Dreaming of genius ...

... Book Review: Farther and Wilder - WSJ.com.(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

That Mr. Bailey has managed to turn such an unpromising subject into a brilliant and gripping book suggests that, maybe, we are all wrong in the way we approach literary biography. Common sense suggests that the better a writer is, the more he deserves to have his story told. But it is precisely the genius's genius that no biographer can explain, or usually even evoke. All that we love about a great writer is poured into his novels or poems, and what is left over is the ordinary failures of a life, which seem all the more unworthy by comparison with his triumphs on the page.