Word: readers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...After all, in addition to accurately describing a life, biographies give the reader a chance to get into some famous person's head. Two current bestsellers probably owe their success to this phenomenon: When Pride Still Mattered, the story of Hall of Fame Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, and John Glenn: A Memoir, the life of the former Mercury astronaut and former senator. Both of these books are about people who lived lives far removed from that of the average book-buyer, making the chance to relive their lives all the more thrilling. In the case of the current...
...were retellings of polar expeditions. A glance at the New York Times Book Review bestseller list for nonfiction reveals that biographies take up a large share of the popular market. Regardless of what the domination of Harry Potter books on the fiction bestseller list might indicate about the typical reader of today, just as interesting is the number of biographies on the nonfiction list. Of the top 15 bestsellers last week, only two non-fiction books can be classified as having no biographical content or slant whatsoever...
...injecting one's own opinion into the subject's work, often resulting in a rather one-sided view of the subject. Of course, an incomplete portrayal of a subject can easily be construed as an unfair one, and it is this implicit danger that no doubt often encourages the reader hungry for intrigue or second-hand gossip to purchase a biography. Such is potentially the case in Nicholas Fox Weber's Balthus...
...could also be the case that the "real" Balthus was simply not living up to the thrilling figure that Weber had imagined him to be. Throughout the book, Weber relies on analysis of Balthus' paintings as practically his only source in constructing his life, which provides the reader with only a weak characterization and superficial understanding of Balthus. Unfortunately, Weber appears to take to heart the epigraph from Oscar Wilde that appears at the beginning of the first chapter: "I treated art as the supreme reality and life as a mere mode of fiction...
Topics like "Will We Still Need To Have Sex?" grab the reader's attention, but your issue reads like a condensed version of a futuristic science magazine--bereft of heart, soul, news and politics. HARRIET LERNER Topeka, Kans...