I'm not sure if this applies to anyone else, but another way that I was struck by this biography and by the biography Mina helped to write, is learning the methodology used in producing such a work. I always found the prospect of writing a biography to be interesting, but must admit, have never once considered the process. After reading Mina's experience with Foddick (via Maher) I was a bit surprised with the amount of work was needed. And then after meeting Maher and learning what she did in order to create this one I am just astonished. It clearly makes sense now though. One way that Maher put it in an essay she wrote about writing Mina's biography, is that you have to write the life of someone. How do you get that right? How do you pack decades' worth of experiences, growth, emotion, accomplishments and lives that were touched by a single individual? I imagine the incredible anxiety in the hopes of ensuring the details are true and that the story is really as it was and not simply the author's interpretation of the events. We all have our own experiences and perspectives and unconsciously reflect those onto everything we do. I wonder what it must be like to be constantly metacognitively removing yourself from the text as well as yourself from current social norms. Maher explains,
"It is at times like these when a biographer begins to feel the burden, the responsibility of the task. There I sat with Mina's papers in my lap. Mina' s brother had entrusted them to me-I was about to try to tell a life. Imagine trying to get someone else's life right. Many months later, I would mention this to Adrienne Rich, who had been hired by Mina in the late 1960s to teach basic writing at City College. 'Of course you can't get it right,' she told me, 'but you can get it righter.'" (Maher 54)
Maher, Jane. "Writing the Life of Mina P. Shaughnessy." Writing Across the Curriculum Clearinghouse. wac.colostate.edu Web. 20 Dec. 2014 http://wac.colostate.edu/jbw/v16n1/maher.pdf
I'm so glad we had the chance to cover the biographer's process for our book cub presentation. It's not something I've had to consider before (among other things in this class) and it's a fascinating process. Maybe it's because I have a tendency to become obsessed in doing things the right way, but I can't image how one goes about fleshing out a person's life story, correctly and at all.
ReplyDeleteMy guess would be to do as much research as possible (such as the interviews, reviewing of personal documents, etc. that Jane Maher did) and then form an opinion on how the public persona was created from his/her life events. Perhaps it's a bit Freudian, but I truly believe that people learn their ways and develop their views on life based on the way they grew up and how their parents interacted with them. I speak as someone who has reflected on this constantly as a parent (and considering my parental practices alongside my parents').
There isn't a right way to present someone's life, just an effective way. The truth is, one has to consider a viewpoint in order to write the biography, otherwise it becomes just a compilation of facts. One has to have a theory; Jane Maher frames Mina's work as being a result of her childhood stubborn drive to succeed. I think this works, but the biography also shows the flaws of living to such a code -- particularly in the way that Mina lives wholly in her work while having a "disaster" of a personal life (again, Maria, I agree with you that such a word can mean many things to different people in this context and we'll just have to remain curious to what Professor Maher means).
It's such an undertaking that I can't imagine ever doing at this point in my life, but perhaps in the future I would feel confident enough to consider this kind of writing. Maybe not as a book but an article about an important Cambodian figure.