A Life in Biography

The Gatekeepers

This podcast is not as pretentious or self-pitying as you might suppose.


The Existential Loneliness of the Long Distance Biographer

Ray Boomhower talks about what it is like to be a journalist in Vietnam and about what it is like writing biographies of journalists. 


Malcolm W. Browne reporting from Vietnam and other biographical matters with Ray Boomhower

I had fun with this one. I really let it rip, if I do say so myself.


Biography in the Prison House of Modernism, Part 2

Lois Banner, biographer of Marilyn Monroe, turns to Garbo, learns Swedish, and discovers all sorts of important sources not to be found in previous biographies. 


A new Greta Garbo biography by Lois Banner, with new sources and insights

Mary Dearborn does a valiant job of dealing with my interruptions in our discussion of her splendid biography of Carson McCullers.


Mary Dearborn discusses her new biography of Carson McCullers

You might want to read Plath’s poem “Mirror” as I explain my reactions to it as a biographer.


Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror” and the Prison House Modernism

How Rebecca Rego Barry discovered Carolyn Wells, and why she wrote a biography of a forgotten literary figure, and how she did it. 


Authors vanish after they die and are revived. A talk with the biographer of Carolyn Wells.

Paul Alexander talks about his new state of the art biography of Billie Holiday. I listened and I learned.


A rollicking interview with Paul Alexander about his new biography of Billie Holiday.

My listeners respond and I comment on their comments 


My listeners respond

A rambling meditation on the biographer as exile.


Why Biography Doesn’t Belong

Arte

Libros

Talks and interviews about the life of biography as experienced by a biographer over forty years and fourteen biographies, dealing with subjects ranging from Sylvia Plath to William Faulkner, Marilyn Monroe to Susan Sontag, and much more.