Worst Bios

[Blergh]

What do we consider the worst bios/autobios read? Are the authors needlessly coy or outright dishonest re subjects' ages/origins,etc? Do the bios avoid significant parts of their subjects' stories up to and including spouses & offspring? Do the bios skip back and forth with no logical or chronological order? Do they wind up causing the reader to thoroughly dislike their subjects due to bad deeds and tudes spun? Here's a thread to discuss our least fave bios we've read and why.

[Spartan Girl]

I hated Wired by Bob Woodward. With a passion. Not only has the accuracy been called into question by the people who actually knew (and cared about) John Belushi, bout the book itself was very poorly written. The writing is very cold and dry and overall negative. Even the "nice moments" of his life were slanted in a horrible way.

[Blergh]

Agree with you re Bob Woodward's 'work'. It seemed Mr. Woodward was unable to wrap his head around the concept of the possibility that the late Mr. Belushi could have actually done anything positive in his life. Yes, I know that Mr. Belushi had serious problems and demons he was not able to overcome but he DID do a lot of good and was a genius entertainer and it's too bad Mr. Woodward refused to touch upon this. I always was intrigued by the fact that he developed his very physical nonverbal antics as a means to communicate with his adored grandmother  who raised him but   she spoke almost no English whilst he spoke almost no Albanian- and how utterly heartbroken he was at her death which I believe was a contributing factor to his too-early demise.

[Snow Apple]

American Rose (about Gypsy Rose Lee) by Karen Abbot. It's not told in chronological order and I thought the author used flowery and pretentious wording and it just didn't work. It felt like she was trying to impress the reader with her writing style instead of simply telling what should have been a fascinating story of Gypsy.

[Blergh]

Agree, Snow Apple. What was especially maddenly ironic was how often the writer expressed frustration re how much and often Miss Lee and the other Hovac family members obscured if not obliterated their actual pasts but the author just made thing even more confusing for the reader.

[Blergh]

Here's one that majorly disappointed me: Linda Ronstadt's. I've always enjoyed her music down the years and thought her memoir would give some good insights re what made her tick but it fell a bit flat. Oh, it started out promising re vividly sketching out her early childhood and extended family in New Mexico where she learned to appreciate a wide variety of musical styles and even waxed a bit about her childhood pony. Then it became somewhat withdrawn re talking about her mother suddenly becoming very ill then being paralyzed for months on end. What  condition this was never got mentioned but this required the family to employ a caregiver who Linda loathed apparently for requiring the children to wear shoes. Then suddenly Linda relocated to California to start her professional performing career but what led her to do this and whether this was initially a stopgap measure until she did the conventional route of college and marriage goes unmentioned. What also goes unmentioned is why no one seemed to be more than folks she 'spent   time with'. I mean I actually like memoirs in which the authors are discreet and try not drag others down with them but being coy for its own sake does get a bit weary. Even when she's an adult and found out her mother has died, all Linda said is that she was doing her laundry in London when she found out- then finished with her laundry. That's it.

   Even more frustrating was how she dealt (or didn't deal) with her offspring. It's well known that she adopted them in her 40's as a single woman at a time when few folks not conventionally married did so but what led to that decision and how it impacted the three of them goes unmentioned. In fact, apart from a single photo of herself holding her infant daughter with the caption of 'my daughter and me', a few odd references to 'my baby/ies', 'my kid/s' ,' my son', 'my daughter', the only thing we learn about them is that when her son was fourteen he developed very different musical tastes from her. She never even gave their names. It would have been one thing had she said 'I love my children and since they're not public figures, I want to respect that by not detailing their lives so I hope the reader understands', but she made them seem like   bystanders in her life.

 

   Regardless of this rather unsatisfying book, I'll always enjoy her music and, of course, wish her well in  making the best of her Parkinson's.

[Archery]

Bill  Clinton's autobiography was really disappointing.  On the one hand, he had a nearly encyclopedic memory regarding conversations and who was in the room for political decisions and such, but when it came to his personal life, he was coy and vague.  I really wanted to read his side of the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky stories, see if there was any introspection or regret or even defiance.  And Clinton was like, ". . . and also in 1992, some stuff happened," while at the same time going into incredible detail regarding the campaign.  It just felt dishonest.  

[Pepper Mostly]

Here's one that majorly disappointed me: Linda Ronstadt's. I've always enjoyed her music down the years and thought her memoir would give some good insights re what made her tick but it fell a bit flat. Oh, it started out promising re vividly sketching out her early childhood and extended family in New Mexico where she learned to appreciate a wide variety of musical styles and even waxed a bit about her childhood pony. Then it became somewhat withdrawn re talking about her mother suddenly becoming very ill then being paralyzed for months on end. What  condition this was never got mentioned but this required the family to employ a caregiver who Linda loathed apparently for requiring the children to wear shoes. Then suddenly Linda relocated to California to start her professional performing career but what led her to do this and whether this was initially a stopgap measure until she did the conventional route of college and marriage goes unmentioned. What also goes unmentioned is why no one seemed to be more than folks she 'spent   time with'. I mean I actually like memoirs in which the authors are discreet and try not drag others down with them but being coy for its own sake does get a bit weary. Even when she's an adult and found out her mother has died, all Linda said is that she was doing her laundry in London when she found out- then finished with her laundry. That's it.

   Even more frustrating was how she dealt (or didn't deal) with her offspring. It's well known that she adopted them in her 40's as a single woman at a time when few folks not conventionally married did so but what led to that decision and how it impacted the three of them goes unmentioned. In fact, apart from a single photo of herself holding her infant daughter with the caption of 'my daughter and me', a few odd references to 'my baby/ies', 'my kid/s' ,' my son', 'my daughter', the only thing we learn about them is that when her son was fourteen he developed very different musical tastes from her. She never even gave their names. It would have been one thing had she said 'I love my children and since they're not public figures, I want to respect that by not detailing their lives so I hope the reader understands', but she made them seem like   bystanders in her life.

 

   Regardless of this rather unsatisfying book, I'll always enjoy her music and, of course, wish her well in  making the best of her Parkinson's.

I was hoping for something more personal and gossipy, too. I'm a huge fan, and I know she's had a very interesting life! But about halfway through I realized it was going to be about her music, how she picked songs, how she performed them, and so on. Not a personal odyssey, no fun anecdotes. I enjoyed it for what it was, now I'm hoping a terrific writer will write a great, juicy bio!

[Blergh]

Pepper Mostly,

Glad you enjoyed Miss Ronstadt's IMO lacking bio. I'm afraid, though, this attempt it could enable some hack to attempt a hatchet job that she will have little recourse re self defense since she verified too few autobiographical details in her own work .

[JaneDigby]

Nancy Cunard by Lois Gordon. Cunard was a literary figure in Paris in the 1920s & 1930s. She is thought to be the inspiration for Lady Brett in The Sun Also Rises and several other characters in other books. She wrote a ground breaking book about the contributions of African Americans and did brave front-line reporting during the Spanish Civil War. Sounds interesting, right?

 

Well, brace yourself for this book because Gordon is more interested in the famous writers Nancy hung out with than Nancy herself. Think I'm joking? We get full size photos of T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf yet neither figures prominently in her life. Gordon spends pages on the story that Nancy bagged good ol' T.S. because .... well, because. The looniest is when Gordon devotes a chapter to Pablo Neruda's friendship with Nancy (yes, PB comes first!) and casually mentions that Nancy was in a physically abusive relationship without addressing this any further than as a sign of Nancy's generous spirit. 

 

Gordon yammers on about how the fact that Nancy's mother openly had affairs during Nancy's childhood may have impacted Nancy. No doubt, but I think it might have done more than give Nancy a loathing for hypocrisy. And having one of the men her mother had an affair with be way, way, way too interested in Nancy's sex life (details, the man wanted details) AND asking to see her naked when this man was also hinting that he was her bio dad might have had negative impacts, too. So maybe the fact that Nancy was a hard core alcoholic and apparently incredibly, dangerously promiscuous deserves a little investigation. You won't find it here. Gordon explains it away as a reaction to World War 1 and we're done. The impact on Nancy's life is never addressed. Nor is the matter of whether Nancy was truly promiscuous or just a modern gal who enjoyed sex and didn't always make the best choices. 

 

It's rare to find a biography in which the subject plays second fiddle but this one does the job nicely. 

[Blergh]

JaneDigby- That sounds rather bad. Sad when a biographer is more interested in 'famous' names than the purported subject of their own work. Also, a good biographer gives the readers ALL possible documented reasons for a subject's MO rather than foist their own preconceived and/or agendist  notions. BTW, did you by chance pick your name after Lady Ellenborough the 19th century British iconoclast who was known to marry at least nine times and was the inspiration for the work "Lily of the Valley".

[JaneDigby]

JaneDigby- That sounds rather bad. Sad when a biographer is more interested in 'famous' names than the purported subject of their own work. Also, a good biographer gives the readers ALL possible documented reasons for a subject's MO rather than foist their own preconceived and/or agendist  notions. BTW, did you by chance pick your name after Lady Ellenborough the 19th century British iconoclast who was known to marry at least nine times and was the inspiration for the work "Lily of the Valley".

 

Yes! She was the inspiration for my screen name. Mary Lovell's biography of Jane Digby is fantastic.

[Pepper Mostly]

Sally Bedell Smith's bio of Princess Diana was a real hatchet job. I'm a Diana fan and I know she was far from perfect but she did not deserve that.

 

Also was very disappointed in Dearie, a bio of Julia Child by Bob Spitz. I'm also a Julia fan and read My Life in France and As Always, Julia with great enjoyment. I don't fault Spitz's research or fact checking, but the man cannot write his way out of a paper bag. I can't believe he makes his living as a writer, he's terrible at it.

[Sir RaiderDuck OMS]

In Hitler's Shadow by Yaron Svoray and Donnie Brasco by Joseph Pistone suffer from the same malady: Their opening and middle sections (detailing how their undercover personas came to be and how they gained the trust of those they were investigating) are gripping, but the last third of each book turns into a boring travelogue: "On such-and-such date, I met with so-and-so and discussed blah blah blah. The next day, I talked to my contact and relayed the conversation." While that is undoubtedly what actually happened, it's boring to read. There's a reason the movies made from both books had to inject fake drama (particularly the made-for-HBO Infiltrator, based on Svoray's book) into the last act.

[Blergh]

OK, since we're talking about Joan Crawford on the Movies Forum, I might as well mention here one of the WORST bios of hers ever (and NO, it is NOT "Mommie Dearest"). It's "Not the Girl Next Door" by Charlotte Chandler who not only seemed to swallow whole virtually every self-spin the late Miss Crawford made about herself but actually went out of the way to try to discredit her daughter Christina altogether (and especially her book) by  trying to explain away everything  abusive re Joan Crawford  that couldn't be pinned down and excusing away what COULD be. I mean, she even went to the trouble of extensively interviewing Christina's younger sister (and Joan's inheritance beneficiary) to get her to do all she could to deny the possibility of any abuse on Joan's part towards her elder sibs to spin it as TOTALLY Christina's ingratitude for no inheritance. If Miss Chandler truly wanted to question any of Christina's claims, then why didn't she interview HER instead? It seemed to me that Miss Chandler simply couldn't wrap her head around the possibility that someone as hardworking and talented as Miss Crawford was could possibly have ALSO been a monster to those who couldn't fight back and went out of her way attempt to annihilate any possibility of not worshipping the late Miss Crawford. Considering how I'd previously liked her work on Bette Davis, this book was a major disappointment to me to say nothing of disillusioning me re Miss Chandler's cred.

[Blergh]

OK, I suppose I should have mentioned this while he was still living but I thought one of the worst I'd read was Gregg Allman's. Really, apart from his admiration and later caregiving of his mother Geraldine and his musical talents, there was  little if anything positive disclosed within. I won't recount all the misdeeds here at this time that he mentioned and tried to shrug off but between his appalling neglect of his large number of offspring with virtually no attempts at contact after his splits with their mothers and his justification for usage, I can honestly say that he was his own worst publicist. 

[Spartan Girl]

I didn't like I Walked The Line With Johnny Cash by his ex Vivian. Look, I understand that Johnny dumped her for June Carter and that's going to make her raw, but she made it sound like June was a manipulative man eater and Johnny just got "trapped". Sure, Jan.

Her own daughter, Rosanne, in her own book admitted that Vivian was always bitter despite the fact that she was way happier in her second marriage. 

Edited May 31, 2017 by Spartan Girl

[Prairie Rose]

I was disappointed in Olivia Newton-John's memoir. About three years ago, I checked it out of the library and took it with me on an overnight stay at the hospital (for a sleep study). She went into much too long (and in my opinion, dull) detail about homeopathic remedies and such, in several stretches of the book. I wanted to learn more about the making of her music, how she liked her albums/songs, etc. I guess it all depends on your perspective.