When I read the book, the biography famous,
And is this then (said I)what the author calls a man's life?
And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my
life?
(As if any man really knew aught of my life,
Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of
my real life,
Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections
I seek for my own use to trace out here.)
Walt Whitman
The Complete Poems
I have just read a biography of James Herriot and somehow this poem seems appropriate. I grew up loving the Herriot books and dreaming of being a vet even though I know I could never deal with the cruelty and the suffering. So I found this book at a campsite where you could swap and pick up books and thought it would be good to read. But in many ways it was upsetting as the author seemed to have to make us readers see the 'real' James Herriot 'Alf' as a mere human with human foibles, in explaining he didn't always tell the truth about his stories. And it made me annoyed. Alf was a writer, he made things up for a living and if sometimes as he got older fact and fiction blurred did it really matter? Not to me I have to say. Apart from a wonderful biography on Amy Johnson that I loved and searched for any possible detail of my grandfather most biography have been a real disappointment to me. So I guess the moral is I should not read them, or perhaps only read ones that are historical, where I don't have an image of the person involved.
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