H UGH SETON -WATSON
Faithful Portrait?
The Art of Biography. By Paul Murray Kendall. (Allen and Unwin, 21s.) NOT the least depressing feature of contempor- ary biography is the paucity of any evidence of serious thought by biographers—or, rather, by practitioners of biography, which is not the same thing—about the problems, hazards and respon- sibilities of their task. The current popularity of biography and the restless activity of academics anxious for recognition has meant that we have been heavily oppressed in recent years both by the professional biographer—the individual who, having disposed- of one subject with clinical efficiency, briskly starts on another—and by the dour academic, with his massive documentation, his complacent footnotes and his belief that scholarship consists merely of piling fact upon fact until the final immense structure somehow acquires an authority and ,meaning of itself. It is sometimes difficult to decide whether the char- latan or the pseudo-scholar presents the greater menace. As Sir Harold Nicolson warned us several years ago, 'the more biography becomes a branch of science, the less will it become a. branch of literature.' He might have added that the less will it become human. As Professor Kendall puts it, 'fact is a biographer's only friend, and worst enemy. . . . Biography is the simula- tion, and not the ledger-book, of an existence.'
Edmund Gosse's definition of biography---'the faithful portrait of a soul in its adventures through life'---perfectly sums up the fascination
Ross Macdonald
THE FAR SIDE OF THE DOLLAR A splendid new whipcord thriller starring Lew Archer—the celebrated Californian investigator.
Crime Club Choice 16s
Anthony Gilbert
PASSENGER TO NOWHERE Plenty of excitement and plentrof Crook at his 'insular best' OXFORD rfAu. 15s
Laurence Meynel I
DOUBLE FAULT Gripping new detective novel by the author of Virgin Luck. 'Pleasant holiday reading' GUARDIAN 15$
Harry Carmichael
POST-MORTEM Taut, full of suspense—a most ingenious new story. 15s
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