Review: Tracy Daugherty on Peter Matthiessen

When cataloguing a subject’s contradictions reveals more than the biographer intends

Biographers are strange creatures, presumptuous in proposing to tell another’s story, even when the subject wishes the story to remain unspoken. The presumption is perhaps greater when the subject is a writer, with a strong claim to articulating their own account of themselves. Yet biographers are also self-effacing, withdrawing behind the narrative to …