I'm in training. Heavy duty, weight-lifting training. Every day I pump some iron. And I run. And I swim. It's not an attempt to lose weight. Rather I've undertaken an intense bout of reading. Reading? Yes. Reading. Unfortunately, I seemed to have injured myself in the process. The fault of course lies not in the training but in the nature of my reading: huge tomes of biography. And biographies are becoming so heavy that, for the physically weak, they can cause serious harm.
I noticed the phenomenon while half way through Francis Wheen's work on Karl Marx, a hardback book of over 400 pages. Somewhere around the middle of the volume, the muscles in my shoulders began to cramp up. I could almost feel my arms seizing with the effort of lifting this tome and holding on to it. Admittedly, I wasn't a hundred per cent and I had just celebrated another birthday which moved me from early 30s to mid 30s. Yes, yes. It'll not be long until I need reading glasses too.
Size matters
But, in all seriousness, feminism has obviously passed biographers by. This is genre where size does matter. Big is better. Have you noticed how these works bend the very bookshelves on which they sit? I fear that Dublin's bookshops might collapse under the weight.
I do not wish to detract from Mr Wheen's work. He has written is a good book: intelligent, neither iconoclastic nor hagiographic, and very readable. (Though I didn't much like the word "squiffy" when referring to Marx's drinking. Wie geht's, Herr Doktor? Mir is wohl, danke. Ein bisschen squiffy aber wohl.)
I've read biographies in the past and marvelled at the way in which the authors have systematically and conscientiously reduced their subjects, their work and their lives to dust. All in the name of providing an "objective" view of the subject. David Cesarani's work on the writer Arthur Koestler is probably the most recent and finest example of that trait.
It's another big book which demands big muscles. (Book worm nothing. Feel the muscles). Page after page Cesarani demolishes the many myths which Koestler built up around himself. Rape, adultery and ego are all exposed to scholarly scrutiny. One wonders how Koestler's reputation will survive the work. Though survive it undoubtedly will for, despite the attention to forensic detail, autobiographies never seem to become the definitive autopsy.
Handy literature
Biographies are big business these days. They are the handiest literature for students and professionals. As a reference or as an introduction to a life and work, the best biographies can be invaluable, guiding, informing and, hopefully, sending the reader back to the original texts to re-evaluate or, indeed, to revalue them.
Of course, a cynic might argue that the prime asset of the contemporary biography is the fact that you don't actually have to read the original texts. Reading the biography is akin to a dispensation, giving you enough information to dazzle your friends (who in all probability have read the same biog). Let the biographer guide you through the maze, let him touch on all the salient points, give you a few opinions and, what do you know, you're educated. (Let me add that I speak as a biographer - though you don't need a forklift for my offering which is available in all good bookshops!)
Revelation
Still there is often an element of the soap opera about the genre which would shock even the most devoted fan of that particular field. Sex, of course, is a prerequisite for any good soap these days. The same is undoubtedly true of the literary biography and the more famous the subject, the more demanding the need for revelation.
In this regard, Marx is quite dull. He got the home help pregnant but no-one else it seems. However, he did suffer from boils on the penis. Yes, you read that correctly: boils on his penis. I have to admit that I fell about laughing when I read that. I didn't need to know that, Francis.
Boils and carbuncles seem to have played quite a central part in Marx's life according to Wheen. (Exam question: Never worry about dialectics, did Marx suffer from scurvy?) Still, it left me wondering about that old-fashioned trait of discretion or the use of euphemism to spare the reader (the male reader especially) the horror of such thought. Despite Wheen's obvious empathy and understanding of the man and his works, the boil episode is a moment of pure, awful, unadulterated soap masquerading as lit. crit.
And, if we're honest, too often many of these tomes are just that - soap for graduates, a way of voyeuristically peering into other people's lives while wrapping ourselves in our degree scrolls (Look, I've a PhD) and claiming that it is educational. But hermeneutics is the name of the game. Stick it all in - emphasis on stick. Heaven forbid that some little detail, no matter how trivial might escape and provide a stick with which to beat the biographer.
Anyway, I can't stop. I've got to read Das Kapital - after I finish my weight-lifting class, that is.