Political biography is in the doldrums. No one wants to read 800 pages or so of cradle-to-grave dead politics, especially if it's familiar stuff and has all been written about before.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
You can use a biography to examine political power, but only if you pick the right guy.
I never wanted to do biography just to tell the life of a famous man. I always wanted to use the life of a man to examine political power, because democracy shapes our lives.
I think a biography is only as interesting as the lives and times it illuminates.
Biography is a very definite region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium.
I've always enjoyed reading history, particularly presidential biographies.
Ultimately, my books are not about the politics, although the toil and the struggle and the wars in Afghanistan have a significant impact on the lives of my characters.
I've always had an abundance of material about the subjects of my biographies.
Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.
It can be a long gap between the emergence of fully researched historical biographies.
Biography is one of the new terrors of death.