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Article: Stevie Smith: Laughter in the Dark
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- May 17, 1987
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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STEVIE
A Biography of Stevie Smith
By Jack Barbera and William McBrien
Oxford University Press. 378 pp. $24.95
READERS MUST always be wary, I think, of biographies that open
with the subject's birth and close with his or her death. Though
such an approach is both traditional and blindingly logical, it lacks
insight and imagination. Far better to begin, as Jack Barbera and
William McBrien do in this intuitive account of the life of British
poet/artist/eccentric Stevie Smith, with the informing anecdote. The
wise biographer should start, as they have, with an incident so
vital, so engaging, so telling that the reader is drawn in almost
involuntarily. In a page or two, we know enough that ...