ABSTRACT
In Bernard malamud’s Dubin’s Lives, William Dubin, an award-winning biographer of Henry David Thoreau, is engaged in writing a biography of D. H. Lawrence. Reflecting on his experience with biography in general and with Lawrence in particular, Dubin observes: No one, certainly no biographer, has the final word. The biographer whose life is joined to the biographical subject can also change in important ways as life proceeds and he or she is influenced by personal and suprapersonal events and circumstances. Indeed, one profound influence on the biographer may be the person chosen for study and the work of the biography itself. In young adulthood Thoreau became locked in a series of fateful, if not always consciously acknowledged, rivalries with the brother he loved and admired: while teaching in the same school and competing for student and community approval and, most crucially, when courting the same woman.
