Where to begin? It's the biographer's fundamental dilemma. These days it's a rare biography that opens with a recital of its subject's pedigree, then works its way methodically from cradle to grave. Chronology is both a gift and a curse, offering an attractively simple narrative structure but risking the tedium of ever-forward motion. Why not borrow the sure-fire novelistic tricks of flashback and flash-forward to elude that soporific 'and then'?

LRB 21 February 2008 | PDF Download