I cannot really say why, but I am a compulsive reader of biographies. I know that at times I find in a biography what I can’t get from a novel. Juicy gossip? Who knows. A full view of the guts of the human condition? Perhaps. An exercise to become a keen reader? Sure. Richard Ellman, who wrote brilliant bios of Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, William Butler Yeats and George Bernard Shaw (you know, the Irish dudes who turned the English language upside down), used to say: «A good biographer will lead his readers as any good novelist will do, except that unlike the novelist a biographer should chase away any bloody trait of innocence in his readers.»

Yes!

This is because, again to quote Ellman, a good biographer should never mess with «the logic of psychology;» otherwise, «a biography is turned easily into a hagiography.»

Again: yes!

I can’t be so daring as to say that Freud, Jung or any other psychoanalysis theorists referred to psychology as being supported by the probing scalpel of «logic.» If they did, it is unknown to me. And yet there’s a ring of common sense in Ellman’s remark: «The logic of psychology.»

For example, Robin D. G. Kelley’s biography «Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original» makes the case that the pianist was very much aware of national and international politics, and that he was fond of having highly «intellectual conversations» with anyone. Ditto with racial issues of his time. How Kelly supports this information? By quoting a drummer here, a trumpeter there, a club owner, a woman who would go to see Monk almost every weekend at any club in NYC. The quotes are placed, say, strategically when Kelly rhapsodizes on the Civil Rights movement or riots in Harlem or Alabama. The reader wanting to see Monk under another light is moved to think that the pianist was indeed more than a crazy cat spinning childishly or dancing on stage when he played with his quartet; that is, Kelly suggests that Monk was man of worldly culture.

This, of course, is bullshit. Major bullshit. Indeed, while I cannot say that Monk was an idiot (a man who wrote music like he did cannot be), I cannot really defend the notion that he was, well, what Kelly says he was. And this is because Kelly committed in that book the cardinal sin of any terrible biographer: loving your subject to the point of adding what’s not there, or subtracting what seems to tarnish a reputation.

Ellman is clear on this. When he writes that Oscar Wilde was a voracious reader of literature but hardly touched books on politics, he goes on to prove his case. «The Soul of Man under Socialism,» he writes, «is the product of a brilliant intuition rather than the result of a self-taught scholar, a man who knew well how literature worked.» He then goes on to quote extensively from Wilde’s letters, interviews and those reviews of Wilde’s friends and enemies. What one learns by reading Ellman, a first rated scholar in my opinion, is that a badass biographer is above all an enemy of his subject. Or to put it mildly, a biographer should always (always) play the devil’s advocate.

All this comes to mind after watching two bio-based movies: «Lincoln» (Steven Spielberg) and «Hitchcock» (Sacha Gervasi). The first is a tour-de-force, if only because Daniel Day-Lewis is a freak of nature, an actor who commits every muscle to his role. But the movie in general gave me the impression that the narrative was shady, moving constantly under the feet of this giant. Granted, the movie is based (key word) on a «scholarly biography» (Doris Kearns Goodwin’s «Lincoln, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln») and therefore it take on resources never close to the rigor and precision of a documentary. And yet, the cinematic license seemed sloppy. In any case, as I was watching, remembering Gore Vidal’s novel on the subject, the movie gave me the urge to read Goodwin’s book. How many viewers will jump on the same impulse? Hard to tell.

«Hitchcock» was really created around the uncanny talents of both Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren, monsters among monster actors. So fucking good are both that none of the other actors can hold a candle: indeed, they become insignificant weasels. (Again, Scarlett Johansson’s tits steal the show from the actress’s attempt at acting: and they were concealed, unlike her Betty Boop manners!!) My only beef with the movie is that this Hitchcock can hardly be the Hitchcock one learns to know, both through hate and love, by reading many biographies, but especially the superb «The Art of Alfred Hitchcock: Fifty Years of His Motion Pictures».

Donald Spoto, the author of that book, is a theologian and scholar on comparative religions. But after reading so many of his books, I can say he’s also the devil himself, a grandiose son of a bitch who leaves no stone unturned and like any devilish reporter confronts facts with myths. Those first three chapters of his book are simply a delicious treatise on that «logic of psychology.»

For starters, Hitchcock was hardly the seemingly insecure man that Hopkins gives life on the screen. Spoto and other biographers make the point that Hitchcock was a «bedrock of confidence.» Nothing escaped his wit, and Spoto particularly takes great care in showing through documents, letters and press interviews how Hitchcock was talented at hitting hard with words, showing no qualms to crush people above and below him. Because of his weight and the many years he was bullied in school, he concentrated every effort into polishing his genius: on drawing, writing, mathematics, visual arts and, above all, on the keen observation of human behavior («the foundation of acting»). This meant, among many things related to the «waste of time,» that he was never to succumb to the advances of women, nor he would seek pleasures in the flesh. In fact, his marriage to Alma Reville was the same in spirit as that of Cole Porter and Linda Lee Thomas: mostly a sexless partnership at the service of intellectual challenges.

Although Hopkins portrayal offers something of Hitchcock’s wit and his Zen-like patience, it is mostly a caricature of the caricature Hitch created as a public figure. One can only imagine Hitchcock approving the movie as a long, boring cameo.