Writing about dead people is a lot simpler than writing about live ones, or even dead people with living close friends, relatives and so on. But especially if you weren't there and weren't involved in the same "world", how can you know where to "put your feet." If the live person is collaborating, the difficulties can be even more serious, forbidding some things. What IS a secret worth keeping? What if there are legal difficulties like gag orders from a judge or contract agreements? What if telling one secret asks some scary questions?
We have now read so many horrific and dismal accounts of people we formerly respected, that we've become numb while at the same considering anything less to be boring.
How do you know who is worth writing about? Even the humblest subject can be lifted up by fine writing or deep insights. Trump didn't write his own autobiography, nor did it tell the truth -- but both the purported author and the ghost made a lot of money from it. Money shouldn't be the reason for a bio or auto bio, yet it often is. Bios that are lies -- or revelations that the lies are really the truth -- can be powerful. "History morphing", but is that a good thing?
If the subject of the biographer is alive, preserving the relationship may be worth more than any amount of money. But if the subject intensely wants his story told but can't do it himself, why wouldn't a friend do the job? Friends and relatives exaggerate both the importance and the emotional appeal of lives. What if the subject turns out to be outmoded, now irrelevant? Which is worse, discovering that FDR couldn't stand up without braces or knowing that he had a mistress? For that matter, knowing that Eleanor had female lovers. Are we shocked by JFK? Hell, we aren't even shocked by Trump.
But books don't sell because of the writer or the subject. They sell because the times are right for the public to want them and a publisher can see that and knows how to capitalize on it. Once upon a time reviewers showed the way, but they now are thin on the ground. The newspapers don't support them anymore. They settle for reporting how much money a book or movie made, as though that were an index of quality.
I've reviewed dozens of books, sometimes by friends. None of them has ever reviewed my book in return. Not because they're mean, but because they don't think of it and don't want to take the time to read the book, even if it's in their field. Early in my writing span, Richard S. Wheeler asked me to review his books on Amazon, because it made them sell, and sent me 17 paperbacks. I read each one, wrote a review, posted it. The late author was grateful but then he assumed he could tell me what to do, that I had no writing of my own to review. In the meantime, Amazon discovered how many were in on the review scam and pulled the plug. The book world is as full of judgements and equivalents as any other business, but they aren't about the books.
What we used to call "slick" or even "yellow" media like to pull together themes and series so that they reinforce each other and form a chain. After all, no author can write as quickly as a person can read. So even Amazon tells you what to read next, based on what you just read.
So the theme of hoaxes was invented from three or four stories that were quite different in style and intent. They were presented as very wicked, a violation, although "untrustworthy" narrators, mock letters, "found" documents and so on have always been part of the literary scene. Having been found guilty, each story then presented a chance to report reform.
Some stories make the public "go insane" as the phrase is. Pedophelia is a category of atrocity that might include true ghastliness (torture and murder) or simply be a phenomenon of young lovers living in a too restrictive state. Cannibalism is always popular. (That's irony. I notice that when speaking of emotional subjects, many people cannot recognize irony because it depends upon knowing the reality.)
Indigenous people work as a "third rail" subject. (The "third rail" is the one in the subway that carries high voltage lethal electricity.) The beauty of this subject is that first it's outrage by white people and then outrage by the tribal people, both easy to back up with evidence that's not that far in the past. (Blacks fight back.)
The above paragraphs are mostly about journalism and not about serious literary writing. Once the high schools and colleges have established that Nabokov is an excellent writer to be taken seriously, the outrage over Lolita goes flat. She doesn't seem very traumatized. But explications of the author and his thinking now become interesting to a different class of people. The nature of the audience has a lot to do with the value of the writing. Even Robert Frost had to go to England to be appreciated.
I did write one biography, "Bronze Inside and Out" about Bob Scriver, not self-published. Locals read it. Some claimed to be his best friend, though I never heard of them. Some hated him and made sure I knew why. But the basic facts about this man and his work are there to explore.
My solution to the puzzle is to write the biography but then to keep it secret. This spares me having to spend half my time on the work that an agent and/or publisher would do. What would I gain by publishing, even if I just put it on my blog, which I often do (in pieces)? The real reward is not money or even respect and affection from others, but the energizing of the loops in my own head, the realization of who the person really was and why. It's proof of empathy. If I want to express that in a bound book with a nice cover, I can do it privately and have that one book on my shelf. Maybe the subject can do the same. Maybe the book could be published after the deaths of both subject and author.
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