Customer Reviews

The Biographer's Tale

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is not a light read. It is heavy, layered, rich and in some parts indigestible. Yes, like the best Christmas cake. It contains not only literary references, but scientific and historical ones. One is expected to know who Carolus Linnaeus was, and Galton, and Lyle. One is expected to smile at elevated jokes and nod at passing references to evolution theory, history of science, philosophy. One is expected to remember the trials and tribulations that related to literary fads such as deconstructionism and post-colonial feminism. However, there are other layers, that allow those readers intent on a story to find a narrative that engages. There is the eternal search for romance, the confusion and wonderment that accompanies a change in career direction. There is the uncertainty that comes when one meets a gay couple, or when one meets a person with a definite hard-wired hardcore sexual perversion. A S Byatt uses research like some people use mayonnaise. This is the novel you read not so much to pass the time, but to relish and savour, to wonder at in awe. How can one person have at one's disposal such a wealth and weight of knowledge? And... what have I missed by not knowing what was necessary to know?

This is a very literary book and an entertaining story, but you have to be in the mood. It is saturated with in-jokes. The long biographical bits can be very tedious if you don't like random bits of curious facts. It can easily be seen as pretentious. What grabbed me was that this novel is about the obsessive need to understand and possess another's identity. How much do we need to know to understand someone and what do we do when that understanding is found? Is history fixed or malleable? No answers are possible and this novel concedes to that point. It conveys a deep understanding that all this knowledge that we desperately acquire to know another must be gathered and dropped simultaneously if we are to gain any idea about another person's identity.

Of all Byatt's fictions, I am most fond of the Frederica Potter trilogy, (hopefully tetralogy soon) and then "Possession." While the comparisons that have been made between "The Biographer's Tale" and "Possession" are apt, the differences reveal the reasons this was much less satisfying for me, despite its diverse and interesting expositions and fragments. Unlike the works I mentioned above, this book is much narrower with a smaller set of characters. In the hands of some novelists this leads to deeper, more interesting and ironic portrayal of character. However, I found the character's in "The Biographer's Tale," to be more remote and static, even though what they study is provocative. I suspect that Byatt's keen observation and imagination is at its best when it can focus on on the interactions of a broad and socially diverse set of people. Unfortunately, today's academic climate rarely provides that.

In general, Byatt's recent works seem more polished and less lively than her earlier work, polished to the point of preciousness in some cases. It may sound anachronistic in this post-post modern age, but I miss the flesh, blood, surprise and risk of her earlier work and the deep, believable characters that have remained with me for years.

You have to get more than a few pages into an A.S. Byatt book to get to the really good part, and The Biographer's Tale is no exception. Byatt takes more than the usual author's amount of verbage to lay a book's foundation, but then, her final products are far beyond that of the usual writer.

Here, a literary grad student, Phineas G. Nanson, undertakes to research a biographer who has captured his imagination by leaving myriad examples of his own research but seemingly few clues as to his own life. As other reviewers have noted, there are numerous obscure references to literary and scientific topics, but this doesn't really detract from the narrative.

As in her other books, there is an element of parallel stories here, as the present day researcher studies a past researcher. As Nanson's journey of discovery leads to self-discovery, Byatt finds her rhythm and the reader is rewarded for persisting past the slow beginning. She interweaves science, literature, and romance in some satisfying ways.

Though not her most engaging work, Byatt still creates more depth of character than most novelists today, making this book worth the read.

The premise of Byatt's novel is both clever and intriguing enough: Phineas, a graduate student chained by abstraction, declares, "I've decided I don't want to be a postmodern realist." Understandable. So one of his professors kindly (or maliciously) sends him off on a wild goose chase: researching the biography of the obscure biographer Scholes Destry-Scholes, whose only published work was a study of an equally obscure writer and whose death (or disappearance) is a mystery.

"The Biographer's Tale" is a commentary on the inherently imprecise nature of biography, but Byatt stacks the deck somewhat: not only is there not much information on Destry-Scholes, but Phineas is a notably untalented and easily distracted researcher. In fact, given Phineas's limited skills set, it's not surprising he ends up supporting himself with a "real" job as a clerk at a travel agency operated by two seemingly frivolous lovers--and even that employment proves too much for him. (I couldn't help but imagine Phineas as an up-to-date reincarnation of Ignatius J. Reilly, from "A Confederacy of Dunces.")

Early in the hunt, an archivist sends Phineas notes for three never-published biographical sketches found in the Destry-Scholes's file. Each describes a historical figure known for his generalizations (to make a generalization). Although the subjects are not named, it's immediately obvious that one sketch is about Henrik Ibsen, and Phineas quickly deduces the other two. These texts take up a quarter of the book, and many readers will agree with Phineas's assessment: "I found them both intriguing and irritating. The irritating aspect--well, the most irritating, there were others--was the air of perfunctory secrecy or deception about the whole enterprise." Actually, the most irritating aspects are that they are tedious and sloppily written, like--well, just like rough drafts. Added to the irritation is that another good chunk of the book is (I kid you not) a series of transcriptions from the index cards found in the biographer's research notes.

For a book about the study of life, this miscellany is remarkably lifeless. And I suppose that's Byatt's point: that any biographical endeavor is doomed to artificiality and interpretation. To liven things up, the results of Phineas's amateurish investigations are interspersed with his daily life, including his job, his peculiar employers (used to comic effect), a mysterious customer, and two love interests--Destry-Scholes's niece and an apiculturalist named Fulla Biefeld (one of the book's many unbearable puns).

Byatt's stab at pondering the nature of biography echoes several other works, such as "Orlando" by Virginia Woolf (whose ghost hovers over the entire book) and especially "The Quest for Corvo" by A. J. A. Symons (confusingly misidentified as Symonds, who also is mentioned elsewhere in a different context in the same section). This fixation with the nature and form of biography seems to have become a peculiarly British cottage industry; the novel also reminded me at times of the recent "Wainewright the Poisoner" by Andrew Motion.

I don't deny that there are some fascinating (and often very funny) passages in "The Biographer's Tale." Yet, unlike its literary predecessors or more recent counterparts, the novel as a whole is never as interesting as the cleverness of its parts. And its final pages, too, reinforce the idea that Byatt has diverted our literary attentions with the academic equivalent of a shaggy-dog story.

It is significant that in _The Biographer's Tale_ Byatt keeps coming back to _Les Mots et les Choses_ by Michel Foucault. The novel is narrated in the first person by Phineas G. Nanson, a disillusioned grad student in literary criticism who one day decides he's had enough of texts and must have things. Immediately after making the fateful decision to abandon his deconstructionist path, he is given a biography of Victorian polymath Elmer Bole. Here are things in abundance: world travels, bee taxonomy, Byzantine mosaics.

But despite Bole's colorful and varied life, Nanson becomes obsessed not with Bole himself, but with his biographer, the elusive Scholes Destry-Scholes. Nanson's efforts to discover the personage of Destry-Scholes lead him to new work, two women, and, finally, more and varied things (a remarkable marble collection, the landscapes of Finland, 19th-century composite photographs).

Nanson marvels at Bole's range of knowledge and experience, at his prolific literary output. He says Bole "read, and wrote, as the great Victorian scholars did, as though a year could contain a hundred years of reading, thought and investigation." "Bole himself crammed more action in one life than would be available to three or four puny moderns." But Byatt seems to know as much, or almost as much, as the great Victorian in her novel.

Though the story hinges on Nanson's longing for things, the novel itself delights in words. I felt an almost drunken pleasure reading Byatt's rich metaphors, erudite puns, and the individual words, carefully chosen, which sparkle like jewels ("periplum," "calyx"). I found myself reading phrases aloud, in order to taste them.

There were references I know I didn't get, and there were words I should have looked up in the dictionary. But Byatt's gift as a storyteller is such that she never leaves the reader behind. She doesn't indulge in wordplay or arcane references for their own sake, but as an adornment to the story she is telling. Perhaps the story itself is a thing, a cake, soaked not in rum, but in intoxicating words.

I have found A.S. Byatt's latest book most disappointing. One of your reviewers thinks that the brilliant, meticulous and extensive research in this book is like "mayonnaise" - I think it is more like an enormous diamond ring: impressive, valuable, beautiful but, ultimately, fairly ostentatious and valued more for its bulk than its contribution to whatever wrinkly hand it graces. Sorry Ms Byatt - I think the story line and character development need to be stronger in order to sustain all that encyclopaedic stuff. As you did with Possession and with Angels and Insects.

When you start an A.S.Byatt novel you know that you have something to read for a while. Her novels are not all that long, but she always gives great ideas for other reading. And The Biographer's Tale is no exception.

The graduate student Phineas Nanson need sa change in his life after the death of his mother, and he decides that his life needs to be filled with things, not only ideas. This desicion brings him to the biographer Scholes Destry-Scholes who has written a biography of the Victorian polymath Elmer Bole. Phineas reads Destry-Scoles' biography over and over and wonders more and more if it is possible for a biographer to find the truth about the person they write about. Phineas wants to write a biography of Scholes Destry-Scoles and this takes him to Africa, to Sweden and to Norway. Not in actually travelling, at least not in the beginning, but nevertheless he follows the footsteps of Destry- Scoles.

Through the book, and through Phineas' research, Byatt let us get to know Carl Linneaus, Francis Galton and Henrik Ibsen. The book is stuffed with information, and given to us in a rather unusual way; through notecards Phineas finds after Scholes Destry-Scoles.

Writing the biogarphy, or trying to write it, doesn't take Phineas in the direction he was hoping though, and he understands that the change has to come in his own life. Can any of the two women in Phineas' life help him with this, or is this a journey he has travel alone?

A.S.Byatt is a master of words, and as in her other novels, this one has to be read several times, and you will discover new information every time.

Britt Arnhild Lindland

What is a biography? That is the question that haunts me now that I have put this incredible book down. Is it a simple exercise of "finding your facts, selecting your facts, arranging your facts, considering missing facts, and explaining your facts" or is it, like all writing, a river flowing "toward the writer's own body and the writer's own experience"? Is a biography then, in some way, an auto-biography? After all, what is a fact (and how is it different from fiction)? And what makes this (and not that) fact important?

How will I (or a biographer) know it when we see it? And what, in the end, is "experience"?

This story, as much of a mystery as a story, grapples with these and other questions. I was not necessarily satisfied with the answers-tentative as they were-at the end but that was not the point. The point was the question; and the question is a good one.

It made me think.

One of my favorite Monty Python sketches shows us a number of commentators broadcasting a cricket game. After one play, one of them sagely states, "Very well not played." The others chime in saying "EXTREMELY well not played."

So it is with A. S. Byatt's BIOGRAPHER'S TALE. A young scholar named Phineas Nanson tires of endless deconstructionism and turns to writing a biography of a biographer, the redoubtable Scholes Destry-Scholes, noted for his study of the equally redoubtable Elmer Bole. Destry-Scholes, however, has covered his tracks well -- leaving behind no pictures, only some fragmentary writings on Linnaeus, Francis Galton, and Henrik Ibsen. Oh, and also a radiologist niece named Vera Alphage, whom Nanson beds. He also runs into Fulla Bliefeld, a Scandinavian scientist specializing in bees, who also finds a warm place in Nanson's heart.

Well, what do we have here? Let's see: Several fragments and two budding relationships. And the biography? Abandoned. Miss Byatt has aroused expectations which she has not fulfilled. Nanson's research is actually fascinating; and, until the very end, I wondered where Byatt was taking us. It seems the answer is, down a garden path.

If the rest of the book weren't so fascinating, I would be outraged. As it is, I'm still perpelexed by my first introduction to this writer, though I am interested enough to pursue some researches on my own into Linnaeus, Galton, Ibsen, and a certain whirlpool off the coast of Norway known as the Maelstrom. Consequently, I do not feel myself to have been completely traduced.