Why I Prefer Long Biographies to Long Novels

Since my last post, I've been engaging in one of my masochistic acts of forcing myself to read something that I'm not enjoying, and have given up. The book is the new, long novel, The Song of Stork and Dromedary, by Anjet Daanje. This isn't a criticism of the novel and mainly reflects the evolution of my literary tastes over a long period of time. 

Simply put, fiction has never been my favorite type of writing. I like it only when it either contains accurate and realistic depictions of people or presents a skewed and unusual picture of reality that I find entertaining or challenging. The first category for me, in long novels, would include Middlemarch, which, to me, is an accurate sociological depiction of an English town in the 19th century and also contains autobiographical elements of George Eliot. In this case, since George Eliot was cognizant of Darwinism, there is even a slight evolutionary flavor. I have a strong preference for realism like this. The second category would include Kafka's novella, The Metamorphosis and László Krasznahorkai's Satantango. However, what I've found is that interesting skewed fiction can work just as well or better in a short format. For example, I thought that Kafka's novels, The Trial and The Castle, were boring. I also thought that László Krasznahorkai's shorter works, The Last Wolf and Chasing Homer were about as good as the longer Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance. 

In the long novel category, I should mention the only one that I've read recently, The Mandarins, by Simone de Beauvoir. Although de Beauvoir distorted some facts and concealed identities, it is still an autobiographical novel, and that is what I liked about it. However, I don't think that de Beauvoir understood her environment or wrote as well as George Eliot, so I don't rank her novel as highly. The Song of Stork and Dromedary, by Anjet Daanje, is a long novel that has a realistic basis in the Brontë sisters. Since I had just read a long biography on the Brontës, I was looking for more information about them. For me, this is where fiction often fails, because I prefer fiction that is based on knowledge and facts to fiction that is based on authorial reimagining or speculation.

While Juliet Barker's biography of the Brontës is accurate and unspeculative, they lived so long ago and their lives were so short that the information available to biographers has been limited. Charlotte Brontë corresponded more than her sisters did and had a wider social network, so much of the information came directly or indirectly from her. Furthermore, Charlotte, as the oldest surviving sibling, took an active role in developing the literary careers of her sisters. One lingering gray area for me is whether there was any significant sibling rivalry between the sisters. When Emily and Charlotte were in Brussels with Constantin Heger, though Emily took no interest in him, Charlotte fell madly in love, but he does not seem to have reciprocated. However, Heger later told Mrs. Gaskell that Emily was a genius. It seems possible to me that Charlotte was jealous of Emily's talent and intentionally destroyed or edited some of her work after she died. Also, because no one really recorded it at the time, the details of daily life in the Brontë household are not well known. There obviously were various family tensions periodically, and in modern terms all the deaths would have been traumatic, though, during that period, frequent family deaths were quite common. Barker doesn't discuss the family's religiosity, but that must have played an important role, since Patrick was a clergyman. However, from what little is known, Emily seems a bit like a precursor to Emily Dickinson, who moved from orthodox religion to something resembling a religion of nature, which does not necessarily entail a Christian god.  

I have been reading biographies for so long now that when a topic comes up, I am attuned to finding out more about what people said, did and thought in earlier times. I seem to be too experienced to be satisfied by novelistic speculations and inventions well after the fact. It is often difficult enough to understand what is going on in the present, let alone 170 years ago. I only read a few pages of The Song of Stork and Dromedary, and they consisted mainly of descriptions of what people were doing, without direct quotations. Because I am primarily interested in what people think and feel during their lives, Anjet Daanje has effectively added a layer of opacity which runs counter to my interests as a reader. In any case, because I am a self-acknowledged atypical reader, I am not suggesting that others should refrain from reading The Song of Stork and Dromedary.