Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Summer 1999
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 19, No. 3, Summer 1999, pp. 211-12.
Abstract
Advance publicity for James King's biography of the best-loved author in the history of Canadian literature aroused hostility among many readers who had been eager for the book to appear. With its emphasis on the revelation of Laurence's suicide and on her marital stresses, her sexual drive, and her drinking, the promotional campaign recalled the conclusion of William Watson's brilliant essay "The Punishment of Genius" (1890): "Such is the lot of the modern man of genius; living, he may escape the poisoned arrow; but dead, he is a banquet for the ghoul."
The book itself proves to be less sensational than its promotion. Part of King's problem is that Laurence's earlier biographers (Clara Thomas, Joan Hind-Smith, Patricia Morley) and others had avoided discussing a friend's private problems and failings while writing honestly about the achievements of someone they loved and admired deeply. When Don Bailey broke ranks in 1989, even readers and reviewers who had not known Laurence personally were offended by what they saw as a breach of taste.
Taste is not universal and timeless. The line between the right of access to information and the right to privacy is drawn in different places in different decades, in different media, and for different subjects. King had never met Laurence except through her books, which he had read perceptively and admired intensely. He was given access to hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of private letters and journals unavailable to or unused by earlier biographers, and he interviewed her family, friends, and associates some years after her death. He approached her life the way he had approached the lives of other literary notables- William Blake, Herbert Read, and Virginia Woolf-with industry, care, precision, the urge to understand, and sympathetic detachment. In doing so, he has brought a new perspective to Laurence biography for readers who did not know a generous but sternly private Margaret Laurence in person.
From jacket design to unobtrusive and concise- but usually adequate-documentation, from well-spaced, readable type to generous provision of appropriate photographs placed in text exactly where relevant, this is an attractive volume. The writing is clear and concise; analyses of problems, relationships, and books, are often pithy, epigrammatic, even brilliant.
Comments
Copyright 1999 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln