Alan Hollinghurst reveals secrets of biography at Oxford Centre for Life-Writing

Hollinghurst, who was named Waterstone's Author of the Year 2011, discussed the complex relationships between biographer and subject; lived experience and the attempt to record it, a subject he explores in his latest novel, The Stranger's Child.

The event, entitled 'What can I say? Secrets in fiction and biography', was held as part of a series of Weinrebe Lectures in Life-Writing, which feature fellow Booker Prize nominees Michèle Roberts and Hisham Matar, as well as Candia McWilliam, winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize.

Professor Hermione Lee introduced the winner of the 2004 Booker Prize as “one of the most daring, elegant, intelligent, and profound fiction writers that we have”. The ensuing conversation ranged over the changing attitudes to privacy charted through the historical span of the novel, the fallibility of the novelist's primary tool memory and the difficulty of acquiring a true understanding of the lives of others.

[[wysiwyg_imageupload:844:]]Referring to the depiction of Lytton Strachey in the novel, Professor Lee remarked on the 1918 publication of Strachey's seminal work Eminent Victorians, a “shocking and enfranchising moment in the history of biography” that ushered in a more psychoanalytical approach, and the attempts of Strachey's biographer Michael Holroyd to lift for the first time the “veil of decorum” in his straightforward depiction of homosexuality.

Suggesting a parallel between this evolving liberation of the subject of biography and the emerging freedoms of gay literature, Hollinghurst acknowledged the significance of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act within the narrative of his novel and his writing as a whole, explaining that “I wanted to avail myself of those new freedoms. ... I consider myself extraordinarily fortunate to have this subject to explore”.

On the changing attitudes to privacy over the years, Hollinghurst described how, “someone reading a biography at the start of the period described in the novel wouldn't have expected to read about intimate details of the subject's private life, whereas in the modern day, readers would feel positively short-changed if they didn't.”

Hollinghurst asserted that biography, as with fiction, depends not only on the strength of the research, but, crucially, on the wisdom of the writer to interpret accurately the accumulated ‘facts'. The constant tension between biographer and subject was alluded to in a passage from the novel quoted by Professor Lee: "It was a recurrant little knot of self-defeating resistance that perhaps all biographers of recent subjects had to confront and undo. People wouldn't tell you things, and then they blamed you for not knowing them".

[[wysiwyg_imageupload:847:]]A range of questions were taken from the audience, including one on the blurred lines between fiction and reality created by the intermingling of historical figures and fictional characters in Hollinghurst's novels, such as the appearance of Wolfson Fellow and biographer Jon Stallworthy in a scene from The Stranger's Child. The author generously spared his time at the end of the evening to sign copies of his novels and speak with those in attendance.

The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing was founded last year at Wolfson College, Oxford by Hermione Lee to bring together a rich variety of approaches to the writing and study of biography, memoir, and other forms of life-narratives.

The Centre is one of a number of unique interdisciplinary Research Clusters at Wolfson, devised to build upon, but remain distinct from, the work conducted in departments and faculties. Drawing on the scholarly strengths within the College, the clusters aim to provide inspiring spaces for innovative forms of academic collaboration, across a range of disciplines from quantum theory to the ancient world.

A podcast of the lecture is available to download from the link below.

Podcast of Alan Hollinghurst in conversation with Hermione Lee

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