Curiosity, love, loss: A biographer puts herself in the frame
Megan Marshall, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, looks inward at how her life has been shaped by asking questions and digging deeply.聽
Megan Marshall, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, looks inward at how her life has been shaped by asking questions and digging deeply.聽
Can learning about other people鈥檚 lives inform how we live our own? This question arose as I read, or rather inhaled, Megan Marshall鈥檚 memoir 鈥淎fter Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart.鈥�
Marshall is a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer who specializes in trailblazing American women, including 19th-century journalist Margaret Fuller and midcentury poet Elizabeth Bishop.聽
In 鈥淎fter Lives,鈥� Marshall turns the lens on her own life. In one poignant essay, for example, Marshall recalls spending three months in Japan on a fellowship in 2017, during which she spent much time taking solitary walks.聽
She is drawn to the work of 鈥渢he Thoreau of Japan,鈥� a 12th-century poet turned Buddhist hermit. Kamo no Ch艒mei鈥檚 classic book 鈥淗艒j艒-ki鈥� (鈥淭he Ten Foot Square Hut鈥�) includes the words, 鈥淎nd so the question / where should we live? / and how?鈥� The hermit鈥檚 writings convey not only the peace he found in nature, but also the suffering he witnessed before retreating to his mountain hut. Ch艒mei鈥檚 verses later take on greater resonance in Marshall鈥檚 life, when her beloved partner, Scott, dies in 2019 and the pandemic takes hold. 聽
She draws sustenance from the women in her biographies, all of whose lives were bordered with calamity and loss. And she reflects on what it means to remain open and curious and hopeful about the future. She writes, 鈥淢y season of introspection was receding, and once again I was eager to learn what I could from others: how to live, how not to live, what it means to live. ... It was time to start in again.鈥�