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Humphrey Carpenter
Jan. 5th, 2005 08:22 pmOf recently departed creative folk, the one whose work has gotten the most attention from me is Humphrey Carpenter, the biographer.
He first came to my notice in 1977, when his biography of Tolkien was published. This book distracted my attention effectively from a few workaday nuisances, such as final exams. It's amazing how well it's held up over the years. Certainly none of its successors (except John Garth's Tolkien and the Great War, which is not a full biography) have measured up at all. Carpenter made a fair number of factual errors, as it later turned out: mostly because Tolkien's papers had not been adequately sorted at the time he did his research, so info on what Tolkien wrote and when he wrote it was lacking. But these are mostly just details: what's important is how well Carpenter captured the spirit and intellect of the man. His picture of what drove and interested Tolkien was impeccable, so it's unfortunate that Carpenter lost interest in later years, and once wrote a radio dramatization script that depicted Tolkien as nothing more than an absent-minded coot.
Soon afterwards came his book on the Inklings, also the standard resource on the subject (though wait till the book I've been helping with comes out at the end of the year), though perhaps less successful. Carpenter found C.S. Lewis's and Charles Williams's idiosyncracies more puzzling than Tolkien's, and didn't really have the measure of the men. But he delved deeply into sources and wore his learning confidently.
After that he was established as a famous literary biographer, and went on to many other subjects. The first of these was W.H. Auden, possibly Carpenter's best book, a rich amusing and lucid portrait of the man and his work. But later books tended to lose something. I was quite disappointed with his book on Benjamin Britten, which drew him as a man with a really interesting sex life who also might have composed a little bit of music from time to time. But Carpenter could still turn a phrase and make telling points: I'm especially fond of a footnote in Geniuses Together, his book on the American writers in 1920s Paris, saying something to the effect of noting that Hemingway is believed to have written most of his fiction while mildly drunk; and that it works best if the reader is in a similar condition.
Carpenter also wrote a number of other books, including children's fiction, that I mostly have not read, but Secret Gardens, his critical survey of the golden age of English children's literature, is another brilliant and insightful book.
He first came to my notice in 1977, when his biography of Tolkien was published. This book distracted my attention effectively from a few workaday nuisances, such as final exams. It's amazing how well it's held up over the years. Certainly none of its successors (except John Garth's Tolkien and the Great War, which is not a full biography) have measured up at all. Carpenter made a fair number of factual errors, as it later turned out: mostly because Tolkien's papers had not been adequately sorted at the time he did his research, so info on what Tolkien wrote and when he wrote it was lacking. But these are mostly just details: what's important is how well Carpenter captured the spirit and intellect of the man. His picture of what drove and interested Tolkien was impeccable, so it's unfortunate that Carpenter lost interest in later years, and once wrote a radio dramatization script that depicted Tolkien as nothing more than an absent-minded coot.
Soon afterwards came his book on the Inklings, also the standard resource on the subject (though wait till the book I've been helping with comes out at the end of the year), though perhaps less successful. Carpenter found C.S. Lewis's and Charles Williams's idiosyncracies more puzzling than Tolkien's, and didn't really have the measure of the men. But he delved deeply into sources and wore his learning confidently.
After that he was established as a famous literary biographer, and went on to many other subjects. The first of these was W.H. Auden, possibly Carpenter's best book, a rich amusing and lucid portrait of the man and his work. But later books tended to lose something. I was quite disappointed with his book on Benjamin Britten, which drew him as a man with a really interesting sex life who also might have composed a little bit of music from time to time. But Carpenter could still turn a phrase and make telling points: I'm especially fond of a footnote in Geniuses Together, his book on the American writers in 1920s Paris, saying something to the effect of noting that Hemingway is believed to have written most of his fiction while mildly drunk; and that it works best if the reader is in a similar condition.
Carpenter also wrote a number of other books, including children's fiction, that I mostly have not read, but Secret Gardens, his critical survey of the golden age of English children's literature, is another brilliant and insightful book.
