Charles McGrath at The Hudson Review:
Whatever happened to short biographies? For what seemed like ages I had in my work room three that I could have piled up and used as a stepladder: Ron Chernow’s 1,200-page life of Mark Twain, Sam Tanenhaus’ 1,040-page biography of William F. Buckley, and True Nature, Lance Richardson’s 736-page life of Peter Matthiessen. The Chernow, I confess, I’m still trying to finish. The Buckley bio, on the other hand, is so good that I found it hard to put down. And the Richardson book, though the shortest of the three, sometimes felt like the slowest. It often reminded me of those treks Matthiessen was so famous for making: arduous, exhausting even, but also full of insights and surprises. In the end you’re relieved to be done but, all things considered, glad you made the trip.
Richardson’s previous book was a breezy, gossipy, and affectionate biography of Tommy Nutter, the eccentric Savile Row tailor who dressed, among many others, the Beatles (or three of them, anyway), Mick Jagger, and Elton John. True Nature couldn’t be more different. It’s deeply and meticulously researched, thorough almost to a fault, and the product of devotion so extreme it almost killed the author.
more here.
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