THIS IS FROM "A LEVIATHAN TASK OF BIOGRAPHY" in THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION. I wish the writer had said more about my engagement of other biographers in dialogue and had focused more on what I say about the genre of biography, but I am happy he got this in about litblogs and in particular the litblogger I wrote into my preface:
Parker fires frequent, caustic
broadsides at the scholarly community, especially the New Critics, the
mid-20th-century group of scholars who favored close-reading techniques and
often treated works of art as self-contained objects. "Almost all academic
critics, not just quintessential New Critics, comprehend nothing about what a
scholar does," he writes at the beginning of the book. "Biography:
it's something that's suicidal for you to do at a university," he
elaborates in an interview. "Academia doesn't train how to do archival
research, or reward people for doing it." In fact, he says, "the
great readers are not in the English department. It's a new world and, I think,
a good one."
Parker points to lit
bloggers like Daniel Green: "Most of
the resolute bloggers are independent. They're setting a standard which is more
glamorous and exciting. They're more adventurous in prose and field of
study."
P.S. I don't have a tape recording. I probably did say "glamorous," odd as it sounds. Well.
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