Biography: An Annotated Bibliography (review)

76 biography Vol. 18, No. 1 study reinforces the idea that subverting a specific colonial oppression does not subsequently dismantle other equally insidious and restrictive limitations. The twenty essays of the collection effectively illustrate the many colonizations imposed upon subaltern subjectivity and the discursive pitfalls lying in wait along the path of decolonization. By juxtaposing experience of personal cultural intervention with theoretical discussions and textual criticism, the editors have given the collection a broad and more complete framework from which to review the debates about autobiographical production. The essays, on the whole, are both instructional and informative, offering historical background on a variety of autobiographical projects and providing a forum for examining contemporary theory and practice. In this regard, it should be noted that the exclusion of Chicana autobiography and criticism was purposeful and projects tiiis collection to be read as a complement, rather than addendum, to the important work in this area by authors such as Cherae Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Sonia SaldÃ-var, among others. As this collection enters into dialogue with such preexisting criticism and joins the global discussion of women's autobiography, its breadth of scope and its variety of perspectives should make it of value to the theorist, of service to the pedagogue, and of interest to the informed lay reader. Joy Logan University of Hawai'i at Mänoa Carl ROLLYSON, Biography: An Annotated Bibliography. Magill Bibliographies. Pasadena: Salem, 1992. 215 pp. $40. Annotated bibliographies are tedious reading, but they serve a useful purpose. In this case, Carl Rollyson, an art professor and the biographer of Martha GeIlhorn , does not set out to examine all biographies or even selected biographies, but rather "to organize and annotate the literature on biography" (1). Claiming tiiat "[m]ost of the criticism is about literary biography. Historians and scholars in other disciplines [with some exceptions among feminist and psychobiographers ] have been virtually silent on biography as a form of knowledge" (7), his focus—quite logically if one accepts his premise—is on literary biography. Taken together, his eight chapters, although purporting to look at different points of view about the genre, essentially remind us that the more things change, the more diey remain the same. Perhaps this is the nature of annotation: in order to compress each item into an entry of between 75 and 125 words, much of what distinguishes one argument from another is lost. As all good introductions should, Rollyson's tells us what to expect in the chapters to come and explains why he organized the book as he did. The following chapters stand strangely naked, with only titles to remind us of the focus. To understand die author's categorical decisions, the reader must return again and again to the opening pages, since his choices are not obviously justified. For example, in Chapter One, he comments on books and journal articles that discuss biography and biographical theory from the perspective of modern biographers themselves. In Chapter Two he reviews some of the literature that has examined "historical and critical studies of biography" (2). Aside from its attention to some of the biographical classics throughout history (particularly Samuel REVIEWS 77 Johnson, James Boswell, and Lytton Strachey), it is difficult to see the difference between diese two chapters. Although they talk about different biographies, each reiterates the same arguments about the nature of biography itself, as in fact do most of the chapters that follow. Is it possible to really "know" another life? Is the "external" approach better than seeking to understand the subject's "inwardness " (58)? Should biographers interject themselves into die text? Should a biography consist of endless detail or should it instead seek the telling characteristic, die representative event? The writings Rollyson discusses reflect the various possible opinions on these questions, but the annotations seldom evaluate the weight of the arguments, leaving the reader aware of the work but not its value. Chapter Three examines some of the "enormous literature on Johnson and Boswell" (2), arguing that Johnson, as die master of the short biographical essay, and Boswell, as "the virtuoso of the long form" (3), are compelling subjects, both of whom wrote and inspired a great deal of biographical theory...