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estebanana -> RE: Gabe Souza Guitar pics- 1966 Classical + Mini Quiz (Aug. 15 2012 20:32:23)
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Bill,
When Naipual expressed his distain for biography what he had in mind was the literary trend about twenty years ago to document the travel of ones ancestors from which ever village in Nowhereistanawad to America. Several American writers of Asian ancestry wrote these personal family memoirs and so many writers jumped on the bandwagon that it almost became a genre in itself. Naipaul's anti fervor for these books was focused on his point that everyone has a family story, and that so many publishers produced these books that it became a self indulgent commercial exercise. Of course only a South Asian like Naipaul who has a fascinating story of his own could rise to critique this phenomena, he said he had more important things to observe than to muse nostalgically over his family history.
On one hand it sounds harsh, but part of what he said is that he wanted to strip back the idea that the immigrant has no value in a new culture and thus must create value by retelling ( over and over in that commercial publishing glut ) an origin mythology. He was critical of writers who went for the low hanging fruit of family biography over current subjects which he said where more difficult to tackle critically.
Foucault of course was interested in a critique of various forms of power and his mind was too non linear and complex to sit through the telling of a mundane birth to death story. I think he included biography in his research, he had to have done so, but when he said record keeping is for the police he may have been speaking with some hyperbole. The police hassled him from time to time.
The other writer I admire for his non transparent attitude is Genet. It's probably been to my own social disadvantage, but a boon to self discovery and preservation, that I took to heart something he said in a conversation with an interviewer: I go at society from an oblique angle. It's crucial for an artist to neither be on the outside or inside of society.
I really admire Genet's bravery as well as his work. In another life I would like to be a set designer so I could set his play The Balcony.
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