Word: edel
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...students want practical advice. One of them, an intent note taker, asks how "geographical descriptions" should be fitted into a biographical narrative. "Wherever they fit naturally," Edel retorts...
...autocratic talker, Edel zigzags from topic to topic, trailing half-spoken sentences in his wake. He sugars his more serious discussion-on the role of psychology in biography, methods of research, and narrative forms-with anecdotes culled from his past. An interest in the psychological novel, and in James as its exponent, led Edel to Paris in the 1920s. There, while a doctoral candidate at the Sorbonne, he encountered James Joyce. "Joyce once sat beside me at a reading, but his impassive face put me off," recalls Edel. "What could I say anyway?" he shrugs. " 'Mr. Joyce, I really...
...terms of technique, Edel's advice to his class would make Boswell blanch. Throw out great masses of detail, he advises, in favor of "essences and distillations." Let the biographer describe scenes in his own words, not those of the subject. Quote documents sparingly, for fear of blurring the story line. Most heretical of all, he advocates psychoanalyzing a subject-as when, in his Henry James, he constantly linked sibling rivalry between Henry and his brother William to plots and characters in James' work...
This psychological approach drew some critical fire as the five volumes on James appeared, but it fascinates his Dartmouth students. "I don't go overboard about biography, so to speak, but I think Edel's psychological method offers interesting insights," says Senior Peter Tagge. An ardent sailor, Tagge is writing for his course project a profile of round-the-world Sailor Robin Knox-Johnston. Diane Kilpatrick, a psychologist at Dartmouth's student health center, was also drawn by Edel's analytic method. When Edel proved at the first session to be "a fascinating storyteller," she juggled...
Despite his own colossal biography of James, Edel feels that the Master still has not been fully plumbed. "Even his acceptances or regrets to social events-and in later years, his telegrams-are written in the grand manner," Edel tells his class. He pauses, his hands momentarily stilled. "One could do 'The Collected Social Letters of Henry James,' " he muses. "Yes, or even The Collected Telegrams...