Do you prefer to work with the living or the dead? Ask any biographer, wherever biographers gather, and they will offer a vigorous opinion on this question. I fall squarely into the “safely dead” camp.
Biographers are, in part, professional Peeping Toms, who pull back the curtains of privacy and share what they find. Unsurprisingly, the living often object to strangers rummaging through their lives. Who can blame them? But I find it far more difficult to do this work if I fear hurting people’s feelings or stepping on their toes, always worried that a subject might stonewall or sabotage the project.
