Actually, I have on my shelves a biography of the theologian Dietrich von Hildebrand, written by his wife. One might question whether she had the distance to make the best judgments, and this, I think may be what the editors had in mind: not so much the case of Petraeus and Broadwell as of biographers in general.
What I find most shocking (not most wrong, just most shocking) is that a biographer should have retained a ghostwriter. I'm accustomed to learn of former presidents and retired justices employing ghostwriters for their autobiographies. But a biographer? And one who graduated from West Point, alma mater to Grant and Sherman?
"Sleeping" with "biographer"? Each word on either side of the preposition seem to be an inaccurate representation of literal reality. We can guess that sleeping was not the primary activity, and now--based on certain information--we can also guess that the label of biographer is misplaced. However, if you replace the first suspect word with a widely known piece of colloquial street language, and if you replace the second suspect word with ___________ (fill-in-the-blank), you get closer to the truth.
Actually, I have on my shelves a biography of the theologian Dietrich von Hildebrand, written by his wife. One might question whether she had the distance to make the best judgments, and this, I think may be what the editors had in mind: not so much the case of Petraeus and Broadwell as of biographers in general.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find most shocking (not most wrong, just most shocking) is that a biographer should have retained a ghostwriter. I'm accustomed to learn of former presidents and retired justices employing ghostwriters for their autobiographies. But a biographer? And one who graduated from West Point, alma mater to Grant and Sherman?
"Sleeping" with "biographer"? Each word on either side of the preposition seem to be an inaccurate representation of literal reality. We can guess that sleeping was not the primary activity, and now--based on certain information--we can also guess that the label of biographer is misplaced. However, if you replace the first suspect word with a widely known piece of colloquial street language, and if you replace the second suspect word with ___________ (fill-in-the-blank), you get closer to the truth.
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