The Biographer's Tale [Paperback]

This is a book that makes you want to go and do research, if you have any scholarly inclinations at all. I know that Phineus Nanson begins his story by saying that he is giving up on words and needs things, but the irony of all of this is that his search for things takes him right back to research and to word-play.

The narrator of The Biographer's Tale, Phineas G. Nanson, is both engaging and believable. He's preening, self-absorbed, sullen, anxiety-ridden and thinks of little else but literature. He even looks the part he plays: he is "very small," but "perfectly formed." This man, who could have so easily grated on one's nerves, becomes, in Byatt's masterful hands, a comic masterpiece who is thoroughly enjoyable.

Yet this book, for some reason, so often becomes rather trite and boring. Perhaps it's all the history. Perhaps it's the (sometimes) extreme intellectualism. More likely, it's the theme: that human beings seem incapable of compiling a true history of anything. But I'm really not sure.

Phineas Nanson, one fine day, while looking out of a dirty window (in itself a cliche) decides that he wants more out of life than simply being a critic of postmodern literature. He wants instead, a "life full of things." So, he decides, then and there, to write a biography of a biographer, namely, Scholes Destry-Scholes.

From this very trite beginning, Byatt goes on to create a story filled with atmosphere and exotic details, just one of the many things at which she excells.

Nanson is a first-rate narrator and affords much comic relief as he struggles to write his biography of a biographer. Destry-Scholes seems to be purposely evading Nanson; all he can find of the man is a marble collection, an arcane tool used for drilling holes in the skull, an unfinished manuscript and a collection of note cards used to write said manuscript. It is the note cards that take center stage in this book and it is here that I think Byatt misplaced her emphasis.

Byatt is a storyteller of formidable power, yet she chooses to let Phineas' perusal of Destry-Scholes manuscript and note cards make up the bulk of her novel. As Phineas soon discovers, Destry-Scholes' biography is not of one man, but of three: Carl Linnaeus, Francis Galton and Henrik Ibsen. The more Phineas struggles to make sense of Destry-Scholes' note cards and sort them into some kind of order, the more he sees order and objective "truth" are simply an impossibility. We do get the joke, but it simply isn't funny. What is meant to be satire becomes impossibly tired and worn. Surprising, given Byatt's skill.

Despite all of this, The Biographer's Tale has its moments. There are obscure historical details, scientific facts, romantic addendums. The book is both intelligent and classy and this adds to my dismay about it, for, although it certainly has its high points, in the long run, it simply isn't all that interesting. Still...it is A.S. Byatt and I really don't think she can do much that is wrong.

So it is with A.S. Byatt's THE BIOGRAPHER'S TALE. A young scholar named Phineas G. Nanson tires of endless deconstructionism of literary works and is talked into writing a biography of Scholes Destry-Scholes, noted for his study of the redoubtable Elmer Bole. Nanson is tired of words: He wants things in his life. Destry-Scholes, however, turns out to be an elusive subject. He has left behind no portraits, only a few biographical fragments about Linnaeus, Francis Galton, and Hendrik Ibsen -- oh, and also a radiologist niece named Vera Alphage, whom Nanson beds. Enroute, he meets two gay adventure travel consultants, who hire him, and a voluptuous Swedish bee specialist named Fulla Bliefeld, who seduces him.

So what do we have here? One researcher. Two budding relationships. But no biography. I followed Byatt with great fascination down what appears to have been a garden path.

Normally, I would be outraged: I've been toyed with, but not actually traduced. For me, one measure of a book's success is where it leads me. Destry-Scholes' fragments have made me itch to read more about Linnaeus, Galton, and Ibsen. Aptly, the final image I have in my mind is the toilet-flushing image of the Maelstrom, the giant whirlpool off the coast of Norway where Destry-Scholes apparently lost his life.