The paradox of the biographer

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This paper was read on Friday 25 July 2025 in Cradock/Nxuba during the annual Etienne van Heerden Veldsoirée (see the video). The complete text appears below.

The paradox of the biographer: A note delivered at the Etienne van Heerden Veldsoirée, Nxuba (Cradock), 25 July 2025

The Art of Biography
Is different from Geography.
Geography is about maps,
Biography is about chaps.

No, I didn’t write that – it is a clerihew, a four-line poem rhyming AA and BB.

Biography goes as far back as texts in Egyptian funereal structures, or even earlier to the Mesopotamian stories of Gilgamesh. Like all art forms, its fortunes have waxed and waned over the centuries. It returned to us as the hagiographies of the Catholic Church, the greatly polished stories of the lives of men being proposed for sainthood.

Then came James Boswell and his seminal biography of Samuel Johnson, the great man of letters of 18th century England. Spoken of variously as the first modern biography and sometimes as the greatest of all biographies, this work was the 28-year labour of the young Boswell (he was 22 when he first met Johnson), who spent all these years cosying up to the (initially) 54-year-old man of letters. Boswell’s note-keeping of their every meeting was so detailed that Johnson remarked that “one would think that the man has been hired to spy on me”.

Complex notes were made and kept by Boswell on all their conversations over this long period: “conversations fuelled with vast quantities of port, that range from promiscuity (Boswell was spectacularly wanton, Johnson not so), printers, adultery, birds, primogeniture, marriage, crowds, booksellers, Americans, to the plays of Sheridan, bad poets, fame, Whigs, warfare and writing books”. Boswell was “an unsafe companion who never scrupled to repay the most liberal hospitality with the basest violation of confidence”.

The end product was more than just a recital of facts and dates – it was a personal and intimate record of Johnson’s public and private life, unmatched at the time and still considered by many to be the model biography.

Biography is the weaving of personality into the warp and weft of the flow of history. History without a considered understanding of the people enduring it, is empty, bereft.

“2 million people died in the battle of Stalingrad.”
“72 people were killed today when Israeli tanks opened fire on food queues in Gaza.”

Devastating facts, but they are statistics stripped of the horror and the suffering of those whose blood was needed to make the statistics. Likewise, biography without social context is interesting but incomplete: “Charles Dickens wrote 15 major novels.” Interesting, but without the full story – that his parents and younger siblings spent months in a debtors’ prison, and he then, at the age of 13, worked in a sweatshop, sticking labels on tins of shoe blacking – all of which materially affected his writing. Biography without social context is also only part of the full story of history.

As Carlyle wrote on Boswell’s biography of Dr Johnson: “One wants to see more than facts from histories and biographies, but also the Life of Man in England, what men did, thought and suffered, enjoyed.”

Then, 120 years later, another quality of biography emerged with Lytton Strachey’s book “Eminent Victorians”, in which he began the debunking tradition in biography, the process of exposing fault, the opposite of the hagiography we have mentioned. This is, however, to be an occasional exercise for the biographer, as expressed in Carlyle’s words about Boswell: “He had the great good sense to admire and attach himself to Dr Johnson …. His feelings to Johnson were reverence, the highest of human feelings.”

There is a final characteristic of biography that should be mentioned – here I quote from Jan Swafford’s monumental biography of Beethoven: “When it comes to history and biography, I believe, submission to objective fact is, for all its limitations, what the discipline is about. ‘Interpretation’ comes in second to that, and for me a distant second. A biography is mainly a narrative of a life, not an interpretation of it. … I believe that most of the time, interpretation in a biography is best left up to you, dear reader. I supply the material for you to work with.”

So, there we have five pointers to a good biography:

Detailed research is unavoidable – first-hand sources are desirable where obtainable, and the extensive use of second-hand (archival) sources is fundamental.
A biography must depict all aspects of the subject – his/her life and character, not just his/her special area of creativity.
It must occupy, honestly, some territory between hagiography and debunking – weaknesses of character are to be exposed, but respect and even reverence are acceptable also.
Description of the subject and his/her work is preferable to interpretation of this work.
Contextualisation, the placing of the subject into his group of inspirational contemporaries and into the society that nurtured and/or attacked his/her creativity, is necessary.

Now, we come to the Paradox of the Biographer. And this is: who would be willing to spend two or more years working on an intense study of the life of another person, if he/she did not at least admire the subject or, as is more likely, deeply respect this person – and, if that is the case, how can the biographer establish the distance between subject and biographer that objective judgment requires? How does one expose fault in recording the life of someone one greatly respects?

When I finished my first book, Apartheid’s Stalingrad, which was about the most important political development in the history of my little piece of this earth, Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage, I then decided to write about the most important cultural development in this area, which was the Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona years. Kani and Ntshona were the two most prominent of New Brighton’s Serpent Players theatre group.

I read extensively, and it became clear that there was a comprehensive body of literature on Fugard, but little on the Serpent Players, his fellow paddlers in this river. And the people who had done so much to make Fugard the sensation he had become – Yvonne Bryceland, Barney Simon, the Serpents, Zakes Mokae and Ross Devenish – were, with the exception of Simon, mostly ignored by the literature. Bryceland, who Fugard told me was the most important “provocation” (his term) in his long career, merited two footnotes in the most recent and detailed of the three biographical works on Fugard. And, of the onrush of apartheid during his most creative years, and the cascading tyranny of censorship over his career, there was little written. To use again the words that I used in the beginning of this note, his remarkable work had hardly been contextualised at all in the extensive literature about him.

I went to Stellenbosch to see him. I mentioned that I had begun to write about him and the Serpents. He asked me what line I was to take (for writing about Fugard is a well-trodden road – there are, I believe, about 100 theses out there, of which I have had the horror of reading possibly 30, and the Amazwi archive has over 4 000 pieces on him alone). I told him that I wanted to concentrate on contextualisation – Yvonne, Barney, the Serpents, Zakes, Ross and the political and legislative environment that had been forced on him.

His reply was reassuring: “Rory, take those beautiful people and put them on the centre of the stage.” That is what I have now spent nearly two years trying to do.

And have I succeeded? Do I have a reasonable draft biography on my hands? The answer is “No”. For I have failed in two of the criteria I have outlined.

Firstly, my access to original sources has been too limited. Fugard himself, despite heroic attempts to help, has memory failure (he was 91 when interviewed), which caused him anguish when trying to remember the times I was questioning him about. I abandoned the attempt. And much of what I have written about is now more than 50 years ago – only John Kani and George Luse, of the Serpents, are still with us. Kani was tied up to a contract to deliver a biography and was unavailable. Luse was wonderful, but thereafter, dead men make difficult interviewees.

And secondly, if, as Boswell mentioned, questions need to be asked and answered about the “private trilogy” – sex, depression and drink – again I have failed. Drink, yes – Fugard’s chaotic period at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s is well recorded, and I did dwell on that. But depression and sex? No. I have information – which I have determinedly avoided. Clearly, I have fallen short in the Biographer’s Paradox.

When I took the decision not to rummage about in Fugard’s dirt bins, I realised that I was abandoning the possibility of a biography, and instead was telling the story of Fugard, his friends and their times. I found that okay. Then I got a note from Fugard. He wrote that he was old and unwell, with a young family. He did not feel up to a full biographical peritoneoscopy. I was happy to reply that neither did I, and I was to tell the story of Athol Fugard and the Serpent Players – theatre against apartheid, in a limited and respectful way. Six months later, he was gone, and now I am finished. Finished with a story, not a biography.

Let me close with a reading from the manuscript – in fact, a reading of the short introduction of the work. I think it will help you understand why I went in this direction. The style is unusual, but I believe he would have liked it.

Introduction to Athol Fugard and the Serpent Players: Theatre against apartheid

Tonight, 20 April 1975, we are going to have one-hell-of-a-party.

We’re in New York – in fact, in the Winter Gardens Theatre on Broadway. It is, even by Broadway standards, a big theatre, seating 1 600 people. And tonight it’s going to be full-up.

Tonight, the Winter Gardens Theatre is hosting the Tony Awards.

Maybe a few words of explanation.

London and New York are the two major centres of English-language theatre, and probably of world theatre. Each have about 230 theatres, of which about 40 in each city are clustered into a central theatre district, called the West End in London and Broadway in New York. In these districts, real cutting-edge theatrical action happens, and each has annual award ceremonies to celebrate the major theatrical successes of the previous year.

In London, these awards are the Laurence Olivier Awards. In New York, well, slightly more complex. For New York theatres are classified – a “Broadway” theatre is one that seats more than 500 patrons, an “Off-Broadway” theatre seats between 100 and 500 patrons, and an “Off-off-Broadway” theatre seats under 100 patrons. “Broadway” theatres, the big ones, have a set of annual theatre awards called Tony Awards, and “Off-Broadway” and “Off-off Broadway” theatres are combined, and they qualify for the Obie Awards. Both the Tony and Obie Awards are managed by the same organisation, the American Theatre Wing.

The Tony Awards are, in fact, the Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Broadway Theatre, named after one of the founders of these awards. They have run continuously since 1947 and are the theatrical equivalent of the Emmy Awards (for television shows), the Grammy Awards (for music) and the Academy Awards (Oscars) for cinema.

Phew, enough facts – let’s get back to our party. For tonight the Tony Awards for Broadway shows from 1974 are to be awarded.

The guests are pouring in – beautiful actresses in as little clothing as possible, trying to look younger than they are; handsome actors in bespoke suits, trying to look richer than they are. This is theatre, not cinema – most everybody is poor here. But beautiful, sure.

Big names all around – the hosts include Walter Mattheu, Jack Lemon and Angela Lansbury. Playwright Peter Shaffer is here – his play Equus is up for Best Play, Best Actor, Best Director; it stars Anthony Hopkins and Peter Firth and is directed by seasoned campaigner John Dexter. It was commissioned by Britain’s National Theatre, who brought it from London to Broadway. With all that muscle behind it, it surely is going to be a big winner tonight.

Then there is Edward Albee, whose new play, Seascape, is up for Best Play; Henry Fonda and Frank Langella are both up for Best Actor, and Angela Lansbury and Diana Rigg both up for Best Actress Awards.

It’s a full house of stars and the glitterati of the stage, with a red carpet, endless clacking cameras, champagne (French, of course) flowing like Niagara, canapés to die for. The party is on.

Hello – who are those three rather scruffy-looking guys in that corner? Two black men and one white? Why are they here?

What is that you just said? They have been nominated for awards? The white guy for Best Play and Best Director, and the black guys both for Best Performance by an Actor in a Play? And they are also nominated, with the white guy, for writing the Best Play? What!

Where are they from? Did you say they are from Port Elizabeth? Where’s that? South Africa? Oh, yes, the land on the bottom of Africa, with gold, diamonds and apartheid. But if they have apartheid, how did two black guys and one white end up here, together? Did you say they wrote protest theatre, plays against apartheid? Well, then again, how the hell did they get here?

You say their names are Athol Fugard, the white dude, and Winston Ntshona and John Kani. What drama school did they attend? None, you say? Never been to a drama school? In fact, none of them have university degrees? Heavens! How long have they been in theatre? The white dude – 16 years, and the black dudes nine years and seven years.

Where did they learn theatre? In an abandoned snake pit? Oh, come on – you’re shitting me. You say it’s true? Well, what theatres have they performed in? You say that the black dudes performed in their first theatre with a stage and lights two years ago? And that, in their home city, Port Elizabeth, there were two or three fully equipped theatres, but they couldn’t use them because they are black?

You say the three of them wrote these two plays that are up for Tonys, in an abandoned school classroom and a suburban garage; the one play took 18 days to write and the other 11, and they didn’t have a written script for the first performances? And it is written in their second language – Kani and Ntshona speak Xhosa – they only began speaking English when they got to school? And they had no budget? No money at all? No state support? I suppose not; they are anti-state plays after all. And the white guy had his passport taken away for nearly five years? And yet, here they are, at the Tony Awards ceremony, nominated for awards. No, man, this is unbelievable.

Oh, the ceremony is beginning.

First up – Best Play.

Six nominations, including these three guys for – what is this? Sizwe Bansi is dead and The island? Two plays – I didn’t know that it was possible to enter two plays for one award. What are they about? You say the impact of South Africa’s pass laws on urbanising blacks? They made a play out of that? And the second one – about political prisoners in jail putting on Antigone for their fellow prisoners? A bit weird, not so? Surely no hope for an award?

The award went to Peter Schaffer and Equus, which was easy to understand. A big-budget play right in the tradition of the Tony Awards. Not some weird stuff from the land of apartheid.

Now – Best Director of a Play. Athol Fugard is among six nominations, which is a great honour, but no – it goes to John Dexter, again from the big-budget Equus. Another understandable award, squarely in the Tony tradition.

Now for number three – the Tony for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play. Both Kani and Ntshona are nominated, as one? Never heard of that before! Also, Henry Fonda is nominated, and Peter Firth from Equus. Stiff competition, sorry!

What – Kani and Ntshona won! First time in Tony history, two actors each get the award! And they take it, and all each says to the mike is, “Thank you,” and offstage they go! They, two young men from Port Elizabeth, have won the most coveted prize in world theatre!

And you say all this happened? Man, you’re fucking with my head. It’s just not possible.

But it is possible, and it all happened.

That’s the story I am now going to tell you.

Grab a mug of coffee and settle down in your most comfortable chair, blanket on your knees and cat on your lap.

I’m now going to tell you the unbelievable story of Athol Fugard and the Serpent Players – theatre against apartheid.