WRITING ABOUT WRITING AIN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE

The modern literary biography is wrapped in a paradox. “Only famous writers attract biographies, writers who are famous because their writings are. But the more space a literary biographer devotes to discussing an author’s writing, the less commercial the biography will seem to be, to those who decide which books to publish and push. It looks as though the word is out that readers will happily read about famous writers as long as they don’t have to be troubled much about what they wrote.” – London Review of Books