SOURCE: Irmscher, Christoph. “Building Lives.” Canadian Literature, no. 134 (autumn 1992): 138-40.

In the following review, Irmscher comments on two different biographies of William Carlos Williams before highlighting the contents of Irving Layton and Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence, a volume Irmscher believes holds more value for biographers than literary theorists.

Paul Mariani's biography of Williams [William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked] first came out in 1981 and was soon recognized as a landmark in literary biography. This Norton paperback edition is, alas, unrevised, so that the (admittedly few) factual errors of the first edition remain. Nevertheless, it provides a good opportunity to see how Mariani's biographical technique—complete empathy with the subject—has stood the test of time. A decade on, Mariani's massive work, in his own proud words the document of a “ten-year obsession with another man's life,” still reads well, although some of the passages where the...