Ted Hughes: A Very Sadistic Man
Janet Malcolm writes: ‘In his introduction to “Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life,” Jonathan Bate offers a “cardinal rule†of literary biography: “The work and how it came into being is what is worth writing about, what is to be respected. The life is invoked in order to illuminate the work; the biographical impulse must be at one with the literary-critical.†But these fine words—are just fine words.’
