In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Ryan Cropp shares with Gabriella the multiplicity of choices he made while writing Donald Horne. A Life in the Lucky Country, the biography of Donald Horne, a prominent and outspoken Australian journalist, writer, public intellectual and social critic.
Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:
- Why Ryan Cropp felt compelled to write a biography of Donald Horne.
- The meaning behind the second part of the book’s title: A Life in the Lucky Country.
- Why Ryan opens the biography with a close up view of Horne sitting on a Sydney bus looking out the window while he was being filmed for a current affairs program.
- Ryan’s exhaustive research strategy and how he narrowed the biographical scope to ensure he didn’t write a tome.
- How Ryan incorporated information from Horne’s three autobiographies into the narrative, yet avoided serving as Horne’s ventriloquist given that memoirists are unreliable narrators of their own life.
- How Ryan made Myfanwy, Horne’s wife and literary partner, a central character
- How Ryan represented Myfanwy’s point of view given that the wives of prominent men are often invisible in the biographies of their husbands.
- How Ryan achieved a fine balance between portraying Horne’s public, private and interior lives.
- The literary devices Ryan employed to craft an enthralling narrative.
- Ryan’s beliefs about the role of a biographer.
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