“A biography,” claims Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, “is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may well have as many thousand.” In August LARB featured a number of reviews of recent biographies and biographical essays, as well as pieces that interrogate the nature of the biographer’s art and an excerpt of a new book that tells the story of the Russian Revolution by following the lives of those who passed through “The House of Government.” — LARB Editorial
The Monthly Digest: September 2017
Midwest Interludes: Three Vignettes of the Chicago Renaissance
Liesl Olson shares three vignettes from “Chicago Renaissance: Literature and Art in the Midwest Metropolis.”
How to Remember My Mother
Red House: The Rise and Fall of Bolshevism Under One Roof
Max Holleran reviews “The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution” by Yuri Slezkine.
Awaiting the Real Day: An Excerpt from Yuri Slezkine’s “The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution”
An excerpt from “The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution” by Yuri Slezkine, published this month by Princeton University Press.
Demystifying the Contents of the Universe: A New Look at Mina Loy
Jacquelyn Ardam reviews a new critical study of cryptic modernist poet Mina Loy.
On Not Knowing Yourself: What’s Adam Phillips Saying About Life Story?
Brandon Kreitler on the problem of biography in the wake of Freud.
A Silent Storm: Art, Obsession, Death, and Marcel Marceau
Melynda Fuller appreciates “A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause,” an extended essay on Marcel Marceau by Shawn Wen.
Delectatio Morosa: On Fleur Jaeggy’s “These Possible Lives”
Emily LaBarge is transported by “These Possible Lives,” a collection of essays by Fleur Jaeggy.
Hampering Threadlike Pressure: A New Biography of George Eliot
Paul Delany reviews a new biography of George Eliot.
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