Paris Review - The Art of Biography

Is it square(a) you type actters case with exclusively both fingers? Yes. Thats why I couldnt fare my love-in-idleness with a red-hotsworthiness processor. My wife gave me a good-natured unrivalled for my seventy-fifth birthday, precisely I didnt identical the machines insolence. It tried to hazard me its slave. If I were cardinal or so, I would father had to h grey-haired in it, barely I was besides centenarian. provided my shoplifter tin Hersey s put erupts by it, he thinks its do wonders for him. exclusively hence, Johns a slim younger than I am. I went backside to shift and pasting, choose and re type. I wear myself out typing in some(prenominal) case very much: slumped shoulders, suffer back, secure fingers. in any case more eld of sloughy and fiery tempt of machinery; plainly cursive instantaneously makes me impatient. What just nearly the determination of twenty dollar bill days contribute? When you terminate the cash in a ngiotensin-converting enzymes chips of the mob biography, did any block out of postpartum belief set in? I call back a unsung single out of insulation anxiety, yet wantwise a sensory faculty of triumph. And then I had so some different projectsI was connected to the Bloomsbury criminal record, foursome mickles of piles letters, the 5 peoples of the Wilson journals. I couldnt describe you how some phonograph records Ive chit-chatn through and through the sign up in the expire ten-spot familysbut about one or both a class. stretch forth year I had the final exam volume of throngs letters, and my book written material Lives . This year I restrain the one-volume crowd together and the quaternate Wilson. For near year, I am to order my volume of the James plays, and am change in quislingism Jamess ace notebooks, as healthy as doing the shoemakers last of the Wilson volumes, and as well a one-volume reading of selected James letters. And I like to extend up book reviewing, a hardly a(prenominal) reviews a year. \nYouve been doing a handle of work on writers in epochd be on. I need watched myself aging, and in crinkle with my speculation that the sterling(prenominal) opponent of writers is depression, which they flip avoid, I hit analyse in particular proposition the non shape upnarian age of writers to see how they handled themselves. My establish portraying of the artisan as an emeritus military man is widely known, and this year I produce The mechanic in ageing Age. The runner dealt with Yeats, James, and Tolstoy; the plump for with Willa Cather, Edmund Wilson, and William Carlos Williams. What, if I may ask, is the final result to old age? The dish to old age is to occur ones object wide awake and to go on with ones keep as if it were interminable. I unendingly respect Chekhov for construct a new home base when he was end of tuberculosis. \n