Sidetracks Explorations of a Romantic Biographer
- Binding: Paperback
- Publisher: Random House Inc
- Publish date: 12/01/2001
"Sidetracks" is a unique approach to biography -- examining the biographer's art itself while also portraying a riveting mixture of biographical subjects. Holmes' lets us eavesdrop on Shelley's last days before he drowned off the Italian coast, and takes us on a bizarre journey into the shifting realities of Parisian poet Gerard de Nerval. He also profiles Mary Wollstonecraft, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Robert Louis Stevenson, Voltaire, and Boswell, all made hypnotically alive through Homes' transforming touch.
With each of these twenty pieces Holmes shows how fluid, playful and unconstrained the many voices of biography can be, stretching the boundaries of traditional biography with his use of radio plays, travelogues, and short stories -- all based on impeccable research. "Sidetracks" is Holmes' personal casebook, assembled after "a thirty-year journey in search of the perfect Romantic subject and the form to fit it."
