Looking back at yesterday's entry, my review of Haunted Heart seems a little out of proportion, like using an ICBM on a mosquito (does that date me terribly? Do you young people even know what ICBMs are these days? I hope for your sake that you don't). It's true I did not like the book (and it turns out that I may have been right about the author's remembering a more "upbeat" movie ending to Thinner; again, this is unconscionable given that she was explicitly referring to the texts of the Bachman books), but I should note that I have also felt lightly slimy after reading biographies I did enjoy, such as Elvis: The Last 24 Hours or the Michael Jackson one that told about how he shaved his chimpanzee's ass cheeks. I even felt lightly slimy after writing a certain biography, though I don't think I would go back and do things differently. We live how we have to live, and we don't always get to stay in our ivory towers devoting ourselves to Art.

But I find that I cannot compare writers' biographies to junk about Elvis* or Michael Jackson. My standard is The Lonely Hunter, Virginia Spencer Carr's life of Carson McCullers, which seems to me the finest literary biography I have ever read. While Stephen King has led a more interesting life than he seems to believe (and I don't blame him for wanting to think it uninteresting; after a certain point, writers must start cultivating and craving boredom if they are to get anything done), he has not had the travels, tragic loves, or fascinating neuroses of a McCullers (and a good thing for him, too, sez I). While I can't imagine that The Lonely Hunter was easy to write by any standards, biographies do write themselves so much more readily if the subject has managed to get him- or herself into a lifelong series of big, splashy messes and dramas. I dearly hope that nobody is ever able to make anything of mine. You, there in the back, stop snickering.

*I should admit that anything about the end of Elvis makes me a little sad, as I like his music and a part of me will alway understand how a person could get to that point. However, Albert Goldman's amazing lack of perspective, over-the-top sense of outrage, and willingness to present speculation as dead-to-rights fact all make it impossible for me to take seriously anything he writes.