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Title: The Biographer's Tale : A Novel by A.S. Byatt ISBN: 0-375-72508-3 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 04 December, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.35 (26 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Words and Things
Comment: It is significant that in _The Biographer's Tale_ Byatt keeps coming back to _Les Mots et les Choses_ by Michel Foucault. The novel is narrated in the first person by Phineas G. Nanson, a disillusioned grad student in literary criticism who one day decides he's had enough of texts and must have things. Immediately after making the fateful decision to abandon his deconstructionist path, he is given a biography of Victorian polymath Elmer Bole. Here are things in abundance: world travels, bee taxonomy, Byzantine mosaics.
But despite Bole's colorful and varied life, Nanson becomes obsessed not with Bole himself, but with his biographer, the elusive Scholes Destry-Scholes. Nanson's efforts to discover the personage of Destry-Scholes lead him to new work, two women, and, finally, more and varied things (a remarkable marble collection, the landscapes of Finland, 19th-century composite photographs).
Nanson marvels at Bole's range of knowledge and experience, at his prolific literary output. He says Bole "read, and wrote, as the great Victorian scholars did, as though a year could contain a hundred years of reading, thought and investigation." "Bole himself crammed more action in one life than would be available to three or four puny moderns." But Byatt seems to know as much, or almost as much, as the great Victorian in her novel.
Though the story hinges on Nanson's longing for things, the novel itself delights in words. I felt an almost drunken pleasure reading Byatt's rich metaphors, erudite puns, and the individual words, carefully chosen, which sparkle like jewels ("periplum," "calyx"). I found myself reading phrases aloud, in order to taste them.
There were references I know I didn't get, and there were words I should have looked up in the dictionary. But Byatt's gift as a storyteller is such that she never leaves the reader behind. She doesn't indulge in wordplay or arcane references for their own sake, but as an adornment to the story she is telling. Perhaps the story itself is a thing, a cake, soaked not in rum, but in intoxicating words.
Rating: 2
Summary: A cold and unengaging exercise
Comment: There are a surfeit of fine ideas behind Byatt's study of the problem of constructing biographical and historical narratives out of facts, and overall this novel makes intriguing points about what it means to tell a story basded on the truth, and the way this exposes the human need to impose order or sequence on that which might not adhere to any necessary shape. But this novel is about as cold-blooded and unexciting as can be imagined: the character Byatt pins the story upon, Phineas Nanson, remains largely an enigma until the end, and the novel's interest resides much more with academic halls-of-mirrors games than it does with fleshing out any of the other characters. (They all seem pretty stock: the earth-mother environmentalist, the pleasure-loving gay partners, the wise old professor, etc.) Nanson's task--writing a biography of an eminent biographer, Scholes Destry-Scholes--seems motivated for wholly unbelievable and vague reasons, and his views on literary criticism seem about twenty years out of date. Byatt seems to be playing chilly Borgesian games with this narrative: we can only hope she's worked this out of her system, and will return next time to a more engaging romance.
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: Possession : A Romance by A.S. BYATT ISBN: 0679735909 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 October, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Babel Tower by A.S. Byatt ISBN: 0679736808 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 24 June, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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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: STILL LIFE by A.S. Byatt ISBN: 0684835037 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 01 April, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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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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