Biographies

In his autobiography, All The Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life” Loren Eiseley wrote:

“A biography is always constructed from ruins, but, as any archeologist will tell you, there is never the means to unearth all the rooms, or follow the buried roads, or dig into every cistern for treasure. You try to see what the ruin meant to whoever inhabited it and, if you are lucky, you see a little way backward into time.”

I am currently in the process of reconstructing the scaffolding of Luther Henderson’s life, trying to discover which were the turning points and pivotal moments, what were the experiences that shaped him, and which were those by which he left his imprint on history.

Biographical writing can range from the finely crafted literary profiles such as those published in The New Yorker magazine (Whitney Balliett’s being among my favorites), to short books (a fine and highly recommended example being All In The Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine by Terry Teachout), to lengthy books heavy with annotations and citations (Laurence Bergreen’s works come to mind), to multi-volume oeuvres (such as Edmund Morris’s projected three-volume life of Theodore Roosevelt), or even the artful collaboration of biography with photography in a coffee-table sized tome (Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond by Doug Ramsey, also highly recommended, of course – I’m on page 264).

Assuming one is not writing the definitive and most comprehensive account that would necessitate including everything one took, say, ten-plus years to find, one must choose the best approach for the subject and select just the right moments to suit the plan. Take the above-mentioned Balanchine bio, for example. Teachout says up front:

“This is a short book about a great man who lived a long life. It is not a full-scale biography and makes no pretense of thoroughness or originality….”

He goes on to explain who his intended reader is:

“I had in mind a reader who has just seen his first ballet by Balanchine, or is about to do so, and wants to know something about Balanchine’s life and work and how they fit into the larger story of art in the twentieth century.”

He then chose the personal and performance events that best told the story for his audience with his goals in mind. One must take care to include enough so that the portrait is “true” and not lopsided, but I am not prone to embrace the mega biography a là Bergreen who writes long and uses a chronological, annotated format as seen in Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life, As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin, James Agee: A Life, and Capone: The Man and the Era. As I wrote in 1997 for a “Brief” review of the Armstrong bio for The New York Times Book Review section:

The exhaustive research that characterizes Mr. Bergreen’s work does, however, have its occasional downside. The thread of Mr. Armstrong’s story gets lost from time to time amid the lengthy excursions into the history of New Orleans and voodoo beliefs, the geographical evolution of jazz, the Harlem renaissance of the mis-1920s, and the mini profiles of the many people who populated his life. While these portraits are vivid, pages go by in which Mr. Armstrong plays no part whatsoever. Furthermore, readers might wonder whether the fact that Mr. Bergreen is not a member of the musical scene was of help or hindrance in interpreting his findings, and to what extent the biases and experiences of his sources may have colored what he learned.

(Note of Admission: That review was accepted and paid for, but was pulled when my editor discovered that another editor had commissioned a full feature-length review by another writer, one of greater stature to be sure. That writer later become a dear friend….it was none other than Terry Teachout. Anyway, I digress.)

One of the IAJE panels next week is about biographies. Titled “Jazz Lives in Print,” the blurb reads:

The last decade has seen a torrent of new jazz biographies, some comprehensive and thorough, others mere hearsay and hagiography. What makes a good jazz biography? What are readers, fans and musicians looking for in a good bio? Personal anecdotes? Musical analysis? Social Context? A little of all three? Four prominent authors of recent jazz biographies discuss how they did their research and made their decisions about what to include (and not to include). Moderator: Paul de Barros, Seattle Times. Panelists: Gary Giddins, JazzTimes; Ashley Kahn, Wall Street Journal; Peter Levinson, Peter Levinson Communications; Stephanie Stein Crease.

De Barros (Jackson Street After Hours: The Roots of Jazz in Seattle) and Levinson (bios on Tommy Dorsey, Nelson Riddle, and Harry James) are friends of mine, Giddins (Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams) a longtime acquaintance, so I hope to attend. I sure can use their input!

Incompatible Quotes? Stage or Soapbox?

From time to time the Rifftides staff posts compatible quotes, like these and these.

Today I offer two potentially incompatible quotes:

A lot of people are singing about how screwed up the world is, and I don’t think that everybody wants to hear about that all the time. — Mariah Carey

Country music is three chords and the truth. — Harlan Howard

If pushed to choose between country music and anything by Mariah, I’ll pick country, even when it does have only three chords. But that’s another story.

To me, these quotations imply a question: arts as refuge or arts as an expression of the world? Ideally it can, and should, be both. Any artform, whether expressing pain or passion, should touch the soul and transport the viewer/listener to a world beyond his or her own immediate realm. Such transportation is, to me, a refuge. Not to say that all works of art succeed, but those with a capital A do, and all others should strive to do so. If they do not make the attempt, then perhaps they are not artistic endeavors, but commercial ones.

The question of artists speaking out raises another issue, one about which I have ambilvalent feelings. Should artists use the stage as their soapbox? Certainly my bravo for Mr. Pinter’s remarks might lead you to think I’m in favor, but I’m not always so appreciative when I attend a concert and the musicians make lengthy political speeches. Why? Because I came (and paid) to hear the music and see the show. I want the art to speak to me, not the artist. Having saids that, I am not adverse to performers making brief comments as they introduce their works or tell an occassional joke, even if that comment is ‘political’ in nature. After all, they are leaders of a sort for their fans and it is fitting that they use their influence. Personally, I’d prefer they find means to do so off-stage, through interviews and/or participation in public events. Mr. Pinter was asked to make a speech and so he did; that was appropriate. When artists make speeches during a show, particularly the presentation of a non-verbal art, it should be short, and relevant to the performance.

This is just a my personal opinion. What do you think?

Expressive Music

On occassion, the Rifftides staff posts Compatible Quotes. Earlier this week they paired a Bill Evans quote with this one from Igor Stravinsky

Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all. Music expresses itself.

To which I add this line from Aldous Huxley:

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

Enjoy the Journey – IV

In the end, nothing we do or say in this lifetime will matter as much as the way we have loved one another.
— Daphne Rose Kingma, therapist, bestselling author, and frequent Oprah guest

I’m not big on promoting self-help authors and talk-show guests; in fact, I’d never heard of Kingma before, but she’s the one to whom this words are attributed and I like the quotation. This line seems particularly fitting not just as one in the series of thoughts related to contemplating one’s life at age fifty, but also in light of the recent deaths of people I know.

Shirley Horn was much loved by fans and friends as well as family. And it was, in fact, Shirley’s love of her own family that was responsible for the long delay in her career — some obituaries might imply that jazz audiences were lacking, but in the 1960s, Shirley was on the verge of “making it big” when she opted to stay home with her husband to raise their daughter.

The wife of a long-time friend of my parents also died recently. I have known this couple for as long as I can remember, but I have not been in touch with them for several years. Time has a way of slipping by…if you let it. Who haven’t you spoken to lately?

Another recent death is closer to home — my uncle died a few days ago and I am on my way to San Diego for the funeral. Despite the sad occasion, I am looking forward to seeing my cousins and meeting their children. I am taking the train and travelling light — no computer — so you won’t hear from me again until Wednesday.

Enjoy the Journey – II

Did you ever notice that along the left side, in the fourth box down, there are category links that allow you to filter my blog posts. I’ve just added a new category called Quotables, so you can jump to my own DevraDoWrite mini-collection of sayings and quotations. Here’s the second one from Enjoy the Journey (the first one was here):

Know the value of time;
snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it.
— Lord Chesterfield