Bias in biography

In the British monthly, literary critic Terry Eagleton and professor of cultural theory at the University of Manchester, reviews a biography of the poet T.S Elliot written by Craig Raine and ponders a tendency toward bias in the genre. "Why do critics feel a need to defend the authors they write on, like doting parents deaf to all criticism of their obnoxious children ? Eliot's well-earned reputation is established beyond all doubt, and making him out to be as unflawed as the Archangel Gabriel does him no favours. It is true that the poet was a sourly elitist reactionary who fellow-travelled with some unsavoury political types in the 1930s, and as a Christian knew much of faith and hope but little of charity. Yet the politics of many distinguished modernist artists were just as squalid, and some - Pound and Junger, for example - were quite a lot worse. There is no need to pretend that all great writers have to be uxorious, liberal-minded, philosemitic heterosexuals. Why does Raine write as though discovering that Eliot was a paedophile would change our view of Four Quartets ?"

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