In the Footsteps

Biography at its best makes a persuasive case for the examined life, underlining Socrates' view that "the unexamined life is not worth living" (1998:92). Ill-considered biographies - biographies at their worst - make their readers wish for the death of the subject, which Hazel considered a great injustice. Hazel bridled at closure. An "open" life, she believed, was always better than a "closed" one. Autobiography, without benefit of a moderator, puts its case for or against life-writing even more immediately than biography. Australian journalist Bob Ellis's memoir, 'And So It Went: Night Thoughts in a Year of Change', is such a tedious journey that Louis Nowra titled his review of it: 'Making a Case for the Unexamined Life.' Ellis accused Nowra of bad faith for concealing his politics - that is, for being complicit with the values of the Australian Liberal Party. It is a central tenet of the genre that biography must operate within some centre of reference for the reader and that this is crucial to establish a relationship of trust. But that centre of reference is not the biography's subject, of course, who may indeed be completely untrustworthy (like Ellis, according to the High Court's judgement); rather, that centre of reference is (or should be) the biographer. David Kipen spoke recently in the 'San Francisco Chronicle' of the double standard whereby we assume that "great writers' obsessions nourish and shape their work, but the lives of biographers [...] don't." I completely agree with him that this is "a canard long overdue for demolition" (2003).