In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Introduction to Focus:A Life in Theory
  • Robert T. Tally Jr. (bio)

The biography of a writer poses certain theoretical concerns that might not arise if the subject had a different profession. For one thing, there's something monumental about the very form of the biography, as if the subject's own life were expected to be worthy of a reader's extended interest. Biographies are usually devoted to persons whose works and deeds have made them remarkable, such that a narrative of their lives will provide greater insight into the accomplishments that are already well known. And, along those lines, we might want to read biographies of our favorite writers in the hopes of seeing how their lives have reflected, inspired, or otherwise contributed to their writings. But writers are themselves observers, and many of whom have self-consciously—at least, in their capacity as writers—removed themselves from the fray in order to achieve a perspective that will allow them to provide insights into the lives and deeds of others about whom they are writing. Indeed, many writers are something like biographers in their own right, which means that the biography of a writer already implies a meta-level, a double-distancing from the true subject of our curiosity. The biography of a writer often tells the life story of someone mostly interested in telling stories of other lives.

If that is so for writers in general, what of literary critics or theorists, whose job it is to discuss and speculate upon writers or writing? Surely the biography of a critic, who is already one step removed from the "original" by being a commentator, displaces us even further from the ultimate subject of the critic's own work. Enthusiasts may well wish to read a biography of William Faulkner to learn more about the man who chronicled the lives of those Compsons, Bundrens, Sutpens, and Snopeses, but how many people want to read a biography of the Faulkner critic, an author of commentary or analysis of Faulkner's works? (More than one might think, perhaps.) Even granting that the reader might be interested in such a biography, for the most part, a literary critic or theorist is someone whose own life might appear quite uneventful, if not downright boring. Many are academics, and contrary to what we learned from Indiana Jones movies, college professors do not normally have a lot of adventures. The life of the mind, particularly when it is used to grade papers, prepare lectures, or attend departmental meetings, along with writing essays and books, doesn't always make for the most riveting narratives.

Then there is the more general objection to biography on the part of the critic or theorist, who might note that one's own life story is hardly relevant to one's work. Although there are a number of critics or theorists who have indulged in the occasional autobiographical asides, and some have even abandoned criticism for the self-reflection—one thinks of the wave of egocentric memoirs by such figures as Frank Lentricchia, Jane Tomkins, Cathy Davidson, among others, which Adam Begley in 1994 dubbed Duke's "moi critics" (not to be confused with Toril Moi, also at Duke)—most literary critics focus on the lives and works of other people. Relatively few, I think, would want their own research to be reduced to some mere reflection of their own biographies. In the introduction to The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), for instance, Michel Foucault famously averred that he "writes in order to have no face," and then challenges his readers: "Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same; leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write." This, from the author of the essay, "What is an Author?" which famously ends with Samuel Beckett's question, "What does it matter who is speaking?"

And yet there has been no shortage of interest in Foucault's life or in that of any number of other theorists, philosophers, critics, and other writers. For all of the objections suggested above, biographies...

pdf