The Future Of Biography

Social media is breathing new life into an esteemed literary genre

- Charlotte Gray

BIOGRAPHY combines history, psychology, and gossip, and there will always be a market for its insights into the Life (how careers crest or crater) and the Times (the context of each life) of a stranger. Students of US politics, for example, hunger for a fifth volume of two-time Pulitzer-winning author Robert A. Caro’s biography of thirty-sixth president Lyndon B. Johnson. Aside from the jaw-dropping details about Johnson’s personal habits (issuing orders to subordinates while he defecated) and political achievements (the Great Society), there is Caro’s larger theme. In his words, “I always wanted to use the life of a man to examine political power, because democracy shapes our lives.”

Caro may dominate the biography world today, but five volumes, totalling many thousands of pages, about Johnson with publication spread over nearly three decades? In twenty- five years, how many readers will want a heavyweight linear narrative about a Dead White Male? How many publishers will support such a marathon?