All essays tagged:
Biography
Brittle and brilliant: Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century
A new and comprehensive biography by Australian-born Britten scholar, administrator and conductor, Paul Kildea, is a worthy addition to the already significant pile of biographies and scholarly tomes on the composer. And it comes with a new controversy.
Oct. 2013 •
Biography • Non-fiction
The mind has mountains: A life of David Foster Wallace
What I desperately wanted from this book, and what Wallace deserved, was a biography that was itself a significant work of literature. Max is no slouch as a reporter … but his prose doesn’t have the percipience and complexity over the long haul to fully dramatise the unresolvable questions that it raises, and he tends to be wiped off the page whenever he quotes from his subject.
Mar. 2013 •
Biography • Non-fiction