I recently picked up a collection of poems by a writer named Ann Carson and was happily struck by the simplicity of the biographical note — or bio, as it’s called in the trade — written about the author. In its fine stark entirety, it reads: “Ann Carson lives in Canada.” Not even the province in which she lives is given. Miss Carson, it turns out, has written other books, but these, too, get no mention. I am greatly impressed by Miss Carson’s absence of vanity, her refusal to attach the prestige of institutions or previous achievements to herself in this splendidly economical bio. “Ann Carson lives in Canada” — a lean, clean writing machine, Miss Carson.
Styles in the writing of bios have changed over the years. When I first began noticing them, bios for male writers, especially novelists, on the dustjackets of their books tended to emphasize the sweaty, heavy-breathing masculine. “Jack Clark,” such a bio might run, “has been a lumberjack, dishwasher, magician’s assistant, short-order cook, and Marine officer in the Korean War. The Onyx Urinal is his fourth novel.” Often there would be an accompanying photograph of the manly Mr. Clark in corduroy jacket, a pipe clenched in his square and rather pompous jaw.
Bios for female authors in those days tended to be homier. They might mention a woman writer’s interest in gardening, or sailing in the summer, or having three daughters all of whose names begin with the letter Q. Today I am sure this treatment would be considered vicious sexism. But now an even cozier, more odious change is on the way. The change is to use first names in a writer’s bio.
In the “NB” column in the January 2, 1998, T. L. S., it is reported that Lucy Ellmann’s new novel has a bio with sentences that begin, “Lucy was born in Illinois. . . . Lucy’s first novel was published in 1988. . . . Lucy now lives in Hampshire.” Nicknames or diminutive names, surely, will be next. “Chip’s [or Muffin’s] new novel is his [her] first since. . . .”
As every editor who has had to write them knows, sometimes there is a paucity of things to say about a writer in his bio, particularly a young writer, and so a bit of padding has to be done. The New York Times Book Review used to solve this problem by calling a reviewer about whom there must have been nothing else to say “an observer of the contemporary scene,” which always seemed to me rather a pathetic thing to be. Any self-respecting writer, I used to think, wants a few italics in his bio, the titles of books he’s written or the names of magazines to which he contributes.
When I was young, I remember, I used to feel what I can only call bio-envy at reading, in the Commentary of the late fifties, the heavily italic- laden bio of F. R. Lewis or Sidney Hook. Once an editor myself, I would occasionally describe a contributor in his bio as “distinguished,” but I used this sparingly, saving it for writers of the stature of Jacques Barzun or Arnaldo Momigliano. For myself, I am thankful for never having been “an observer of the contemporary scene”; and I would like to go out without ever being described in a bio as a “national treasure.” Don’t ask me why, but you never want to be called a national treasure.
To fill in their bios, writers will occasionally promote things that they have in the works: “He is currently at work on a trilogy of novels about the founding of Levittown”; or, “His series of connected screenplays about the life of Buddha is nearing completion.” This is all very well, except that these “works in the works” frequently never get done. A writer named Wallace Markfield used for years to have it noted in his bio that he was working on his first novel; and he did, after a decade or so, eventually complete it (the book turned out to be a comic gem called To An Early Grave). The critic James Wolcott, some while ago, began to advertise himself in his bios in Vanity Fair as working on a novel. So far the novel hasn’t materialized. No hurry, kid, I have other things around the house to read in the meantime.
I once claimed, in a bit of bio padding, that I was working on a novel, which resulted in my getting letters from two publishers asking to look at it. Unfortunately, I hadn’t written a page of it. (The only thing he disliked about the writing life, Peter De Vries used to say, was the paperwork.) If two publishers were interested in that vague entity, “a novel,” what might have been the reaction had I baited my trap with something a great deal more enticing: “He is currently at work on a book on double-jointed courtesans of the belle epoque“? When younger and not yet married, it occurs to me only now, I might have used my bios to promote dates: “Joseph Epstein, a smooth dancer and an easy conversationalist, is an observer of the contemporary scene, but not too close an observer.” Damn. Another opportunity lost.
JOSEPH EPSTEIN
