BLURB FOR A MODERN LITERARY BIOGRAPHY
The biographer:
Q.X. Smith, author of umpteen authors’ Lives,
3-time winner of the Wartsworth Prize,
was evidently born and, doubtless,
lives somewhere between archives.
He/she, it appears, is a very
private person, with nothing
whatever to hide.
In this biography:
He/she retrieves - from silences behind
gilt masks, seamless cloaks.
illusive mazy screens -
fascinating True Facts lying packed
between these covers which uncover
for us all with adult appetites to know
who the person was whose “untold life
has been, by alchemistic wizardry, subsumed
into now famous well-loved forms,
this legacy of rare redemptive art"
(his foremost critic’s often-quoted words).
The revelations:
picked his nose
bullied his mother
while playing pure
yielded to television
fibbed to flatter
devised convenient evasions
feared his orifices stank
relished the lies
his eloquence hid
the taste of cruelty
in his too much or little
attained release of lust or love
fantasised strangling
puppies or babies
attempted corrupting girls
or was by flashed flesh
cash or flattery corrupt
sure for sure as rumour shows
he was most weak or wicked
harbouring moreover
lethal defects in his genes....
|
