Contents
Abbreviations
1 Beginnings
Biography: A Background Sketch
Becoming a Biographer
And Then I Wrote . . .
The Editor’s Hand: Hemingway
Fitzgerald and the Craft
The Amazing Archibald MacLeish
A Dual Biography of Fitz and Hem
Recovering Robinson
Other Chores, On to Fenton
2 Topics in Literary Biography
Fact and Fiction
Writers as Subjects
Ethical Issues
Sources: Letters
Sources: Interviews
3 The Impossible Craft
The Issue of Involvement
Trying to Capture Hemingway
The Mythical Ideal Biographer
What Biography Can’t Do
And Yet . . .
4 Case Studies
Telling Robinson’s Story: The Fight over a Poet’s Bones
Summer of ’24: Zelda’s Affair
Hemingway’s Battle with Biographers, 1949–1954
5 The Cheever Misadventure
Writing the Cheever
The Lawsuit
The Next Biography
Bibliography