"The Shadow in the Garden: A Biographer's Tale," by James Atlas

“The Shadow in the Garden: A Biographer’s Tale” (Vintage, 2017), by James Atlas, is a pleasure to read. Atlas, a literary critic and the biographer of poet Delmore Schwartz and of novelist Saul Bellow, writes engagingly of his own experiences as a biographer; he also puts the art of literary biography in historical and literary context. For example, he writes fairly extensively about one of the most famous biographers of all time, James Boswell, and his subject, Samuel Johnson. He also writes of Lytton Strachey, Elizabeth Gaskell, and many other biographers of well-known writers. His research and knowledge is deep, and it is clear he has a great and genuine love of literature, writers, and in particular biography. But the best part of this book is Atlas’ descriptions of the years-long, complex process of doing the research for his own biographies. He did not know Schwartz personally, as the poet had died before Atlas embarked on the biography. He did know Bellow, and spent much time with the novelist, his family members (including several ex-wives and children), his girlfriends, and his friends. Atlas’ relationship with Bellow was fraught: Bellow was sometimes friendly and cooperative, sometimes resistant and even icy. Atlas writes extensively, although with a diplomatic reserve, about his own feelings about Bellow, but these clearly became somewhat resentful at times. He also writes about his own life and struggles and insecurities, although not extensively or inappropriately. The book is truly a treasure for what we learn about the art of biography and about literature more generally. The way Atlas weaves together all the topics mentioned above is truly impressive. As I said above, the book is truly engaging, whether the reader is a scholar of literature or not. This is true for me even though I don’t know the work of Schwartz well beyond reading him in a college class on poetry, and though despite reading several of Bellow’s novels and being impressed by them in my twenties, I have grown far less enchanted with them over the years. But Atlas managed to draw me in and make me fascinated by these writers and by the process of writing biographies. I will just remind readers here of a related memoir on the writing of biographies that I wrote about with very high praise here on 2/18/20: Deirdre Bair’s 2019 “Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me.” I personally enjoyed this book by Bair even more than the one by Atlas, but I highly recommend both books.