Iris Murdoch: A Life

Rating:
Summary: Worst. Biography. Ever.
Review: Can you write a biography without being in love with your subject? The question isn't really relevant to this work, because I don't see any evidence that Conradi can write at all. There's plenty of evidence for his fawning, puppy-dog adoration of Dame Murdoch. There's plenty of evidence for half of Oxford's fawning, puppy-dog adoration of her, along with about a fourth of the population of London and assorted Americans and Continentals. Conradi could have called his book "Iris Murdoch and All the People Who Went to Bed with Her: Lives" or "Iris Murdoch: She Almost Makes Me Wish I Weren't Gay" or "Iris Murdoch: If You're English, Your Parents Probably Had Sex with Her. Yes, Both of Them." The bulk of the book is a catalog of love affairs and intrigues that would be over-the-top for a high school prom queen, mixed up with feeble stabs at placing Murdoch's intellectual development. What there's little evidence for is any sense of irony or humor on Conradi's part. I personally could not plop down one-sentence references to Simone Weil, the allegory of the cave, or Holocaust survivor guilt like a giant blob of oatmeal in the midst of a candyfloss paragraph giving me details of Murdoch's vast network of flirtation without intending to be funny. Conradi isn't funny. He's just incoherent.

This obsessive focus on Murdoch's status as sweetheart to the philosophical regiment is not only incredibly boring to read, it's offensive in the same way focus on Doris Lessing's motherhood is offensive. Male writers and intellectuals who leave a child in the care of others, as did Lessing, or who lead complicated romantic lives on a Murdochian scale, are not presented to the world by others as if these are the central facts of their existences. Conradi's book communicates that the most important parts of Murdoch's life were her sexual intrigues. This is an unforgivable reduction of an important moral philosopher and it's going to take me all day curled up with "Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals" to stop feeling icky at having been exposed to it.

Rating:
Summary: Worst. Biography. Ever.
Review: Can you write a biography without being in love with your subject? The question isn't really relevant to this work, because I don't see any evidence that Conradi can write at all. There's plenty of evidence for his fawning, puppy-dog adoration of Dame Murdoch. There's plenty of evidence for half of Oxford's fawning, puppy-dog adoration of her, along with about a fourth of the population of London and assorted Americans and Continentals. Conradi could have called his book "Iris Murdoch and All the People Who Went to Bed with Her: Lives" or "Iris Murdoch: She Almost Makes Me Wish I Weren't Gay" or "Iris Murdoch: If You're English, Your Parents Probably Had Sex with Her. Yes, Both of Them." The bulk of the book is a catalog of love affairs and intrigues that would be over-the-top for a high school prom queen, mixed up with feeble stabs at placing Murdoch's intellectual development. What there's little evidence for is any sense of irony or humor on Conradi's part. I personally could not plop down one-sentence references to Simone Weil, the allegory of the cave, or Holocaust survivor guilt like a giant blob of oatmeal in the midst of a candyfloss paragraph giving me details of Murdoch's vast network of flirtation without intending to be funny. Conradi isn't funny. He's just incoherent.

This obsessive focus on Murdoch's status as sweetheart to the philosophical regiment is not only incredibly boring to read, it's offensive in the same way focus on Doris Lessing's motherhood is offensive. Male writers and intellectuals who leave a child in the care of others, as did Lessing, or who lead complicated romantic lives on a Murdochian scale, are not presented to the world by others as if these are the central facts of their existences. Conradi's book communicates that the most important parts of Murdoch's life were her sexual intrigues. This is an unforgivable reduction of an important moral philosopher and it's going to take me all day curled up with "Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals" to stop feeling icky at having been exposed to it.

Rating:
Summary: A WOMEN WHO MANUFACTURED BOOKS
Review: This biography proposes to be about a woman who manufactured 26 novels and who knows what else ( plays etc.).How she did that the author never says . Instead we get knowing little talk about the role of Irish protestants in the 20th century,the life of a lesbian with male friends ,and potted biographies of numerous British personalities and celebrities .We never get a handle on the life of a writer who was a brand name for a while in Britain .We never are told whether Iris Murdoch books sold in the hundreds.

Rating:
Summary: The depth of coverage is impressive
Review: Writer and philosopher Murdoch played a major role in English writing for nearly half a century: Iris Murdoch: A Life provides her first authorized biography, examining her life and work and revealing not only connections between her life and her art, but the moral and social changes she helped introduce to new generations. The depth of coverage is impressive.