Half-lifeography

The day after Christmas is a crazy day to go shopping—between all the returns, gift card redemptions, and the urge to go buy what you really wanted, it gets pretty insane out there. The supposed after-Christmas deals aren’t that hot either, unless you are really into saving that extra roll of wrapping paper for a whole year. That said, a trip to the bookstore turned out to be reasonably productive. A lot of stuff was in rapid transition to the bargain tables and I picked up a couple of good deals.

One book I did not scoop up, though, was Russell Crowe’s biography (even though it had been further reduced from the bargain price of $4.99 down to a mere $2). It wasn’t hard to think of reasons to pass it over, including the subject matter, the horrendously boring editorial blurb (which not only made me yawn, but also observed that he has a reputation for being volatile and temperamental, and then later claimed that the book will “reveal the real man behind the cool façade”), and the fact that I can pick it up on Amazon for 18 cents!

But I have a more fundamental objection: Generally speaking, I prefer a biography (the story of a life) to be rendered when most (if not all) of the life story could be covered. As this book stands, it can’t possibly tell us the story of Crowe’s life, because he hasn’t lived an extremely large portion of it yet. In fact, he was only 37 years old when the book was published.

Now there might be some exceptions to this rule for some truly outstanding individuals, but I ask whether (a) such a book should still be called a “biography” and (b) if Crowe really falls into that exceptional category (if he did, I probably couldn’t pick up the story of his life-so-far for less than the price of a Twizzler).

Let’s have some respect for the literary form (and for the dead and nearly dead) by saving the biography label for those who are a bit closer to the grave.