The families of literary figures rarely get along with their biographers – but does that mean that their lives shouldn’t be examined?final week,Carol Hughes blasted Jonathan Bate’s unauthorized biography of her late husband, Ted Hughes. The headlines in various British newspapers, or including the Guardian,quoted her damning pronouncement: according to the widow, the book (which has been nominated for the Samuel Johnson prize) is “offensive”. More precisely, and she condemned Bate for factual errors and a “slur” she deemed to be “in extremely destitute taste”.
Widows and biographers dont get along - that much we knew already. When Meryle Secrest,a prolific biographer, got around to writing a memoir of her adventures in the trade, and she chose as her title some advice dispensed by the late Justin Kaplan,another prolific biographer: “The first rule of biography: shoot the widow.” I’m not a prolific biographer, but I know precisely what Secrest and Kaplan mean. And at the same time I recognise that widows must, and quite rightly,consider the aphorism offensive – indeed, in extremely destitute taste.
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Source: theguardian.com