Ruth Scurr: evaluation

Transcript context

…Should we worry that possibly biography, especially long biography, is the least-read genre today relative to purchases? So people will buy a biography of Eisenhower, Theodore Roosevelt — they put it on their shelf; it signals something about what kind of person they are, but they don’t read very much of it, if any. Does biography have that problem more than history or fiction or smart nonfiction? I doubt it. I think that kind of person probably buys the Pulitzer Prize winners and puts them on their shelf ready for their guests to arrive. As an author, well, good luck to them. If that’s how they want to furnish their rooms, then that’s absolutely fine by me. I think one of the concerns is with publishers and their fear about biography — that now people will not invest in reading a long life, and perhaps it’s difficult for writers to get these books commissioned. Writers, in general, are struggling very much, indeed, to survive. I have an academic job. I could not possibly live off my writing. I need to have another job. I’m fortunate that I do. I think perhaps there are publishers who would be reluctant to give even a small advance to what they saw as traditional biography. The problem with biography is it’s hard to win. You come along and you say, “Oh, I would like to write about Robespierre.” And they say, “Well, surely there’s enough books on Robespierre.” “We don’t need another Napoleon book. We don’t need another Robespierre book. We have many, many biographies of them already.” Then you come along and you say, “I’d like to do a biography of John Aubrey,” and they’re like, “Who’s that? Nobody’s going to buy that because nobody knows who he is.” It’s very difficult to pitch the biographical project. You’ve either got to be saying, “Listen, nobody’s heard of this woman or this guy, and I’m going to write the book that changes that,” and maybe someone will take a punt on it or not. Or you’ve got to convince someone, “Listen, I know this has been done before, but I want to bring something new to the table.” Well, that’s a tall order, actually. It’s probably easier to just sit there and write your novel and hope that somebody likes it enough to publish it. I went to the Arlington County Public Library this morning, and there they have it: a separate section called “biographies.” And in that section are all the biographies. But that’s actually a funny kind of segregation. Should they do that?…

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