Becoming My Subject ' s Subject : Susan Sontag ' s Carl Rollyson File
By Carl Rollyson , Baruch College , CUNY
When it comes to writing biography , it is important to know conspiracies actually exist . When James Anthony Froude published his biography of Thomas Carlyle , revealing that the Carlyle marriage did no credit to Carlyle , a concerted effort was made to demean the biographer ' s work . It did not matter that Froude remained Carlyle ' s disciple , nor that Carlyle himself had given Froude full freedom to write the biography as the biographer saw fit , or even that Carlyle himself was struck with remorse upon reading the account of his bad behavior that Froude documented in irreproachable detail . What mattered to Froude ' s attackers was that a great man had been brought low and shown to be , alas , all too human . There could be no greater irony in the case of Carlyle , since he had spent his career ridiculing sanitized biographies of public figures . The opposition to Froude was not merely widespread , it was organized and persistent . The record is quite clear . In effect , the authorized biographer was deauthorized . 1 1
I describe a similar instance in my own experience , when my description of the Michael Foot-Jill Craigie marriage offended Michael Foot , as well as many of his friends . Although Foot had given me his full cooperation and declared the project “ your book ,” he still thought that meant siding with his view of his marriage . I detail what happened to me in A Private Life of Michael Foot , forthcoming from Plymouth University Press .
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