailey then introduced the subject of his biography, Charles Jackson, the eccentric author of the popular and influential but forgotten novel The Lost Weekend. When asked on why he would write a biography on a madly alcoholic writer with a one-hit wonder, Bailey gives a simply answer.

�"The same reason why I write anything,” said Bailey, �"because I find it interesting.”

Bailey then read from his book, discussing the great success that followed The Lost Weekend and the Oscar-winning film adaptation that quickly overshadowed the novel. His inability to reproduce another hit left Jackson in a deep depression and led him to further push the limits of his alcoholism, but a bout with tuberculosis led to a creative rebirth.

Bailey then departed from his novel to discuss the origins of the biography, describing his plans to do a volume on several forgotten modern writers. While he originally did not think Charles Jackson fit in the proposed book, the thousands of letters he discovered written between Charles Jackson and his brother captivated Bailey enough to begin work on a separate volume on Jackson.

Scott Donaldson then read from his biographies on two acclaimed but controversial icons of twentieth century fiction; Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

�"Both [writers] were complacent in establishing themselves public images,” said Donaldson, �"but images that stuck with the public and never shook off.”

Beginning with Fitzgerald, Donaldson described the image of the rebel for the younger generation that the author established for himself. While this led Fitzgerald to become an icon of the Jazz Age, he became more known for his celebrity than for his writings, driving the author to oblivion and a young death.

Quoting from his biography on Hemingway, Donaldson described how the super-machismo image Hemingway created for himself initially enhanced his success yet eventually caught up with him later in his career. Donaldson theorized that the constant hounding by the press, even during his darkest years, and the cliché his image had become was what led Hemingway to his suicide.

The floor was then opened to questions from the audience, ranging from the origins of Fitzgerald’s current status to upcoming posthumous work from Hemingway.

When asked on why they each decided to write about modern writers, each biographer gave unique answers and anecdotes.

�"I had an interesting opportunity to present not only the public persona but also the most detailed account of this modern first-class writer,” said Bailey.

�"It was an awful lot of fun to meet and talk to people who have the memories of this great writer,” said Sklenicka.

�"That can be the problem or the fun,” replied Donaldson to Sklenicka, referring to the tense relationship he had with the descendants of Ernest Hemingway as he was writing his biography.

The final question of the evening asked the simple but telling question of why the authors decided to get started in writing biographies.

�"It was all a big fluke,” said Bailey, referring to how his work in biographies resulted out of a failed career in fiction. �"I love this work. Ninety-eight percent of the work published these days have the shelf-life of yogurt…you get a lot of press this way, and we have so much fun working on them.”