What literary biographies teach us

"The literary bio is an oddly enduring genre. People who read have always been interested in the story behind the stories, but you’d think that of all the people you might want to know more about, writers would probably be somewhere near the bottom of the list. After all, most of them don’t actually do very much but sit at a desk somewhere and write. That’s their job. And aside from what can be gleaned from autobiographies and memoirs (an entertaining but not very trustworthy genre that becomes even more doubtful when penned by people who have spent their lives making things up), an author’s rich inner life, crucible for the imaginative alchemy that transforms experience into art, has to be pieced together mainly from circumstantial evidence.

So what’s the take away? One of the reasons we read biography is for the life lessons they offer. While there are infinite paths to immortal literary fame, what helpful hints can be gleaned from the lives of the greats:

First, experience a traumatic episode early in your childhood or youth that you will then be able to draw upon for inspiration and raw material for the rest of your life.

Second, find yourself a self-denying partner who will support you and accept your eccentricities, moodiness, alcoholism and infidelities as expressions of your genius.

Finally, have a lot of kids and give up other hostages to fortune so that you will be compelled by financial necessity to keep writing."

More: http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/bookreviews/article/1140789--dickens-tolstoy-j-g-ballard-and-kurt-vonnegut-were-literary-geniuses-in-these-bios-other-writers-try-to-capture-what-made-them-so-writerly



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Jury Duty

I suspect that many writers would jump at the call for jury duty. I should too, after all how often does one get a chance to observe so closely a criminal case? It's a civic duty. If only it didn't, always, come at a bad time. What is one to do? It may be time to fill out the questionnaire with Leo Tolstoy's words:

"The usual argument "What is one to do with the evil doers? Surely not let them go unpunished?" no longer confused him. This objection might have a meaning if it were proved that punishment lessened crime, or improved the criminal, but when the contrary was proved, and it was evident that it was not in people's power to correct each other, the only reasonable thing to do is to leave off doing the things which are not only useless, but harmful, immoral and cruel.
For many centuries people who were considered criminals have been tortured. Well, and have they ceased to exist? No; their numbers have been increased not alone by the criminals corrupted by punishment but also by those lawful criminals, the judges, procureurs, magistrates and jailers, who judge and punish men.

Nekhludoff now understood that society and order in general exists not because of these lawful criminals who judge and punish others, but because in spite of men being thus depraved, they still pity and love one another."

Modern literature and the problem of life

"Subtleties, allegories, humorous fancies, the wildest generalizations abound, but nothing simple and clear, nothing going straight to the point, that is, to the problem of life.

Besides these graceful frivolities, our literature is full of simple nastiness and brutality, of arguments that would lead men back in the most refined way to primal barbarism, to the principles not only of the pagan, but of the animal life, which we have left behind 5,000 years ago."

Leo Tolstoy

The most important thing in life, according to Leo Tolstoy

I stumbled upon this obscure book, a collection of articles from the 1960s, by a Polish journalist Krystyna Kolińska. In 1966 she went to Ley Puy, France, to rummage through a traveling trunk that belonged to one Victor Lebrun. In it she found correspondence between Lebrun and Leo Tolstoy! What an amazing account of a young boy's fascination with the great author and the ensuing friendship (Lebrun became a close secretary to Tolstoy) that began with a letter a 17 year old Lebrun wrote:

"Worthy of my highest consideration, Leo Nikolayevich. By a strange coincidence, Volume XIII of your works has fallen into my hands shortly after the death of my father. [...] I was struck and delighted with the simplicity of your thoughts, honesty and accuracy of your stunning works. [...] What way [in life] to choose? You showed me the concept of good and evil, and I realized that I can not and do not have to do evil. But what can I personally do, I do not know." Victor Lebrun, October 15, 1899.

Tolstoy's reply:

"Unknown, young, dear friend. I received your letter when I lay sick in bed. [...] The letter is sincere and pleased me very much. One thing confuses me: Your very young age. I do not think of it in the sense that youth stands in the way of understanding truth in life. [...] But I'm afraid of your youth, because it had not yet experienced the lure of many of the world's temptations. You did not have time to realize the futility of things, and they may yet seduce you and force you to give up the truth. [... ] The most important thing you can do is grow love around you. " Your Leo Tolstoy.

Leo Tolstoy on military life

Colonel Russell Williams, commander of one of Canada's largest military bases stands accused of multiple murders and sexual assaults.

People wonder how a decorated soldier, who mingled with the imperial regime (Williams gave a tour of the base to government apparatchiks shortly before his arrest), could do such a thing?

The great Leo Tolstoy, who served in the imperial wars, knows what military life is all about. Tolstoy writes in his best novel, Resurrection:

"Military life in general depraves men. It places them in conditions of complete idleness, i.e., absence of all useful work; frees them of their common human duties, which it replaces by merely conventional ones to the honour of the regiment, the uniform, the flag; and, while giving them on the one hand absolute power over other men, also puts them into conditions of servile obedience to those of higher rank than themselves.

But when, to the usual depraving influence of military service with its honours, uniforms, flags, its permitted violence and murder, there is added the depraving influence of riches and nearness to and intercourse with members of the Imperial family, then this depraving influence creates in the men who succumb to it a perfect mania of selfishness."

Resurrecting a good novel

Reading Resurrection. This is Leo Tolstoy's last great novel. In the author's lifetime it was more popular than Anna Karenina or War and Peace. It remains Tolstoy's strongest condemnation of social, judicial and religious conditions that were at the root of the misery suffered by the masses. Resurrection is as valid today, as it was at the time of publication, not long before the Revolution that sought to change the world and the condition of the people. Perhaps the novel should be resurrected...

Now it seemed as clear as daylight that the chief
cause of the people's great want was one that they themselves
knew and always pointed out, i.e., that the land which alone
could feed them had been taken from them by the landlords.

And how evident it was that the children and the aged died
because they had no milk, and they had no milk because there was
no pasture land, and no land to grow corn or make hay on. It was
quite evident that all the misery of the people or, at least by
far the greater part of it, was caused by the fact that the land
which should feed them was not in their hands, but in the hands
of those who, profiting by their rights to the land, live by the
work of these people. The land so much needed by men was tilled
by these people, who were on the verge of starvation, so that the
corn might be sold abroad and the owners of the land might buy
themselves hats and canes, and carriages and bronzes, etc. He
understood this as clearly as he understood that horses when they
have eaten all the grass in the inclosure where they are kept
will have to grow thin and starve unless they are put where they
can get food off other land.

This was terrible, and must not go on. Means must be found to
alter it, or at least not to take part in it. "And I will find
them," he thought, as he walked up and down the path under the
birch trees.

In scientific circles, Government institutions, and in the papers
we talk about the causes of the poverty among the people and the
means of ameliorating their condition; but we do not talk of the
only sure means which would certainly lighten their condition,
i.e., giving back to them the land they need so much.

Henry George's fundamental position recurred vividly to his mind
and how he had once been carried away by it, and he was surprised
that he could have forgotten it. The earth cannot be any one's
property; it cannot be bought or sold any more than water, air,
or sunshine. All have an equal right to the advantages it gives
to men.