SOURCE: “Biographer: Get a Life!,” in American Scholar, Vol. 67, No. 3, Summer, 1998, pp. 140–42.

In the following excerpt, Kellman discusses the problem of biographical writing and offers a positive assessment of Out of Sheer Rage.

“You have but two subjects,” growled Samuel Johnson at James Boswell, “yourself and me. I am sick of both.” The first great modern biography, Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson reveals as much about its author as about its subject, and readers sick of both Johnson and Boswell are sick of life.

A human interest in the lives of other sustains the health of the publishing industry. Abraham Lincoln alone has sold enough books to put a smile on every copper penny he has fronted. Books about the lives of saints (and sinners) are endlessly fascinating, not so much because of the lives but because of the books—because, bound and stitched, experience is endowed...