The Biographer's Tale

Rating:
Summary: A "Tale" not worth telling
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The Epiphany of A.S. Byatt
Review: One must bow to the scope of A.S. Byatt's fiction. Her knowledge is broad; her interests wide; her allusions many; her literary references dense. More impressive than all of these, however, is her skill as a storyteller - how she weaves her academic musings into epiphanies about life.

The Biographer's Tale follows Phineas G. Nanson from the abstraction of graduate school to the discovery of wonder in the natural world. "...the vision of these very real, chattering birds said to me... that the senses of order and wonder, both, that I had once got from literature, I now found more easily and directly in the creatures." To reach this point near the end of the novel, both Nanson and we readers need to travel through a series of lessening abstractions to the moment when the narrator can put down his pen, renounce writing, and immerse himself into the world that his senses can directly communicate.

Through his quest to become the biographer of Scholes Destry-Scholes, Nanson is faced with the many challenges a writer faces in understanding another human being. With the biographer, we come to understand that neither the taxonomic, psychological, nor artistic approach to understanding life is sufficient. Not even the amalgamated approach, represented by the various discussions of composite biographies or composite photographs, can help the biographer in his quest. Ultimately Nanson comes to believe that we are necessarily constricted by our senses and by our "selves." Biography is impossible; only autobiography is left.

Byatt's work makes an interesting comparison and contrast between art and life. While Nanson does succeed in putting down his pen, Byatt does not -- she finishes the novel, after all. This conundrum of this dichotomy is perhaps best summarized by a line from the novel, when Nanson writes: "Back to what I was writing, which was a renunciation of writing."

Rating:
Summary: EXTREMELY Well Not Played
Review: One of my favorite Monty Python sketches shows us a number of commentators broadcasting a cricket game. After one play, one of them sagely states, "Very well not played." The others chime in saying "EXTREMELY well not played."

So it is with A. S. Byatt's BIOGRAPHER'S TALE. A young scholar named Phineas Nanson tires of endless deconstructionism and turns to writing a biography of a biographer, the redoubtable Scholes Destry-Scholes, noted for his study of the equally redoubtable Elmer Bole. Destry-Scholes, however, has covered his tracks well -- leaving behind no pictures, only some fragmentary writings on Linnaeus, Francis Galton, and Henrik Ibsen. Oh, and also a radiologist niece named Vera Alphage, whom Nanson beds. He also runs into Fulla Bliefeld, a Scandinavian scientist specializing in bees, who also finds a warm place in Nanson's heart.

Well, what do we have here? Let's see: Several fragments and two budding relationships. And the biography? Abandoned. Miss Byatt has aroused expectations which she has not fulfilled. Nanson's research is actually fascinating; and, until the very end, I wondered where Byatt was taking us. It seems the answer is, down a garden path.

If the rest of the book weren't so fascinating, I would be outraged. As it is, I'm still perpelexed by my first introduction to this writer, though I am interested enough to pursue some researches on my own into Linnaeus, Galton, Ibsen, and a certain whirlpool off the coast of Norway known as the Maelstrom. Consequently, I do not feel myself to have been completely traduced.