Parallel Lives

The document discusses the challenges biographers face in balancing truthful accounts of their subjects' private and public lives while maintaining reader interest. Biographers must consider how to present contrasts between private and public personas as well as navigate differing accounts from firsthand sources versus media portrayals. Examples are given of Jesus and Ellen Terry to illustrate how biographers symbolize public figures while addressing criticisms.

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Parallel Lives

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nwaladavid58

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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

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His vigor was a whirlwind and his days a storm.

His teaching was to us a little life

boat and his words a compass to the Mariner. Here is a prophet-who was .
(mine)
The above poetical line might divulge a lurid figurative sequence of the many
years lived by a man, but surmise in just three lines. To the novelist biographer,
this is not so as the principle of economy of word is not adhered to.
The extract might appear to be the life of a fishermen or better still a prophet,
teacher etc. But it might not occur to us that the writer speaks of a king –king
David, in the Bible whose live was torrentuous and buffeted by highs and lows.
The biographer at all time seek to show his audience the dots and crosses that
make for the big picture. This is because he likely has firsthand information of his
recipient who he writes of, so he cannot be swayed by the babble of the media on
popular lives. You know biography having it's bedrock at writings about nobles,
Saints, generals etc, which were known personalities. But little will be known of
their private lives. For an example let's take Jesus who will speak to the multitude
in parables without an explanation but in secret to his disciples, he had it
explained or what about the case were he never makes himself known as the son
of God but to his disciples, he affirm his testimony of he being the son of God.
Look at it this way- the biographer doesn't just write what is well spoken of by the
public of a known personality- their knowledge are constricted to the produce of
the media, so he writes in accordance with literary truism. The result might be
that certain contrast in there private to public lives, so the biographer is faced
with an inescapable quagmire to present an account acceptable before the public,
and still retain basic truth of the personality.
So it was what Benton all along presented in chapter two of his book. He used the
master biographer’s work- Michael Holroyd to expound the idea of the
biographer having to tell truths and paint no fancy at all.
His argument was this: does the biographer writes just what the personality
desirably requested written or in pari passu with what the media public portrays
of that person? In any way, we must ardently agree that there will always be a
symbiotic fixation between the two of them and surely, the biographer has this to
an end.
Sure though not implicitly stated or highlighted, we see the upsurge of the
pragmatic Theory and the deconstructive theory deconstructionism side-by-side is
used in horrid biographical analogy. Benton marks this early enough to say
'Holroyd choice of illustration is a sign of what was needed to make the life of a
successful actress acceptable the Victorian England: theater and the domestic
must complement each other’(page 46. 35)
He had his rudiments as a master biographer put together. the piece of plotting a
life In view of many lives has its way of degenerating the creative mind who will
most likely be prone to ardent criticism, but Holroyd made way past it.

"It is Holroyd interpretation of contemporary accounts of Ellen Terry’s

performances that indicate how the process of symbolizing her as a public icon
and private fantasy figure work together to subdue if not exclude criticisms”
(page 47. 12)
To the biographer, Benton would invariably state; unapologetic detailed writing is
as crucial as the process of making a baby: the father and the mother come in,
and two becomes one. However, here it is the public Life and the Private Life
made in no little measure to present an inscrutable dispense of accrued plot
overtime hedge in time present.
The Essentials of Staging a biopic life
In plotting a life, it is embroidered with the literary ambiguities that are as much
as used in a novel, but with an even more exaggerated plot. why it is so is what
Benton will State
“It legitimate his borrowings from the novelist’s Workshop in particular the
interplay between the Histoire (the events of the story), the recit (discourse or
text), and the narration (the process of telling) that helps to illustrate the
ambiguous status…”

Conclusion
Benton has worked out the vast possibilities of constructing meticulously, the
patterns of a biographical handiwork, using the chapter two of his book.
Biographical writings has horn as a gorrila in the world of literature, and therefore
ardent attention should be put on its side, as there are more biographers
becoming than had being. This will mean to say then that mastery would be
appreciated, thus the need for a study on the on plot presentation in biographical
writing.

Reference