Feature: Confessions of a Biographer

A prolific biographer of cultural icons reveals how much self-revelation takes place in practicing his craft. I suppose my career as a biographer began when I was an undergraduate, during what I called my 'eighteenth-century' quarter at MSU. I was an English major taking nearly as many credits in history as my main subject. It occurred to me in my sophomore year (1966-67) that I could simultaneously take surveys of eighteenth-century British history and the novel, as well as seminars on eighteenth-century British poetry and on continental history. This was my most exciting quarter, as I compared and integrated the courses and got to know my professors, who were themselves quite a study: a gruff, brilliant dialectician whose Brooklynese reminded me of Ralph Kramden, an elegant (Agnew would have said effete) British lecturer, a dour Alexander Pope adept, and a cheerful, flaxen-haired Midwesterner who relished Lovelace's devious entrapment of Clarissa in Samuel Richardson's great novel.

I have now written so many biographies that I cannot deal with the disciplines without attaching them to the personalities who pursue them. Thank God for that stairway in Morrill Hall connecting the English and History departments, my passageway to and from the disciplines, which I traversed, I now see, because of what was, even then, a biographical impulse -- to connect human personalities with the quest for knowledge, to see that history, literature, and the other disciplines can be assimilated into a biographical narrative.

I take my inspiration from one of my biographical subjects, Norman Mailer. Unlike most biographers, he does not hide behind a third person voice. In his biography of Marilyn Monroe, he is very personal, confessing his biases, expressing his doubts about his qualifications as a biographer, yet he treats Monroe as a fellow artist and posits an affinity between them -- which, I have concluded, is certainly there. As I show in my biography of Mailer, both he and Monroe are self-invented figures and have craved public exposure and dreamed of a fame that transcends the usual appeal of authors and movie stars, aiming for nothing less than a transformation in the consciousnesses of their times. Mailer says of himself and Monroe: 'Put an artist on an artist.' In my biography of her, I have tried to make the equation even more exact: 'Put an actor on an actor.'

What engaged me on the deepest personal level with her is her idea that she would find her identity through a career as an actress. I was attracted to acting at thirteen, shortly after my father died. By accident, it became the passion of my life. Like everyone else in the ninth grade, I was required to memorize a speech and give it before my English class. To my surprise, I enjoyed declaiming Franklin Roosevelt's words, and my teacher complimented me. I entered a speech contest. I won. The speech teacher suggested I try out for a play. After school I made my way to the auditorium and introduced myself to a remarkable teacher. He had the most beautiful speaking voice I had ever heard. He gave me a script. I read perhaps a dozen lines. He stopped me gently, touching my hand with his and saying, 'You read beautifully.' On one had ever spoken to me in this way -- with such authority and directness. I was now an actor.

The transformation was instantaneous. A few months later, my mother met my teacher and mentioned how grateful she was to him. I remember her saying something about my father's recent death. What she didn't say, and what I probably could not then have put into words, was that I had found another father. Marilyn Monroe had to wait for her acknowledgement until she was nineteen and working in an airplane factory during World War II. An army photographer, looking for pretty girls to put on the covers of magazines sent to soldiers, spotted her. Would she mind posing for him? No indeed. She loved it. The photographer forgot about finding other girls. He shot her in every location and from every angle he could think of and told her she was a 'natural.' Had she ever thought of becoming a model? Her name was not Marilyn Monroe then, and if she had thought of modeling, she had done absolutely nothing about it. The photographer's discovery of her gave her an identity -- or at least a sense of self she could shoot for. Later she would describe herself to the press as an orphan. All her life she would search for her father, for someone like the photographer who could authorize her existence. I believe she knew she was an actress the instant the photographer said she was a natural. Her life had no meaning until she realized that she could give it one, that she could become the author of her existence. 

Each of my biographies presents a facet of myself -- or some potentiality I see realized in the subjects I choose to write about. Lillian Hellman was an obvious choice: I was attracted to her life in the theater. I happen to think it is more difficult to write a great play than a novel or a poem or a short story. Actors usually adore Hellman's plays. They are so full of vivid characters and sharp conflict. Hellman was also a first class screenwriter -- and one of the few in Hollywood to enjoy single authorship or scripts. She was active in politics and in her person embodied many of the conflicts that arose in the American sensibility from the Depression through the 1960s. And she had written a set of controversial memoirs that cried out for a biographer's investigation.

As a personality, I did not think I had much in common with Hellman, and I was thunderstruck when I was proven wrong after the publication of my book. About a year after it was published, I was interviewing Mary Hall for my Martha Gellhorn biography. She had been a childhood friend of Gellhorn's. They had grown up together in St. Louis and years later had had to worry together about whether their sons would be drafted to serve in the Vietnam War. Suddenly I began to tell Hall about my worries over Vietnam -- that I had been a graduate student in Canada opposed to the war.

I had applied for conscientious objector status, which was denied. After much maneuvering, it all came down to a showdown at my draft board, where I had to appear for my appeal. I was prepared. I had gone through several mock interviews with draft counselors, who advised my about the kinds of questions I could expect and even about the personalities of my potential interrogators. I needn't go into the details, except to say that in a time when some young American men were burning their draft cards and engaging in public protests that sometimes included brandishing Viet Cong flags, I came to my hearing neatly dressed, polite, and respectful. I think there was something in my tone that conveyed regret, not rebellion. I was a dissenter, yet I spoke the language of a loyal citizen. There was no threat in what I had to say -- that is, my tone was not aggressive. My draft board was impressed -- not with my arguments, I hasten to add, but with my demeanor. They were especially taken with the fact that I had come from Toronto. They knew many american men had decided to stay there rather than serve in the armed forces. What I did not tell my draft board was that I was prepared to do that as well -- if I had to. I think I felt as much anger about the war as any other protestor, but I did not show it at the draft board. I stated my principles, but I did so without prejudice to their own.

To this day, I do not know what happened. For I neither received conscientious objector status, nor was I called on to do alternative service. I was simply deactivated, buried -- so to speak -- in my draft board's files. In the middle of telling this story to Mary Hall, I suddenly discovered the personal connection between Hellman and I.