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Title: The Biographer's Tale by A. S. Byatt ISBN: 0-375-41114-3 Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Pub. Date: 16 January, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.35 (26 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: one too many happy endings
Comment: If you made a list of all the literary devices A.S. Byatt uses in The Biographer's Tale, it would look like a best of postmodern narrative. There are embedded stories, documents, theoretical discussions, and a double ending (happy both times). A.S. Byatt knows how to make a novel, I'm just not sure she has a real story to tell in this book. On the face of it, grad student Phineas Nanson leaves the academy to write a biography and finds love and adventure instead. It all feels extremely predictable and safe-from the sexual partnering to the debunking of contemporary postructuralist thought. Somewhere along the way a great idea for a novel about the contemporary state of the self became an exercise in literary structure.
Rating: 4
Summary: Very Intelligent but No Emotional Engagement
Comment: A.S. Byatt is an extremely intelligent writer. That much certainly can't be denied. But, for me, interesting as her books and stories are, they lack fire and passion. They often leave me cold. This was the case with THE BIOGRAPHER'S TALE. I loved the premise and I liked the protagonist, Phineas G. Nanson, but I just couldn't warm up to either him or his story hard as I tried.
Phineas is a British postgraduate student who desperately needs a break from his studies and his work in the classroom. He's persuaded to write a biography of a relatively obscure 1950s biographer, Shoales Destry-Shoales. Destry-Shoales was writing a three-volume biography on one of the obscure Victorians (Elmer Bole) Byatt seems to love so much when he mysteriously disappeared, apparently a victim of the Maelstrom, a violent whirlpool that lies off the coast of Norway.
Phineas is an interesting man, though he lives entirely in the world of ideas and so it's almost impossible to achieve any emotional engagement with him despite his bizarre adventures while attempting to research Destry-Shoales' life.
Phineas isn't the only interesting character in this book. It's peopled with interesting characters, among them two gay travel agents and a Swedish bee specialist, all of whom interact with Phineas. These characters, along with Phineas, should have made for some very amusing, yet highly intelligent, reading, but they didn't. Oh, Byatt's usual intelligence was fully present, but, as usual, any hint of the amusing was missing. Amusing, after all, belongs to the realm of the emotions and Byatt deals, not in emotions but in intellectual musings.
Phineas doesn't find research on Destry-Shoales easy, not even when he finds a cache of documents and index cards the elusive biographer has left behind. While this cache doesn't contain information on Destry-Shoales (it seems that not even one photograph of the man exists), it does contain information on Carl Linnaeus, Henrik Ibsen and Francis Galton...some of it true, but much of it embroidered by Destry-Shoales, himself. The book's overriding question, "Can Phineas ever understand and chronicle the life of Destry-Shoales?" remains unanswered, however, at least at this point. Poor Phineas. Had he been a more fully fleshed out character, I would have felt sympathy for him. He is trying so hard to avoid inserting himself into his biography of Destry-Shoales, yet he finds that with every stroke of his pen, he's writing more and more about himself and less and less about his subject.
Readers looking for a book similar to POSSESSION or the novella, ANGELS AND INSECTS, are probably going to be disappointed with THE BIOGRAPHER'S TALE, though I think it's better written than the other two. It is certainly more literary and more intelligent...more "brainy," if you will. It reminds me of the stories contained in ELEMENTALS, but it lacks romance and, like POSSESSION, it likes fire. Byatt's realm is the world of ideas, not the world of feelings. She does a wonderful job of exploring the mind, but when it comes to exploring the heart, she backs off. Perhaps the heart just isn't "her thing."
Despite the fact that couldn't connect with Phineas on an emotional level, I still enjoyed this book. It should have been funnier; it should have engaged our heart as well as our mind, but it didn't and oh, well, I guess that's okay. Despite its lack of "feeling," THE BIOGRAPHER'S TALE is still better than 99% of the stuff on the bookshelves today.
I would recommend this book to lovers of A.S. Byatt's work and to those who love highly literary fiction. And, even some Byatt fans are going to find this one a disappointment. THE BIOGRAPHER'S TALE, despite its irony and wit, is not light reading and it's certainly not geared toward a general readership. Only fans of very intelligent books will find something to like in this well told, but rather dry, tale.
Rating: 2
Summary: A "Tale" not worth telling
Comment: A.S. Byatt is the master of fiction that focuses on art and literature, like the "Matisse Stories" or "Possession." But in "Biographer's Tale" she misfires by hammering square pegs into round holes, despite a solidly engaging idea and some likable characters.
Student Phineas Nanson decides to ditch his present studies to become a biographer -- specifically, to "biograph" a famous biographer, Scholes Destry-Scholes. Destry-Scholes was writing a long biography of Elmer Bole when he was apparently killed in a whirlpool. He carefully studies Destry-Scholes' elusive notes and writings about three unnamed men who turn out to be Carl Linnaeus, scientist Sir Francis Galton, and dramatist Henrik Ibsen.
Phineas continues hunting down clues and twisty truths about Destry-Scholes, running into two compelling women along the way. But the facts are seldom as concrete as they seem, something Phineas finds out. He soon begins to unearth new information about his subject, that changes the way he sees Destry-Scholes.
Cross avant-garde classic "Pale Fire" with the mind-bending "House of Leaves" and you will get something like "Biographer's Tale." Like Nabokov's quirky study of critical analysis, this is a highly literate study with plenty to fuel it. Byatt's writing is pleasantly lush and detailed. Her grip on Victorian artistes, not to mention the layers of writing, is rarely paralleled.
But there's a certain out-of-control quality to "Biographer's Tale." Several times, Byatt interrupts the narrative to have Nanson ramble at length about his childhood, primates, magic, and any number of any other topics. The problem is, it isn't very interesting. Nanson's thoughts tend to be kind of random, and his actions are bloodlessly briefly-described. Add to that that she flings in some elements like interviews, letters, poetry, and a stumbling conclusion, and the result is a tangle.
Self-important graduate student Nanson is the biggest weakness of the book. Since it's all in first-person, he rambles incessently; he has the distant, coy quality of a trickster you only encounter over the Web. Byatt tries to make him quirky, but he merely seems insubstantial. Other characters, such as Destry-Scholes' niece or the gay guys, have more substance, but they are still seen through Nanson's eyes.
Predictable and plodding, there's a novel in the spirit of "Pale Fire" locked somewhere in "Biographer's Tale"'s cold, distant shell. But Byatt forgot to unlock the door before sending this puppy off.
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Title: The Shadow of the Sun by A. S. Byatt ISBN: 0156814161 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 16 April, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: A Whistling Woman by A.S. BYATT ISBN: 0375415343 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 10 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Babel Tower by A. S. Byatt ISBN: 0679736808 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 July, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Possession: A Romance by A. S. Byatt ISBN: 0679735909 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 October, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: On Histories and Stories: Selected Essays (The Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature) by A. S. Byatt ISBN: 0674008332 Publisher: Harvard University Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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