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| Herbert R. Lottman |
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| How did you become interested in writing literary biography? What do you find attractive about the genre? |
| HL: By the time I settled down in Paris, which I had wanted to do ever since college, my original purpose for going abroad had to be reconsidered. For I thought that I'd write novels — isn't that what one is supposed to do in Paris? — but I discovered that I couldn't create credible stories or characters. We were then living in an era of fact and not fiction, and so I'd begin by writing for newspapers and magazines. When at last I sat down to do a book it had to be non-fiction. |
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| I was a Joycean-card-carrying member of the James Joyce Society — and my Bible was Richard Ellmann's exhaustive biography of Joyce. I didn't realize this at the beginning, but in fact Ellmann's incredibly finicky book was the model for what I was going to attempt to do. |
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| Living in France, dedicated to fact, I'd obviously have to choose French-based subjects. It turned out that neither of the two personalities who interested me most, Flaubert as the writer's writer, Camus as a product of the politics of his time, had ever been subjected to the Ellmann treatment. Naturally, since he died nearly a century earlier, Flaubert had been written about quite often, sometimes with charm (I am thinking of Francis Steegmuller's work). But too much remained unknown, and Jean-Paul Sartre's imaginative study had only served to confuse. So I'd ''do'' Flaubert. But my first publisher decided that a definitive biography of Camus — who had died 17 years earlier — was more urgent, and I went along with that. In fact I was delighted, for Camus had turned himself into a recluse, protected by his friends, his publishers, and his family, and I'd have much digging to do. That suited me fine. After the book was published one critic in Paris sneered that I was ''the detective'' (while Sartre was the good professor). Another reviewer wrote disdainfully: ''Mr. Lottman seems to prefer fact.'' |
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| What led to your interest in French literature and culture? |
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HL: My childhood and college years coincided with the persistence of the American-in-Paris legend. In the early days of the Fulbright program it was easy to get sent to France on a fellowship (and I wasn't even fluent in French). But I learned a good deal in that year, and as soon as I could I returned to stay.
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| In a brief piece you wrote that appeared in the New York Review of Books in 1997, you made a firm distinction between literary biography, the subject you did like Camus and Flaubert, and your biography of Jules Verne. Could you talk about this a bit more? Verne was a writer yet you say your work is not a literary biography. What made Verne, in your mind, unsuitable as a subject for a literary biography? |
| HL: I'd rather not put down an author-Jules Verne-with whom I spent a couple of years of my life-researching his life. But Verne was very much a hired hand, with a facility for concocting tales of unforgettable characters in extraordinary places and situations. He could as easily have done this in comic strips. I think that I did a credible job of reconstructing his development, and I paid due respect to the power of his imagination. But when a man sets out to write one hundred books and achieves his goal, he can't be writing at the top of his form all the time. Verne had an immense career, but (to my mind) not quite a literary one. |
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| Could you discuss your book on Man Ray? What led you to him? Were you a bit daunted by the fact that there have been several fairly recent books about him? |
| HL: This book was not intended as a biography (indeed, there is a rather complete one in print), but as a panorama of Montparnasse in its most exciting decades-the 1920s and 1930s, tucked between two world wars. By luck Man Ray was in Paris exactly then, available to serve as an observer of this extraordinary mix of artists and writers. Because he had a camera, everybody wanted to know him. Through his camera we can meet Dada, the Surrealists, Picasso, the School of Paris painters and sculptors, and of course the Americans who chose Paris for their apprenticeship in letters. Hence my title: Man Ray's Montparnasse. |
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How do you feel about the rage in biography that is currently sweeping the United States? There is now a biography magazine, a biography television channel, and any number of biographical documentaries. Do you think this is indicative of something particularly interesting or distressing in American culture now? How do you feel about published biographies generally? Certainly, one common complaint is length. Are many of these books longer than is necessary to serve the subject? Do biographers feel compelled to inform their readers of more than the readers really need to know because there is so much material that can be uncovered in research these days? |
| HL: Were I doing a market study I'd say that the overflow of biographies of just about anybody is going to spoil the business. Such overwriting can be found in literary biography as well. One of my favorite bad examples is a two-volume life of an American Nobel Prize author — let's leave his name out of this — , allowing important information to be lost in an ocean of inconsequence. My favorite line in this 2000-page book has the subject going to Paris, where he ''visited Shakespeare & Company, but never saw Sylvia Beach, the proprietor of the well-known bookstore....'' He ''did not see Ernest Hemingway, who frequented it, or another American celebrity of Paris, Gertrude Stein....'' (Once the subject of this biography saw-or thought he might have seen-Ezra Pound.) You can easily fill 2000 pages this way. |
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| Which of your biographies do you feel was the most rewarding for you as a writer and thinker? |
HL: I find myself hesitating between my Albert Camus and Flaubert. Camus the witness, Flaubert the magician of language. Perhaps because I had to do so much scratching and digging to unearth the details of Camus's secret life — in childhood as well as adulthood — I had more stimulating adventures with my Camus, and certainly came out of the project a different person. Tracking down the teacher who taught the great Flaubert how to write French was perhaps more significant to readers and scholars, but finding examples of Camus's heroism that he had kept a deep secret was perhaps more exhilarating. After finishing that book I don't think that I should have rejected any other project offered to me as impossible. When I was asked to do a similarly deep investigation of Philippe Pétain I took on another exciting exploration, but I have regretted ever since having had to learn so many of those depressing things.  |
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