2013 at otb 15 p. On cspan cspan 2. My name is care about cash, director of educational and cultural programs for the Smithsonian Associates and im delighted youre here this evening at the smithsonian castle. Sitting in the library, which seems like the Perfect Place for this program. We are here to celebrate and enjoy the art of biography. This evening highlights the first of a new series by harpercollins publishers, titled eminent lives in which a number of distinguished authors will publish biographies of wellknown figures central to history and culture. I want to thank all of you who are members of the Resident Associate Program for your membership and for coming out for programs like this one tonight and for all those who are not numbers of the Resident Associate Program, well hope you will join us. To discuss the art of biography tonight, we are delighted to have christopher hitchens, Francine Prose and Michael Korda as our guest. Her discussion is moderated by mark packer, director of the National Portrait gallery and editor of telling lives, the biographers art. Christopher hitchens is the author of more than 10 books, including recently, it longshore for the postponed liberation of iraq. He contributes a monthly essay on books to the atlantic monthly, which i go to first mad magazine arrives and is a contributing editor to vanity fair. Hes also the author of the forthcoming biography of Thomas Jefferson. Cant wait for that. Francine prose is the author of a dozen novels. Among them, and take the dreams and household saints. Her most recent work was the lives of those nine women and the artists they inspired in addition to a new novel to be published in march titled a changed man, a forthcoming biography on cara baggio. Cant wait for that either. Michael korda is the writer of both fiction and nonfiction, including another life, a memoir of other people, charmed lives in the immortals is also editor in chief, corporatized president of simon schuster. His book for the five series is ulysses s. Grant, which is available for sale and signing this evening. I cant wait to get out. The series edited by james atlas. Mr. Atlas was a staff writer for time and assistant editor for the New York Times book review in the New York Times magazine as well as contributing editor to the atlantic, the new yorker and vanity fair. Mr. Atlas is the founder of atlas books and the author of several biographies, including summer shorts, the life of an american poet and although a biography. We have a Stellar Group of speakers for you this evening. We are delighted that you could either end that they are here. Would you please join me in giving a warm smithsonian welcome to james atlas. [applause] im actually very distracted by these pandas over here. Im not sure how many of you can see them running around, but i hope they are not a reproach to our talk tonight. I am very glad to have those team of biographers here. Id like to think of them as my team. I am sure are better behaved than the pistons and pacers. Im sometimes asked how i got the idea of publishing series of short biographies. This is the sequel to the penguin wines that i found it a few years ago. I dont want to be in a succession of speakers here, but very briefly as on page 1000 of my own biography of cells bellow, which had grown absolve my children, developing at the same rate. When i got to page 1000, which had laminated and gave to my editor at random house has a president , she was rather a lot. I thought there must be some other way to do this. So at that moment, the idea flow into my head that there should be short notes by distinguished writers, a tradition that is long flourished in english and american writers, for mockeries through five, johnsons lives of the poets in many different forms. So what we have here is really a revival of the venerable form, done by a very lively and distinguished writers, who are not specialists in their field. Thats the dynamic that is so exciting about it. Novelists, journalists, historians writing about biography. As a parent is in biographer for the last 30 years, you can imagine either very long very long shelf of biographies of myself, books about biography, more than a fivefoot shelf. Three of them that are the most common that i referred to time and again early on he tells essays on literary biography, richard elements goldman codgers. The great good fortune to be a student at oxford, of which set me on my own path and mark tractors towing lines. Mark has been at the smithsonian he tells me for as long as ive been preoccupied with ir graffiti. Bad enough i should say a lot about is, but 30 years. He is the director of the National Portrait gallery in an old friend of biographers are. Telling lives to save book that features have been writers thinking about biography, writing about biography. It came out in 1979 and includes doris kearns and justin kaplan. But i also have a great fan of marks introduction in which he really crystallizes in just 12 or 13 pages but it means to write a biography. He really understands all the elements of it. The biographers ambivalence towards the subject, the way he becomes obsessed with his pursuit, the struggle to maintain a balance between narrative and interpretation. It is all they are and i can always tell from his citations that he has read as deeply as anyone has in the field. I can always create from his introduction to find the quotes from plutarch in boswell and johnson that i need. It was interesting when i pulled the volume down from the shelf this morning to look at it again, i was looking at the title of the thread telling lines. It reminded me of something that whr game once wrote that only an asp separate or cosmic from the. I said well actually only has the separates telling lives from telling lies. I can assure you that mark is on the right side. If you have any doubt, i will redo a sentence from his introduction. For search from the truth in the life is the biographers preeminent standardizes on response to that truth shapes desire. I think that is as good a credo is any. So when i learned to mark would be presiding over this evening, i knew we were all in good hands and im glad to to welcome mark packer. [applause] well, put that way i am a hard act to follow, so i wont say very much because we really want to get to the proceedings tonight. I suppose i might see only one thing and its really about the National Portrait gallery. Those of you who dont know it and weve been closed in our building in washington for a number of years now, we wield it and in july for a vote. You might think well, what is an art historian doing fascinated by biography of . Would simply say this, situate myself in this inquiry at the National Portrait gallery is not principally about portraiture understood as the visual or. It is a National Institution of biographies. It is really a place of portrayal. When i got there initially, i immediately wanted to establish that fact in a broader sense by having the discussions come which led to telling lives and of course upon with intentional, the possible when i did that because i wanted people to understand biographers as birchers supports your case. And i find in its nice segue into the evening where i will invite the panelists to, that a lot of the language to describe modern biography is borrowed from portraiture when it has to be sustained to an artful and that certainly is the match we are looking for. Words like a profile. Sometimes biographers actually say they are doing a portrait of an individual. Every time that happens, you have the sense that the notion of just the heat of fact there might be biography and was it heavily in the 19th century becomes school did and to a particular life told by a particular voice. That is really a think the kind of biography by james atlas is inviting us to enjoy through this remarkable series. That being said, i would like to invite the panelists too, appeared. As you see, so shall you begin. What i have said as the rhythm of the evening, i hope this is all of you as an opportunity to see a number of things. One, i think we want their own individual glimpse of the worst of the biographers of perhaps its the marriage they struck with the subject in a series or their approach to biography. So ive asked them to each speak for about five minutes on that match that theyve made. Then after that, i will ask a number of questions to invite conversation and we will certainly leave sometime at the end for your questions as well. I will be the rhythm of the evening. That being said, michael, would you like to give us yours. I was a voracious reader of biography by the time i was 12. Living as they did going and going to school in switzerland, the American Civil War was not something that looms large in my education. In england we had our own civil war a good job before yours and in switzerland theres never been one. But my father took books everywhere. I never cared what you read. He had no interest. I came across the works of bruce kathy. Now somewhat disregarded in the american story and found myself plunging into the civil war and came away from it with a tremendous fascination with the vigor of robert e. Lee. That is fascination scared by more people than not. And enormously iconic figure, and enormously admired figure. It took me two or three years of reading into the civil war before it occurred to me that lee had been beaten by grant. Also, that lee was a bad general a good general in a bad cause because no matter how you cut it, the course was rebellion and slavery in this union. Whereas grant was a good general and a good cause. And so i got interested, more and more interest to the grand truths awkwardness, whose shyness, whose ferocity in battle was still in large numbers of men seemed to me extraordinary and also seem to need to have received not sufficient respect. When the great president s tooted up, theres always the car and magazines for the bad president and grant always fears either above or below hurting. I did not feel he belongs there. Early and coming to grips with the question of who grant is an elusive and shy figure, who is by any standards or greatest general and america has ever produced. And by any rational standards, a significant, important and excellent president grant himself to find what may be right to fight for own writing who was also of all president s in certainly about generals the best writer and his book is one of the few nonfiction books that is a part of American Literature. He wrote, i read a few lines of great man because biographers do not preserve rule. Tell us enough about the formative period of life. But i want to know is that a man did as a boy. I decided thats what. Grant. I wanted to know the boys who became the picture of shiloh, the term for carlson. I wanted to know that grant required a reputation as a term, but still became a successful general under president. I wanted to know who that boy was and to show readers who you are and how he became was speaking. That i think is not the art of biography and anything that pushes most of us into writing. Will perhaps come back to that subject broadly. But before we go along, i am in effect asking this of each of you. It never occurred to me to ask before we began. In this particular series, were you invited into the series and masters choose the life, or to the editor may have been great mr. Atlas himself, did he say to you, ive always been interested in court . So was it your choice to pick grant or were you given an idea . I must confess that charm of her frustration is such that i cannot remember the exact sequence that led to it. He had asked me to write a biography and i had proposed a number of people who interested me, but did not seem to copyright that eminence for him. After a couple of tries, i had wanted to do i hate. I would put in on grant. I have been tempted to a biography because they dont think of it as a short point. Fortunately for me, jim talked me out of that and i propose grant, which he loved. And im very happy because i loved the year or more that i spent with grants, but i wouldve feared the year or more that i wouldve spent with him. Is interesting to note. You see, how did you come to this project . I came through it through care baggio work. I remember going to it. I didnt care baggios preproduction before, but theres practically no wind or reproduces so badly. I saw the show and he became really one of the most important painters to me. So when i would travel, i would make sure would find in museums and go to them and i began to notice an interest in me that even museums that were underpopulated nmt, thered be a huge crowd in front of the caravaggio painting. Things happen. For example, is just beginning to think about doing caravaggio. We arrived there very early in the morning. We have jet lag. We didnt feel like going to sleep. So we were sitting up and went down to look at the great caravaggio in the church of san louis. I noticed the guy there who has seen on the plane to become about the same time and he had come straight off the plane as we had. I thought, he must be an artist tartare credit. I said, what are you doing . He said well, im an accountant for mayor bloomberg office. Ray, but he had the same passion. In the course of working on the book, i found also as a people expected walks of life that had that feeling for caravaggio. Do a few things about caravaggios life. Im a novelist really. Im not a biographer. I knew his life was a novelist stream. I started thinking about it when it was still the last series. He lived to be 39. His wife was extremely dramatic. He was accused and probably committed a murder. He was on the run from the police and various other groups of people for the last four years of his life. He was the original that boy, renaissance artist. So between the love for the work of the drama, it seemed like the natural project. Mr. Adler sought the immediate when you propose to . Mr. Allison ive known a for about 30 years now. So we beseech other parties and so forth and talk about the possibility of me doing some rain. I knew i wanted to do a visual artist. Id begun writing our criticism for the wall street journal. Also i wanted to write about the painting. We talked about a few artists and i guess i came up with caravaggio in iran into jiminy said just that day someone had been in a meeting same should get someone to caravaggio. So thats how it works out. Im just realizing its hogwarts dining room we are brand. I know it comes to me me in a second. With pandas. This one here is Jefferson Way i think. There are now ive realized three streets in washington d. C. A think hes the only one. Its just as well because i now know there were at least three of him. But its telling that there should be as many as that. I always was resistant to the idea of biography. Debunking people as a critic and a culture if you dont do some of that. Theres so many great tethered limbs just waiting for your attention. I hadnt wanted to push it any further. I think this came out of some residual marxism on my part. It was the feeling that in the telling of history the world is a great manner great woman at the expense of the discussion of ideas or forces. When i was in england, it was at least a pageant of monarchs do we. I start history by rains. Until the 30s. If you notice history is is that way. The mac we still do it by administrations. Sometimes a decade. Its sometimes a great deal. At any rate, these were the reasons since ive overcome and possibly missing the cystic to be writing in this way. I did envy the people. It seemed to be with someone elses life. What are you going to do . Have one of your own if you have to live the life of a subject all the time. So that was my frame and state of mind when mr. Atler approached me and said that i like to do Margaret Hatcher . I said yes, it did intrigue me as an idea. I dont know how he do this, but a few weeks later he says i dont think youre really happy with that. I had been thinking about it in the bathroom to shower, and then fill in the good for me when i have my first cigarette out of the shower in the morning to see if im still concentrating are not. I said no come as a matter of fact, no. The only other time ive been asked this by an agent who i think thought he would give me position in society is some kind of the post albert einstein. I knew the first tower that was wrong because fiction on einstein just doesnt compute. I thought it was ridiculous, is fairly sure everybody else would. Sue said what about jefferson . And understand not only had i only want to write about that, but a lot of the time i was doing so in any case because anyone who makes america their subject is in this sense condemned. Maybe thats too bleak a word. They are destined to think about Thomas Jefferson part of his time enough for conversation to some extent involves him. Other than a city thats part of the memorial, ever cheer for nearly a quarter of a century. I now know we have the same birthday he was born in under the old calendar into changes but they recherche machine in orlando which i like. And then i realized james wanted this first biography. I thought how wonderful that would be. I forget what book it is dr. Johnson said i could possibly wish longer. But whichever san, i wish shed asked me to take a little more space. Even asked them if they make it to the upper limit for this reason. Jefferson is in power, more or less continuously once he goes to be minister. For 25 years, very nearly a solid quarter of a century on top of the political tree. That is after hes read the declaration of independence. Being the governor of virginia and propose the virginia statute of religious freedom. So its an extraordinary life. Its a very, very massive one and he kept an anonymous correspondence going and what a number of journals and memoirs. I dont think now would be possible for any one person to say that he had Read Everything by him and about him. It might be beyond the compass of an individual to have done that. But its worth a try and make a huge education wouldve soured the great subject, the United States. And ive spoken too long already, but i trust a little more if i may, the project of the enlightenment, which was part of its design was what influenced him the most comes out all the time in substituting happiness or property in the declaration, but also the paradox is that his attitude to his own property and in his wanting to be remembered, he wanted to be remembered only for the declaration, the virginia statute on religious freedom and defending at the university of virginia. President and secretary of state and governor minister. Even when he designed the lewis and clark expedition, to some extent even though we cannot purchase a of nationbuilding certainly, but a new kind of nation that was based on a secular and scientific approach to life had one of the things that interest me most is his contempt for all forms of religious faith, which is the contempt i personally share. Thats probably been more germane. The idea for the United States is there is not a secular country. The other problem is too many forerunners. The ballon biography, the quarry from which the tracks still rumble away. In my book i actually say i wish i could do to it which a percentage to the bible and cut out all the superfluous junk could similar book is in a way and someone needs to fire out to me. Very good, short solid book. Just because everyone else has spoke about sally. Ive never met anyone else who has amassed me about this. Should simply say that i do not see where theres ever been any controversy about this at all. I do not see how anyone could look at the evidence and being the smallest at the chip or said was the father of the children. Long before i met gordons liberal is staring you in the face as it was fascinating for me to find many people vastly senior to myself and much more qualified could examine that evidence and concluded it didnt point out my or that it was ambivalent. Select any chapter just on that as ive often had to do. Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, for my subject just lived a lot longer. General question, and that is that it is not only the name of the streets that are at jefferson, but there are at least there are three i think, only but particular domes meant to evoke monticello. The Natural History museum in the old west wing of the art museum, the national gallery. Then whether it was intentional or not, it speaks to the other two, the new National Museum of american indian. They are all in effect tributes to the jeffersonian ideal. He even has a form of democracy named after him that doesnt com erbody. The broader question which takes off from each of your characterizization of your passion, ill start with an anecdote which would add to this point and that is that i was i had the interesting experience of being with david mccullough, the day after he had told his pusher publisher to take back the Million Dollar advance he got to write picasso, and the tried hard for a year, writing pick picasso, and decided he couldnt do it. And it was a matter not of expertise in his point of view, although he admitted he wasnt an expert on art it was a matter of sympathy. And that brilliant publisher of his said, instead of accepting the million back, whom would you like to write about . He said harry truman. So the question i want to ask you is the question of sympathy. Have you found it necessary to feel sympathetic towards your subject . We have the notion of taking your subject on. Have you found it important to have a feeling, this is a life that you can evoke and admire or is administer racing admiration not cid cal to your telling of the story. Id first like to say that having been David Mcculloughs editor, this is an an next dote i can vouch for. It is true. Yes. Good. Good. And that leads me to Say Something which i feel but never properly analyzed. The autobiography would be limiting if we limit it only to those subjects whom we liked or felt we would be comfortable with. Hitler is a perfect example of somebody with whom most of us would certainly feel uncomfortable. But in many ways ought to be studied very carefully, and theres a deficiency in english language of good buyographys and a really good one would be a valuable and important book. So i think that we cant limit biography or think about biography as if it were a form of fan mail. I would have been very uncomfortable writing a biography of lean, because theres something remote and something altogether cold about lee, a veteran of manner which seems offputting, or seems offputting to us at present. I found grant, his very shabbiness and bouts of drunkenness and selfdoubt, his unwardness and unhappy childhood, made him a figure i related to and could feel sympathy for. So i think that the biographer has to decide whether youre going to be a fulltime professional at it in which case, as with the case with harold nicholson, when the call comes from Buckingham Palace to honor you with the task of writing the official biography of george v, you say, yes, and accept the fact that it will be five years of work and youll get a knighthood afterwards and thats perfectly respectable, but for the amateur biographer, i feel that the task would be impossible if you didnt like your subject. You spoke of a nation with this life and an admiration for the art but not a sympathy. Well, wouldnt want to meet in a dark alley. He was in trouble with the law over 20 times during his life. He was a murderer, actually, but i found him incredibly appealing and romantic and attractive. He was a genius, which is always attractive. For another he himself passionate about art. Theres very Little Information about his life. He didnt write a word we know about, but theres one a court case he was involved in. He was sued for libel by a fellow painter. He was critical and insult tolling fellow painters, and theres the amount of the court case in which he gives this incredibly beautiful, impacterred defense of real art, art drawn from nature, art that is not idealized, and when i started learning about his life i realized how near the end of this life, just before the murder, he had been extremely successful and celebrated painter in rome, and then the more sentimental, the more acceptable artists began to be more popular, and he just went kind of crazy as a result. Well, all those things, how could i possibly not be sympathetic to this guy . That important in your choice if you think of a life to live with in this way. I would have had he been a mass murderer, dont think that would have affected me decision. The art would be the art. I did fine him hugely appealing. Christopher, i want to ask the same question of you, but i once interviewed malone, who spent almost 50 years and five volumes of jefferson, and i asked him a question that i would like to ask you, although his take was probably different from yours. I said, did jefferson ever disappoint you . And he paused, because of his project was a project of monumental admiration, and he did give some instances when jefferson disappointed him, but he was bit taken aback. So im going to ask you, does this soup of admiration apply to how you think about jefferson, and if so, did he disappoint you . For me it was above all necessary he be the salvation of a continuous argument, that he not be a figure on whom theres a general agreement or ever will be. I knew i would never get bored. I wouldnt feel the rattle of the revolver against my teeth in the morning, what you dont want when youre writing a book. And youre guaranteed that with jefferson. Tothough you are writing counter to obviously i shouldnt say he its not wings exactly but he clearly felt he had a responsibility for representing this part of American History in a respectable way. That george v yes. Mustnt upset the School Children too much. And i dont know which instances he gave to come to the second part of your question. Theres another thing. I think its a jolly good thing that youre writing about somebody where there are no photographs, something of this kind, where its literary, the written word will remain, and you have to look at the stuff and its all reading. Theres some good portraits of him. It would be lovely to have a photograph. But no one really knows. And there were lots of areas of him that he kept very private. I think gore vidals description of him in bur was very probable. Very passionate, very much under control, and with a splinter of ice somewhere in his core, and if you ask the question i always ask about nip i anyone i know, if they were an animal, what animal would they be . He would be a fairly large fox. With a questioning muzzle and a ruthless disposition and a good deal of cunning. I think you admire foxes. Im not against. You cant eat them. Understood. Disappointment. I dont know what malones reply to you was. What i really have against malone is in my book, at one point he said of the claims by the hemings descendents they had jeffersons blood, he said thats just what you expect, just trying to make themselves more pedigreed. At it just like what some farmers and stock broders do, coming show time or race time, they pretend preposterous lineages for their animals if thought that was a bit much of a compare son. What was he saying there . And for a second, the other way around. This stock analogy. I thought, it was consider erred a respectable reply at the time. I first knew that a lot of editing of his stuff is required to make it sizable in lapy idary form. You have to cut out a lot of what he elsewhere said, and of course everybody knew there was a paradox in his life. I guess i was shocked to find out how much and how coldly he was determined not just to postpone the an abolition of slavery but stenthe time in which it would be an institution. I dont think i appreciated at all the extent to which that was true. And i think disappointment isnt quite the right word for that. It was an education. Very much to the point. Malones disappointment was the extent to which having read so many of his letters, how much malone said he massaged the truth. And then he went on to excuse that as a southern disposition. But yeah. Wont be actually there is another big disappointment. Jefferson and his wife throughout christian shamby was a good back. So no sense of humor. They would read it to each other in the long evening. Not a chuckle in it. The next question is, again, i think, perhaps inevitable in the series were contemplating, and that is the question of brevity as a virtue. I think that its actually suggested done maybe i didnt hear it when i was basking in the glory of what he said about me suggested something about it being more comfortable to do a short life if youre not actually an expert on the life, so there is either a perpetual biographer or somebody who wasnt immersed before. I wonder if thats the only issue in brevity, the father of us all in terms of these aspirations, really felt that brevityie was credit dollar to the cap cure capture of a life and life was only presentable and evokable briefly. Now, that being said, that was michael, what about the links of either time invested in the project and the form itself . Do you think it i wrote a biography of my father and his two brothers, called charmed lives, which was a very long book. Felt like w. G. Fields, ive been rich and ive been poor, and believe me, rich is better. Theres a pleasure to writing a long biography. You can play with you can deal with peoples correspondence, you can sum up long lives. You have more room to play with, and that was for me a great experience, and if somebody said to me, you can write a biography of grant but it cant be less than, say, 700 manuscript pages, that would not have daunted me at all. I would have been energized by that and done it happily. I think its in some ways more difficult to condense a life into a short form, and indeed i think one of the challenges that jim presents this authors with is not just to write about somebody who interests them, kind of a form of saying, put up or shut up. If youre that interested, do it. Which is very smart. But it must be of this particular small length. So that you have to condense, you have to get the whole story into a very small number of pages biographical sonet. To me, if anything true live astop issue astonished me and pleased me, it was my ability, like nancy, to make grants campaigns and battles Crystal Clear to a nonmilitary reader in very short form and without maps, and if i have to sort of put my hand to anything and say, im amazed i could do that, that is the thing that amazes me the most. So i think it is a challenge, certainly the bigger the life, the harder it is to get into 160 book pages, but its a fascinating challenge and makes writing these biographies such an acute pleasure. At it different from anything else we do as a writer. Other books we go on and on and on until we feel we have run the subject to death. I think the subject to death is a good name for a biography. When jim posed this as a topic you had the topic, but as a length, was that daunting or was that exactly what you happened for . I was in a very different situation than michael or christopher. If i were to write down everything that was known about his life, the book would have been 15 pages long. So the question is whatles i wanted to but in the book. Certain things seemed important to me, what rome was like during the time in which he lived, what the social and Political Climate during the different papacys like. And there was a very good biography of caravaggio, and i didnt have much to add, but i but also i knew i wanted to be able to write about the paintings in a way that they hadnt been written about. So i could take everything about the life, a certain amount about the surrounding history, and then destroy it as much as i describe as much as i wanted about the paintings, which was ideal. The hardest person of all would be william shakespeare, all the books about him have to be shakespeare and his time. We know practically nothing. [inaudible] at this length, too. Medium length. Anyway. Whatever ive said already, i shouldnt belabor at the point, but with me subjects, quite large books or series of books have been written about just the Louisiana Purchase or the lewis and clark expedition, or the bar barry war, and the decision to go to war in north africa. So i was spoiled for choice. What one tried to do, i think, is to find something that is vaguely fanatic. The same story but in a different form. Same things operating on jefferson when he is doing apparently quite disdiscrepanciant policy, and you can fold it in a bit. I hope ive managed to do that. And then share a corny theme with you if you like. Want to share . The 4th of july is generally agreed to be the day of independence but probably isnt. But its the one they agreed to hit pop, the day of the declaration, and it is also the day on which the Louisiana Purchase is announced in the public print in washington, which is also the day that lewis and clark say goodbye to their master and leave for pittsburgh, to set off for the west. The day on which jefferson died. On the same day as john adams. So, there are ways to hang out a line and drape things along it. That give it some shape. And youre going to need this line because you have to have the thread of something to follow and hold on to yourself. The three themes im referring back to what michael said about the childhood and the becoming the subject, becoming the individual, and how each of you balanced these elements, really also speaks to what christopher just said. Onc Edmond Morris said to me did not write a short biography, still writing he coot but hasnt he thought it would be a screen play, but [inaudible] that was the theme. Edmond morris is a passionate pianist. He would have loved that. But Theodore Roosevelt is given the arc broadly and then devoted a separate book, the sweetness of youth of the rise of theodore relevant, the period of power, and then what he really wants to write about, which is the decline, the greek arc that he is interested in. In your book, have you weighted it toward any one of these periods in the life childhood, period of consummate achievement and decline. Caravaggio didnt have time for decline. Was it weighted towards the young grants . I would say, yes. But i would do the same for almost anybody. I think that without exploring in depth somebodys childhood, you are leaving out the most interesting part, and the part that enabled the rest of the life to make sense. Once you know the child, then very often the adult person becomes much more knowable. The less you know about the child, the more in doubt you are about knowing the adult. With grant, the childhood is of enormous interest and enormous importance, that i devoted probably more pages than i should have to it. Partly because i wanted to write about what a childhood in illinois was like in the 1820s and 1830s. I think its extremely important in writing biography to bear in mind, which for some reason biographers have great difficulty in doing as a rule we are writing about people who arent living today. Therefore, we first of all, we owe the reader to the recreation of their lives within the society and the kind of world in which they lived. We also owe them not judging people and events by the standards that apply today, because if you were writing about somebody in the 1830s, you must write about them within the standards that applied in the 1830s, not in 2004. I would say, with the bulk of grant, nevertheless, has got to be, if youre writing a biography about him, his genius in general, and the threads of life, of childhood, early experience west point, that in this singularry unpromising young man who had the lowest marks ever recorded in the history of west point at that timeexcept in horsemanship, and was also the worst dressed and most slovenly dressed cadet at west point. To go become, knowing what we know now, and take out of it the threads that you see will one day produce this extraordinary ability to command men in battle and this enormous courage that grant displayed as a soldier, that is a fascinating task. So the answer is that you must in writing a biography, devote a substantial amount of text to the thing the person is famous for and the fact it would be just selfindulgent to produce a book that was threequarters childhood and only one quarter accomplishment. Some books are only that, but not your book. Not if youre writing the whole life. I think ive sended one bond, the horsemanship, another connection between you and grant. I have to admit that i am a horseman myself. And i love horses and always have, and one of the things that has always attracted know grant was that at the age of 10 or 11 he was selftaught horse whisperers and people brought him farm horses from all over ohio and illinois that were intractable, bolted, kicked, couldnt be ridden, and this 10 or 11yearold by, without knowing how he did it, could gentle them, whisper to them and hand them back to their owners, cured. And if that isnt an attractive trait in a man that later oregon became a generalization i dont know what it. We discovered the real rope you wrote the book. In the short live of karavaggio do you look at segments of growth . I decided to begin the book with the last four years of his life. The murder was committed in 1606, and he in rome, and he left rome, fled to the hills outside room. Then he fled from rome to naples, doing okay in naples, getting commissions. He fled planeles for some unknown reason. Went to malta to become a knight of malta, which was very unu, got into trouble, imprisoned, escaped prison, got a commission, painted one of his most beautiful paintings, accused of looking oddly at school boys. He hit the guy so went back to naples, died under mystery your circumstances going to rome. The astonishing thing to me about that period, he continued to paint. He was never anywhere for more than a few months. He got commissions and did some of the most extraordinary paintings of his career, so it seems to me those years concentrated everything that was most violent, turbulent, and mysterious about his life so thats where i started and then moved back to the beginning from there. The, arc of jeffersons life . I mentioned the weems school. Most of those which i think have their origins in religion, do stress extraordinary things about a childhood life, George Washington and the cherry tree, which we know to be false, as is the story of kim jung ills birth being attended by shards of blue birds that spoke korean and all the stuff were about to go through celebrating next month. And im very glad theres almost none of that in jefferson to be quarried from. Just cant know it. I havent been as lucky perhaps in my subjects. I find this irritating, and in jeffersons case we know his own auto buy groggraph doesnt mention his childhood at all. His first memory was his family moved and he was carried on a cushion by a slave whose name he knew. The little boy lying on a cushion. His life ends on a death bed surrounded by domestic labor. We dont know why he did not like his mother at all. And obviously that is something far too good to miss. That has to be important. Very rare and mug be suggested. He didnt like mama and didnt give a damn when she died. Cant think of anyone else except gore vidal who could say that. He quite respected his father. Was very lucky for him his life begins if with education, which is very good, because he is a man of enlightenment and great learning and a bib leophile as well and he is very lucky with his teachers in virginia, and wanted to be private. We know that his first date was a nightmare. Miss Rebeca Burwell can the most southafter babe of the town in those days, and he worked on it very carefully, probably much too carefully, rehearsed approach to her, at a dance, made to look and feel like a complete idiot and wrote an agonizing letter to a friend about this and started to get his migraine attacks which never left him. Weve all been there. Im going to ask my last question to allow the audience their chance, and that is going to be, maybe an inevitable question. Its the mix of lives that a biography represents that i want to get at, because how much you are aware that it is korda on grant, or how much korda withdraws, either in the voice you use or in the aspirations toward objectivity that you plan . So id like each of you give some sense of whether youre consciously holding yourself back or enjoying what may in fact be an essay by you on this life, and so youre part of it. Well, you cant, even if you tried very hard, you cannot remove yourself. The notion of a totally objective biography is almost impossible to achieve, and probably not worth achieving. Because you could do that essentially by putting together just the salient facts of a life in the form of a list. The encyclopedia brit britain nick could provides pretty good objective biographies of almost anybody you can think of but if youre get to to writing somebodys write, you must bring to the table, whether you like them or not, your own feelings about that person, about the world they lived in, about your subject. You cannot avoid seeing them through your eyes. And what about your voice . Is it there . Your voice, of course, has to be there because if you are a writer, your voice is what is your the essential thing you have. It also theres one argument another strong argument against plagiar. I is that the length of a book it would be ear norm missouri mousily tedious to write about anything a voice or with a range of interests that were not your own, and above all the important thing is you cant pretend to be that but to be completely open to the reality thats presented to you on a page, and you cant turn away from the worst of your character, your central figure. You mustnt exalt over the death. You must try to present as nearly as you can the person as you think that person was. Now, thats a difficult task and a challenge, and its probably not possible for any biography, even the most gifted one to succeed in dog that 100 . Thats what you really have to too. You have to read each page and say, if grant himself were reading this page, would he agree with it . Disagree . Would he think it was fair . It was unfair . And those are questions which ought to keep a biographer awake at night. To what extent is your become a collaboration of two lives . I think for one thing, its always a great idea to have artists write about other artists. There are things he experienced and faced in the world that i felt extremely sympathetic toward. I also felt for me i was able to use the various desspirit and schizophrenic parts of my life. My long career as a novelist, my briefer career as an art critic, and also insofar as i write what i guess is called cultural criticism, i feel that its the kind of voice crying out in the wilderness against things that are trashy, unsolved, and sendmental and hollow, which is what caravaggio was doing every moment. I look the question you asked before, about sympathy for ones subject. I just voice back to oxford to attend the retirement din over my old history teacher, who actually so far has just given up his College Position to produce the general edition of the disk dictionary an epic achievement of its crime. Has not been redone for some time and he has done it. Every recount i hear is praising. I mention this because his practice has been, as the dnf was for some time, you want to get people who can really write convincingly for others they should have some sympathy for as well as knowledge of the subject otherwise you wouldnt have wonderful portraits of old deans and professors, and for example, theres an 81 2 thousand world entry on karl marx in this new edition, and its by the a communicatize. I wouldnt quarrel with that because theres nobody who would know the subject better, i cant think who could have been given that job. Since everyone knows who he is and everyone knows who, at is where, where his heart and sleeve come into opposition, i think theres no harm in that at all. Again, my own case, i claim is different because only about three president ial studies you have to write about the United States, without whom there wouldnt be a United States. Theres obviously washington, clearly jefferson, certainly lincoln, and probably roosevelt. Possibly without these possibly not being the United States as we understand it to be. So, thats a lot to ask. And one reason i was so greatful to james and so humble for this was it happened to coincide with my own decision to take on the papers of citizenship as an american. I decided sometime after september 11th, 2001, that i would be cheating the country of its dues if i just went on being a green card holder. I wanted to make it plain i had signed on. And so it was in that frame of mind i wrote about jefferson. I dont think it made my any more lenient about his shortcomings or crimes. It was sad by some historian now forgotten, about a century ago now, think, that if jeffson was right, the United States is right. If jeffson was wrong, the United States is wrong. Too simple. But worth cogitaty ng. Im glad you made your decision earlier than henry james about britain. Theres an odd parallel. I make my students do this. Very nearly and sincerery becoming an englishman and citieding in becoming a new yorker at least. Which culture got the best of the bargain. A good essay i make them. With henry james no question which is the best country. Now id like to give the audience a chance at questions. We have about ten, 15 minutes for that, if you are interested in asking this elegant crew something. Stand up. Mr. Korda, did you see any affinity between grant and huck finn . And huck finn. Yes. Thats an interesting question, actually. And but it relates to the question which we discussed, of going back to the era in which the person lived, with some sense of sympathy and understanding for that period. Its not accidental that mark twain ended up being grants publisher, and its not accidental that American Literature to some degree, rests upon grants extraordinary brevity and lapidary ability to write concise english. His memoirs are amazingly readable, but i left in how to write brief, short sentences, from which hemingway, stein, and any number of american writers, who grew up in the heartland, derived their style. You can read her and she quite quickly how anybody reading them would be led towards a particularly abrupt and come pressed style of writing. In addition to which, of course, growing up in ohio and illinois, in the 1840s, 1830s, next to a great river because the was born on the ohio river grant had what looks superficially like a huck finn childhood. On the other hand, when you read about his father, jesse grant, who was surely one of the most overbearing, overambitious, people ever to have fathered a child the competition is huge competition for that. But in any such competition, trust me, grant would get a strong number of both. You realize that its a deceptive huck finn childhood. Its barefooted and fishing with a hook in the ohio river and growing up in the, so i huck finn, but growing up also under a shadow of expectations he couldnt fulfill, and awkwardness which were to dog grant all his life. But, yeah, grants childhood looks on the surface a lot like hucktips. Interesting. Would you stand, please. Ive read the. [inaudible] id like you to talk about how you approached those biographies, albeit brief, and then id like to ask the publisher which women he we only heard about men. First question was, to francine about the muses, and how that might relate, and then well get to the second. Oh, well, they were shorter, the essays were shorter, and i was thinking about them in relation to one another. So in other words, my choice of which women to put in the book depended a lot on which other women i had and what sort of stores i was telling. I knew i wanted nine stories as different from one another is a possibly could. Caravaggi0 it was just me and caravaggio and it depended the anyone women i felt extremely sympathetic for some less for. Caravaggio was pure sympathy. The second part of the question was, is it a mere coincidence that all of these lives are lives are men or are there a number of lives of women i think thats what youre asking publish in the series. James, would you mind giving this awesome responsibility to [inaudible] may have fallen short in our musclety cultural, multigender and [inaudible] we had joan of arc, and katherine of however, confess we have i confess we were got me up here again i con the we have had a problem in this area. Very little of which can be attributed to my being a mail chauvinist. If you look at history and you look at history of literature, if you look at great generals, great religious figures, unfortunately men rule. Now, that may change, i assume its going to change, but anyone who has suggestions, come up and see me after the show. We almost had a life of margaret thatcher. Yeah, we did. But i got to say, jefferson is preferrable. Fairly asked and fairly answered. Another question . Yes, thanks. Again, would you stand up and boom out if you can. This is a variation of the question about imagination. When you write history, you have to have a little imagination but do you have some sort of internal monitor that tells you when youre lapse interesting the area of speculation. When you dont have any sources to work with. This, you have so much to work with, there is a danger you reach a point where you know that youre only speculating, you have left yourself behind as best, and thats the point beyond which i cant go. I would just summarize that. The question is the temptation of overspeculation, maybe the investment of yourself in this without sufficient evidence and are you aware and worried about that. Michael . You mentioned before david mccullough, and having been his editor, and publisher for a very long time, david once told me i think its true that the words a biographer must shy away from as if they were totally evil are, he must have felt. So that when you read a biography of napoleon that says, as he crossed the yemen river, napoleon must have felt you should put the book down and move on to another book. At any rate you should begin to approach the book with great, great caution. We know what people did. We know what they said. We know what they wrote. We do not know how they must have felt. And, therefore all of them, biographies in which theres at least as much fact available on Thomas Jefferson if not more. And nevertheless, they inevitably bring you to what must he have felt as he stood on the steps . We dont know what he felt. And therefore as biographies we have to be very careful when we type those words to ask, do we in fact know . If we dont, take them out. Anyone else on the temptation of speculation . I would just add the phrase, would have thought. Yes. I would say, must have felt must be in there somewhere, and ill tell you why. When i said earlier i cant believe theres ever been an argument about sally hemings, i mean you can make it come out differently. You can have jefferson alone in paris, a widower, and you can have him ask for one servant to be sent with his daughter and get another one he didnt know was coming. Just turned 15 and this is his wifes half sister and looks like her. And you can read the letters he writes to other women that contain dick jokes, penis jokes and you can look at that and think he never laid a glove on her if you like, if you dont make the assumption that some people dont, that he was some kind of i think if you dont think he did, then you dont know what he must have felt. If you do think he did, you do know what he must have felt. That isnt a full response. Just arrived in paris. Thats what he must have thought, all my birthdays just arrived at once. Would be nice to have a picture of her. It would be really good even a painting. We dont have a thing, but we sheaf very good descriptions. He must have felt, wow. We have time for one question more. That may have neatly summed it up. Okay. Yes, please. Againstand. [inaudible] just to repeat the question. Have you considered writing bat person who or have you done a person who is still living . I have written about people who are still living, yes. And its a lot easier to write about people who are dead. [laughter] i wrote about my aunt while she was still alive, and had cause to deeply regret having done so. I think its terrific to write about people who are still living, but its very difficult to write about them with total honesty, and the one thing to be said for biography is there are an awful lot of interesting dead people to write about. Youd have to be willing to take very serious risks indeed if you were to write honestly about living people. In the music book theres chapter on yoko ono and another one on susan farrell, and i spent a lot of time on the phone with the Harper Collins lawyer. Almost as much time talking to the lawyers as i did writing the chapters. So that was cautionary experience for me. Ive written, it would be very kind friend of mine who were they were intended as revisions of existing reputations, one case of William Jefferson clinton and the other case of henry kissinger, and the first case to shorten the career, and the second case to try to shorten the life. Okay. Indeed. Indeed. Abbreviating. Writing biography of saul bell low. Dont do it. On that note. Its wonderful you had the last word. Lets thank our panelists and shadow panelists. [applause] when did the u. S. Slave trade start and how did it start . Well, the u. S. Was involved in the slave trade from the moment that we sort of began as a colony of britain, and one of the interesting things about u. S. History is that in the Constitutional Convention there was a compromise between the states that had slaves and the states that didnt, and the u. S. Constitution said that the federal congress couldnt take any action against the slave trade until 1808. And the u. S. , at the first moment it could in 1807, president jefferson, sent legislation up to congress that banned par tis nation participation in the slave trade by u. S. Ships and u. S. Persons, and come passed that. So in 1808 the u. S. Prohibited the slave trade, which was a long time before, of course, slavery itself ended in the United States. But the issues were
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