Steven G. Kellman

Many literary biographies attempt to draw resonance from the author's body of work and find similar bubbles of meaning e.g. compare/contrast in the artist's life. Other efforts challenge the purity of aesthetic achievement with sordid list of crimes, establishing a delicious tension. Redemption is easily in the latter camp. This isn't like Paul Theroux's one-sided version of events agon V.S. Naipaul. No, Mr. Kellman likely didn't need to probe very deep to uncover the misogyny, the incest, the hectoring which stain his adult life.

I loved Call It Sleep, its palette of voices the snarl of misunderstandings, the hopeful bend towards assimilation and the knackered xenophobia both within and outside the shoebox homestead. Joel bought me the biography the following Christmas and it duly disturbed me.… (more)