Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Picador (1996), Edition: Open Market Ed, 280 pages
Description
Dr. Samuel Johnson observed that everyone's life is a subject worthy of the biographer's art. Accused by a former girlfriend of being unable to empathize, the narrator of Alain de Botton'sKiss & Tell takes Johnson's idea to heart and decides to write about the next person who walks into his life. He meets Isabel Rogers, a production assistant at a small stationery company in London, apparently an ordinary woman. But as the biographer's understanding of Isabel deepens, she becomes remarkable. Her smallest quirks, private habits, and opinions become worthy of the most painstaking investigation-and unexpectedly attractive to her biographer.
User reviews
LibraryThing member ablueidol
Reflective account of the practice and philosophy of Life Writing and of the particular being the key to interesting accounts of the day to day life of individuals. Not sure why this is not seen in the same way as his later works.
LibraryThing member KayCliff
The hero/narrator, dismissed by his latest girlfriend as totally self-absorbed, determines to prove his possession of the quality of empathy by writing a biography, seeing the biographer’s mission as ‘understanding a human being as fully as one person could hope to understand another,
This hybrid novel/biography/ biographical critique comprises three strands. It is at once the (pseudo-)biography of Isabel; an account of the narrator’s developing relationship with her; and much consideration of the nature of biography itself. The tenor of this can well be assessed by quoting the subheadings under BIOGRAPHY in the index:
categories
of dead
details given in
discrepancies between author and subject
eating habits in
ending
family research
ghost-written
impulse to write
lack of understanding of subject
length
men writing about women
private life in
psychology in
relationship between author and subject
writing
There is reflection on the nature of family trees, adapted for this fiction, which is illustrated by a family tree conventional in layout but "tracing the passage of emotional dispositions" with annotations such as:
Christina — depressive, repressive, hysteric =
Henry Howard— alcoholic, promiscuous, authoritarian
Isabel—‘We can go into it another day. Are you sure I can’t get you anything to eat?’
Lucy—sandwich problem, masochist, intellectual insecurity
Paul — aggressive, worshipped too much by mother, neglected by father/sisters
The index — 12 pages, to the text’s 246 — is a properly detailed and structured biographical index. It fills out proper names merely mentioned in the text, and large general topics are duly specified as to aspect:
hands, taking notice of
London:
finding way round
views of living in
men, differences between women and
sex:
continuing friendship after
embarrassment of
first experience
liberal attitude to
manual of
substitutes for
as symbol of intimacy
tastes in
with full breakdown for major characters. Isabel’s own entry fills four-and-a-half columns; that of her mother, one-and-a-half.
As an index to a hybrid fiction/biography, this must be
reckoned a most interesting example of the craft.
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submerging myself in a life other than my own’. For his subject he will select someone quite ordinary, to demonstrate ‘the extraordinariness of any life’. So Kiss and tell details the life of the fictitious Isabel Rogers, ‘the next person to walk into [his] life’, presented in proper biographical format. The 12 chapters begin with ‘The early years’, ‘The early dates’, ‘Family trees’; the volume comes complete with preface and index, and two sections of photographs of Isabel, her family and friends, all appearing entirely authentic.This hybrid novel/biography/ biographical critique comprises three strands. It is at once the (pseudo-)biography of Isabel; an account of the narrator’s developing relationship with her; and much consideration of the nature of biography itself. The tenor of this can well be assessed by quoting the subheadings under BIOGRAPHY in the index:
categories
of dead
details given in
discrepancies between author and subject
eating habits in
ending
family research
ghost-written
impulse to write
lack of understanding of subject
length
men writing about women
private life in
psychology in
relationship between author and subject
writing
There is reflection on the nature of family trees, adapted for this fiction, which is illustrated by a family tree conventional in layout but "tracing the passage of emotional dispositions" with annotations such as:
Christina — depressive, repressive, hysteric =
Henry Howard— alcoholic, promiscuous, authoritarian
Isabel—‘We can go into it another day. Are you sure I can’t get you anything to eat?’
Lucy—sandwich problem, masochist, intellectual insecurity
Paul — aggressive, worshipped too much by mother, neglected by father/sisters
The index — 12 pages, to the text’s 246 — is a properly detailed and structured biographical index. It fills out proper names merely mentioned in the text, and large general topics are duly specified as to aspect:
hands, taking notice of
London:
finding way round
views of living in
men, differences between women and
sex:
continuing friendship after
embarrassment of
first experience
liberal attitude to
manual of
substitutes for
as symbol of intimacy
tastes in
with full breakdown for major characters. Isabel’s own entry fills four-and-a-half columns; that of her mother, one-and-a-half.
As an index to a hybrid fiction/biography, this must be
reckoned a most interesting example of the craft.
Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original language
English
Physical description
280 p.; 4.37 inches
ISBN
0330347144 / 9780330347143