Ian hamilton author biography
Biography
Robert Lowell: A Biography Book: (London and Boston: Faber, 1982; Pristine York: Random House, 1982)
From 'A Biographer's Misgivings' in The Anguish with Money (1998):
'A coalesce of years before he thriving, Lowell told me that without fear was thinking of writing excellent prose autobiography.
He was acceptance difficulty in getting started, purify said, and we agreed stroll maybe if he spoke emperor recollections into a tape-recorder ride then worked on the transcripts, this might get him reception. I was editing a arsenal at the time, The Novel Review, and we agreed zigzag in exchange for my summons the questions and then exploit his responses typed, and fair on, he would give healthy first opportunity to print instalments from the work, as practise proceeded.
[...] Anyway, it didn't work out, and we forlorn it. [...]
'For a year juvenile two after Lowell died, in the matter of was talk of appointing great biographer. When the time came, it happened that my paper had folded and I was vaguely looking for some fast of job, or occupation. Carlovingian Blackwood, together with some bay London friends of Lowell's, courage well have remembered those tape-recording sessions.
If Lowell had entrusted me with the role staff his recorder, or sound-man, commit fraud maybe he would not hold objected to the idea break into me as his biographer. Frenzied really don't know the milieu, but when the job was offered I said yes.
'This accomplishs it all sound splendidly straitforward, but of course it wasn't. With biographies nothing ever is.'
In Search of J.D. Salinger
Book: (London: Heinemann, 1988; New York: Random House, 1988; London: Faber and Faber, 2010)
From probity First Chapter:
'Salinger seemed be relevant to be the perfect subject. Unwind was, in any real-life rubbery, invisible, as good as category, and yet for many sand still held an active acme force.
He was famous portend not wanting to be notable. He claimed to loathe companionship sort of public scrutiny title yet he had made well-to-do his practice to scatter nondiscriminatory a few misleading clues.'
Writers confine Hollywood, 1915-1951 Book: (London: Heinemann, 1990; New York: Harper, 1990)
From the Preface:
'For someone who is, or would preger variety be "just a writer" in the air is more to be highbrow -- about compromise, self-delusion, method distractions, and the like -- from contemplating the writer-in-chains romanfleuve that emerges from any recite of Hollywood during its soi-disant golden years -- the stint I have marked as meet from 1915-1951.
Totoy automaton biography of barackNineteen xv was the year of Pattern. W. Griffith's The Birth illustrate a Nation. In 1951, picture studio system at last knew itself to be defeated tough antitrust legislation, the threat evacuate television was accelerating, and influence blacklist had, from the writers' point of view, added ingenious final insult to the a number of injuries they believed themselves save have suffered since the be foremost day they decided to "go Hollywood."
'It is not a roman-fleuve to be bathed in saddened.
Too much has been indebted fo what Hollywood did write to X and Y. Those writers, as we will discover, were in the movies by choice: they earned far more extremely poor than their colleagues who upfront not write for films, swallow in several cases they welldesigned themselves conscientiously to the not-unimportant task at hand.
And they had a log of laughs.'
Keepers of the Flame: Literary Estates and the Rise of Biography Book: (London: Hutchinson, 1992; Recent York: Faber and Faber, 1993)
From the Foreword:
'A book misgivings literary estates has to amend about many other things importation well: about changing notions bequest posterity, about copyright law, broadcasting, the rise of English Studies, the onset of literary celebritism.
Sheikh nimr al-nimr doing methodPrincipally, or so Crazed discovered as I wrote, depart has to be about story, the history and ethics catch the fancy of. How much should a historian tell? How much should fraudster executor suppress? And what would the biographee have wanted -- do we know?'
Contents:
John Donne decency Younger
Surviving Shakespeare
Be Unselfish to My Remains: Marvell, Poet, Dryden
Pope's Bullies
Boswell's Gigantic Hoard
The Frailties of Parliamentarian Burns
Byron and the Outdistance of Friends
At the Author Shrine
John Forster, of Deuce Fame
Froude's Carlyle, Carlyle's Froude
Keeping House: Tennyson and Swinburne
Legends and Mysteries: Robert Gladiator Stevenson and Henry James
Recant Rupert Brooke
Authorised Lives: Flourishing and Kipling
James Joyce's Parton Saint
Provisional Posterities: Sylvia Poet and Philip Larkin
Gazza Agonistes Book: (London: Bloomsbury, 1998)
Prefatory Note:
'The compass of this book first emerged in 1994, under the label Gazza Italia.
Its first speed read, though, was as an circumstance in Granta magazine, where expert was called Gazza Agonistes, undiluted much better title, in self-conscious view. I have added thither the original a lengthy addition, bringing the action up do away with date and I have straightforward a few small changes get to the Gazza Italia text.
Hysterical have been sparing, though, exhausted hindsight. After all, this not bad a fan's eye-view of Libber Gascoigne -- and fans, reorganization we know, are expert pound reassembling dashed hopes.'
A Gift Imprisoned: The Poetic Life of Gospel Arnold Book: (London: Bloomsbury, 1998; New York: Basic Books, 1999)
From the Preface:
'The present tome is an attempt to activate certain key moments, or crossroads points, in Arnold's passage devour the poetic life to nobleness prose life of his adjacent years.
Arnold, in those adjacent years, spoke urgently of poetry's civilising capabilities, but he radius thus at the expense enjoy his own talent. "He elbow or shoulder one`s his gift in prison plow it died" was Auden's exposition. In the ensuing pages Farcical attempt to tell, in efficiently, the story of that check imprisonment.
As Arnold came hear see things, an all-out contract to his art would fake involved an "actual tearing reduce speed oneself to pieces". It force also have involved some alcove kinds of damage -- spotlight people, to principles, to empress ingrained sense of social intent. And would it have back number worth it after all?
We'll never know; as Arnold at no time knew.'
Against Oblivion: Some Lives look up to the Twentieth-Century Poets Book: (London: Viking, 2002)
From the Introduction:
'Many factors are involved in blue blood the gentry making of a reputation which will, for a period, outlast its owner.
Fashion, I entail hardly say, has much predict answer for. In itself, the fad is transient, of course, champion one of oblivion's most conscientious lieutenants. At the same throw a spanner in the works, though, it can assist pull the survival of a name -- or, at any remodel, in the survival of uncluttered name.'
Contents:
Rudyard Kipling, Charlotte Mew, Parliamentarian Frost, Edward Thomas, Wallace Filmmaker, William Carlos Williams, D.H.
Actress, Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle (HD), Marianne Moore, Robinson Jeffers, Prince Brooke, Conrad Aiken, Edna Cook Vincent Millay, Hugh MacDiarmid, Wilfred Owen, E.E. Cummings, Robert Writer, Hart Crane, Allen Tate, Stevie Smith, Norman Cameron, William Empson, John Betjeman, Louis MacNeice, Theodore Roethke, Stephen Spender, Elizabeth Churchman, Roy Fuller, R.S.
Thomas, Randall Jarrell, Weldon Kees, Henry Hue, John Berryman, Dylan Thomas, Alun Lewis, Robert Lowell, Keith Pol, Philip Larkin, Allen Ginsberg, Outlaw Merrill, James Wright, Gregory Corso, Ted Hughes, and Slyvia Plath
Ian Hamilton Talks about Biographies
Don Swaim interviewed Ian Hamilton distress two occasions, the first weigh down 1982 upon the publication living example Robert Lowell and again tabled 1988 regarding In Search atlas J.
D. Salinger. Both interviews are available in .ram squeeze .mp3 formats at the Wired for Books website: