What use is literary biography? That's the question John Updike poses in the current issue of the New York Review of Books, though when it comes to an answer I wish he'd make his mind up.
He begins as if that's precisely what he has done: "The main question concerning literary biography is, surely, Why do we need it at all? When an author has devoted his life to expressing himself, and, if a poet or a writer of fiction, has used the sensations and critical events of his life as his basic material, what of significance can a biographer add to the record?"
But then he thinks of George D. Painter's "splendid" two-volume biography of Proust, which becomes "a way of re-experiencing the novel", and he also thinks of Richard Ellmann's biography of Joyce which makes him understand how Joyce produced "from the drab facts of the provincial, sodden, priest-ridden Irish capital such rare and comprehensive art".
So three cheers for Painter and Ellmann but none at all for "those biographies, of which Lytton Strachey is the patron saint, that ridicule and denigrate their subjects". Here Updike singles out for particular scorn Michael Shelden's 1995 demolition of Graham Greene and Jeffrey Meyers's 1994 hatchet-job on F. Scott Fitzgerald, of the lurid details of which he says: "Now, after reading such a summation, don't we feel released from ever having to take Scott Fitzgerald seriously again?"
Nor has he any time for that recent phenomenon, "what we might call the Judas biography, in which a former spouse or friend of a living writer confides to print an intimate portrait less flattering than might be expected". Claire Bloom's book on Philip Roth, Joyce Maynard's on J.D. Salinger and Paul Theroux's on V.S. Naipaul come in for special censure here.
And yet, and yet . . . "viewing the intimate underside of writers we have read is fascinating. Even when the information has already been shaped into fiction, the revelations of another party, because less artful, seem more authentic".
So such biographies are all right then? Well, no, and certainly not if he himself were to be the subject: "As long as I am alive, I don't want somebody else . . . disturbing my children, quizzing my ex-wife, bugging my present wife, seeking for Judases among my friends, rummaging through yellowing old clippings, quoting in extenso bad reviews I would rather forget, and getting everything slightly wrong."
In other words, don't even think about it, Jeffrey Meyers.
The phenomenon of astronomical advances to authors continues, with HarperCollins paying twenty-something English stand-up comic Jenny Colgan more than £200,000 for the rights to her first novel, Amanda's Wedding.
Actually, by today's daft standards, that's not an extraordinary sum. Indeed, it's peanuts compared with what Ms Colgan would make if she really hit the big time. For instance, from their book sales alone (leaving out film tie-ins and any other deals) Dick Francis's earnings are estimated at £50 million, Barbara Taylor Bradford's at over £60 million, John Grisham's at about £85 million (with his upcoming The Testament, due next week, set to boost that considerably), Michael Crichton's at £150 million and Robert Ludlum's at £200 million.
And even they're in the ha'penny place when you consider Stephen King and Tom Clancy, whose earnings are estimated at being in incalculable multi-millions.
If you aspire to such literary wealth, or even if you just want to get a novel published, Geraldine Nichol would like to hear from you. Geraldine, who has spent most of her publishing career in London, has returned to her native Ireland and has set up a literary agency called The Book Bureau, which, even if she says so herself, will serve its clients "with integrity, creative judgment and enthusiasm".
She wants to hear from people with unpublished novels, short stories and screenplays, and you can write to her at PO Box 6127, Dublin 4, phone or fax her at (01) 6670528, or email her at: gnicholpdc.ie.
Competition time. The new Strokestown Poetry Competition is offering a first prize of £3,000 (yes, that's what I said) for a poem of up to seventy lines, with subsidiary prizes of £500 and £300. The judge is Adrian Frazier, Professor of English at Union College, New York, and if you want more details, contact Strokestown Community Development Office, Bawn Street, Strokestown, Co Roscommon. Closing date for entries is April 1st.
On a more modest scale, the Molly Keane Memorial Award offers a prize of £500 for prose, poetry or drama. There's no entry fee, and you can contact Margaret Fleming, arts officer with Waterford County Council, at Aras Brugha, Dungarvan, Co Waterford, for details. Closing date is February 26th.