The Biographer's Tale

Author: Byatt, A S

Brand: VINTAGE

Binding: paperback

Number Of Pages: 272

Release Date: 28-08-2001

Part Number: 9780099283935

Details: Product Description


Phineas G. Nanson, a disenchanted graduate student, decides to immerse himself in the messiness of ‘real life’ by writing a biography of a great biographer. But a ‘whole life’ is hard to find. Everywhere he looks he discovers only fragments – strange notes, boxes of marbles, undated postcards.As Phineas’s research continues, his mind roams from the deserts of Africa to the maelstroms of the Arctic. Along the way he meets others building wholes from bits and pieces – taxonomists, ecologists, even travel agents – and begins to puzzle out his future. But who will guide him from the labyrinth and back into his own life?


Review


“Byatt’s verbal prowess is spectacular.” —
The Vancouver Sun
“The relation of language to things, the arrangement of those things in the world, and exposure of the tricks of literary composition are not just occasional intruders in this novel, they are its very subject.” —
TLS


From the Inside Flap


Phineas G. sets out to write a biography of a great biographer. But a ?whole life? is hard to find. Everywhere he looks he finds fragments and gaps: bones and husks, boxes of marbles, collections of coins and undated postcards. Trails run cold and mysteries are unresolved.

Phineas feels he is hunting shadows. Like a shaman flying across the globe, his mind tracks the journeys of his subjects to the deserts of Africa and the maelstroms of the Arctic. He meets others building wholes from bits and pieces: taxonomists, ecologists, travel agents offering the trip of your dreams. In the process he also puzzles out his own future ? but how will he find his way out of the labyrinth? Tantalizing, comic and rueful,
The Biographer?s Tale is a modern delight, a colour-filled novel of detection and desire.


From the Back Cover


“Byatt’s verbal prowess is spectacular.” —
The Vancouver Sun
“The relation of language to things, the arrangement of those things in the world, and exposure of the tricks of literary composition are not just occasional intruders in this novel, they are its very subject.” —
TLS


About the Author


A.S. Byatt is a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include
Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and
The Children’s Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her ‘inspiring contribution to life writing’ and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.


I made my decision, abruptly, in the middle of one of Gareth Butcher's famous theoretical seminars. He was quoting Empedocles, in his plangent, airy voice. "Here sprang up many faces without necks, arms wandered without shoulders, unattached, and eyes strayed alone, in need of foreheads." He frequently quoted Empedocles, usually this passage. We were discussing, not for the first time, Lacan's theory of
morcellement, the dismemberment of the imagined body. There were twelve postgraduates, including myself, and Professor Ormerod Goode. It was a sunny day and the windows were very dirty. I was looking at the windows, and I thought, I’m not going to go on with this anymore. Just like that. It was May 8th 1994. I know that, because my mother had been buried the week before, and I'd missed the seminar on
Frankenstein.

I don't think my mother's death had anything to do with my decision, though as I set it down, I see it might be construed that way. It's odd that I can't remember what text we were supposed to be studying on that last day. We'd been doing a lot of not-too-long texts written by women. And also quite a lot of Freud—we'd deconstructed the Wolf Man, and Dora. The fact that I can't remember, though a little humiliating, is symptomatic of the “reasons” for my abrupt decision. All the seminars, in f

EAN: 9780099283935

Package Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1.3 inches

Languages: English