TRENDS
Year of biographies
V. GANGADHAR
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2006 was boom time for biographies in the U.S.
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THE year 2006 was indeed The Year of The Biography. Look at the impressive men and women featured in the biographies. Statesmen, generals, poets, entertainers, businessmen, architects, heavyweight boxers and naturalists. One of the subjects was the fictitious detective, Sherlock Holmes! It was difficult to rank which was the best; such was the variety and quality of writing.
Iconic status
Reviewing Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War by Robert L. Beisner, Henry Kissinger argued that Acheson, a former Secretary of State in the Truman administration, though the most vilified Secretary, was judged better in history and elevated to iconic status. Acheson had to formulate the U.S. foreign policy when a new world was being created in Europe and had to create areas of strength around the all-powerful Soviet Union. Acheson tried to achieve this with the creation of Nato and the Marshall Plan but had to bear the burden of being one of the architects of the Cold War. The life of a more recent Secretary of State, Colin Powell, as narrated in Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell by the Washington Post reporter, Karen De Young made slightly depressing reading, detailing how an honest, professional solider was drawn into high level politics and found himself overruled constantly by his successor Condoleezza Rice and former Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld who went along with the machinations of President George Bush over the war against Iraq. Powell emerges from the book an honourable, though slightly, tragic figure.
Two huge "business" biographies stood out. Andrew Carnegie by David Nasaw and Mellon: An American Life by David Cannadine were productions of monumental research. Handpicked by the family to do the book, Cannadine's 12-year labour details how Andrew Mellon built his formidable empire. Though an "authorised" biography, the book reveals the shoddy personal life of the billionaire, whose marriage to a girl who was 21 younger to him soured and led to a bitter divorce with both the parties spying on each other. David Nassaw deals with a more serene life. The rags to riches story of Carnegie details his success in the share and finance markets while the endowments and foundations highlighted how society's wealth can be distributed.
Decent human being
Jane Goodall was passionately attached to her chimps and had names for every one of them. Dale Peterson's admiration for his subject is all too obvious in Jane Goodall: The Woman who Redefined Man. He is happy to narrate a life of human decency and compassion. This is also the theme of Jack Cavanaugh's portrayal of a boxing champion, Tunney: Boxing's Brainiest Champion in describing the historic rematch between title holder Gene Tunney and challenger Jack Dempsey in 1926 which Tunney won after the referee bungled a countdown in the seventh round. Dempsey was the favourite, gangster Al Capone had bet $50,000 on him. The hero is an appealing figure who seldom made tall claims, read classics, quoted Shakespeare and on the evening before the big fight was found reading Of Human Bondage.
Slightly less flattering is architect Frank Lloyd Wright in Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright by Roger Fried and Harold Zellman. Unfortunately, the book devotes more attention to Wright's sexual activities, speculates on whether he was gay and why he adopted a casual approach to structural conventions all the time, sidelining Wright's great projects. The same kind of faults plague Betjeman: A Life by A.N. Wilson. John Betjeman was the second best selling poet since Tennyson and was quite a television personality. Chosen the poet-laureate, he wrote often on middle class pastimes and way of life, focusing on the seaside, golf, holidays, churches and middle class homes. He looked like an "intelligent muffin" but was swift, efficient and glib.
The Hollywood biographiess were led by the massive Walt Disney: Triumph of American Imagination by Neal Gabler. Disney became so much identified with his characters and creations that he complained, "I am not Walt Disney any more. Walt Disney is just a thing. It is a whole different meaning than just one man." Well, the 633 pages of text and another 218 pages of notes only confirm that Disney was the George Washington of popular culture!
More on Kate
Yet another book on Katherine Hepburn! Kate: The Woman who was Hepburn by William J. Mann focuses more on the sexuality of Kate's long time man, Spencer Tracy but still portrays the Kate-Spencer romance as an epic love tale of Hollywood. The third section of the book explains why Hepburn is one of Hollywood's immortals. Another Hepburn story, Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn by Donald Spoto gives clues as to why everyone loved this Hepburn, the "elfin" enchantress who excelled in an age of busty stars like Monroe, Mansfield and Russell. Spoto details her dedicated work for UNICEF and how the world mourned her premature death. Another flattering but authoritative bio is Jimmy Stewart: A Biography by Marc Eliot, where the best portions are about the actor's rapport with directors like Capra, Hitchcock, John Ford and Anthony Mann. The book analyses the greatness of movies like "Vertigo" and "Rear Window" but there is too much on who was bedding who in Hollywood and why Jimmy retained his virginity for a long period!
Sex symbol Mae West reigned in Hollywood for less than eight years but there was something weird about her narcissism according to biographer Simon Louvish in Mae West: It Ain't No Sin. After a sensational debut, she ruined her career with endless sex talk on her conquests and female unsatiated sexual needs. All this got boring after sometime, the newly-constituted U.S. Board of Censors began to wield its scissors and West's movie success dimmed. She had to remain content with suggestive one-liners.
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