A Higher Form of Cannibalism?: Adventures in the Art and Politics of Biography

Carl Rollyson’s lively and anecdotal investigation of writing about the lives others examines his own practices as well as those of biographers from Samuel Johnson to Richard Ellmann and many others. By its very nature, Mr. Rollyson argues, biography is controversial-it invites the burglar, and justifiably so, especially in the case of literary heroes. A Higher Form of Cannibalism? explores the gap between the scholarly and the popular, the authorized and the unauthorized-which may not be as wide as most people suppose. A candid and revealing account, by an expert in the minefield, of the biographer’s contentious work. I’ve been writing lives for thirty years and learned a lot from it.-Jeffrey Meyers.