The worst of the Fitzgerald biographies, crabbed and inessential. Beatrice Dance and the almost completely unproductive years in the mid-30s seem to dominate it if only because nobody else had let them dominate a biography before; meanwhile, an absurd, oblivious preface dismisses the far superior...
There is no better model for a nonfiction writer than Orwell, who expressed what he thought as honestly as he could and in the clearest possible way. Though I was publishing two art biographies with Harcourt at the time, they foolishly rejected my idea and I brought out my essay in the Kenyon Rev...
Nearly everybody I met suffered from malnutrition or suicidal impulses." Thinking of the English actors who'd lived in her mother's house, she contrasted their unreal hopes with the grim reality of their lives: "Among the phonies and failures were also a set of has-beens. These were mostly actors...