By Don Nelson
I’m currently reading two biographies, which is unusual because I usually mix fiction and nonfiction for variety’s sake if I’m working on more than one book at a time.
But in this case, I can barely put them down. Actually, I can barely pick them up either. Both are thick, weighty tomes (you could work out with them) plumped up by page after page of citations, notes and source references. Such is the nature of deeply plumbing the complex lives of, and authoritatively writing about, people who earned monumental historic stature, for good or ill.
The books are “Leonardo da Vinci” by Walter Isaacson, and “Grant” by Ron Chernow. Both Isaacson (“Steve Jobs,” “Einstein”) and Chernow (“Washington,” “Alexander Hamilton”) are stellar contemporary biographers who are also pretty good at weaving a compelling narrative yarn.
That’s what makes a biography a page-turner rather than a narcotizing trudge through names, dates, places and events. These guys are storytellers, not pedants, and they are fascinated by their subject matter. After his introduction, Isaacson’s opening sentence is, “Leonardo da Vinci had the good luck to be born out of wedlock.” And instantly you want to know why. More than 500 pages later, you’ll have more than an inkling.
Chernow’s story begins at the end of Ulysses S. Grant’s life, when the former Civil War hero and two-time U.S. president was in a race with cancer to finish his memoirs — which he related in 336,000 words over the course of a year as he steadily deteriorated and then, having seemingly said enough for a man renowned for his reticence, promptly died. It was Grant’s last chance to, as Chernow puts it, “cast off the stigma of failure and reclaim his stature before the public and posterity.”
It’s a cliché for high-profile people to claim that they are misunderstood, but Grant had a case. Often viewed from public distance as a rough-hewn, dull-witted, taciturn drunk who got lucky in warfare, Grant up-close is consistently revealed to be not only intelligent, well-read, convivial, thoughtful and remarkably generous, but also one of the most well-regarded military strategists of all time. Chernow doesn’t dodge the drinking issue — and in fact somewhat diffuses it by confronting Grant’s lifelong struggle with alcohol head-on. Grant was sober most of the time, but his periodic binges (he was not a high-functioning drunk) are what people remember.
Neither author is shy about offering his research-based personal insights, observations and conclusions, which may raise doubts about or bluntly refute previous biographers’ constructs. And neither is a fawning apologist for their subjects. Whatever issues, character flaws or shortcomings that Leonardo (which is how Isaacson refers to him) and Grant exhibited are spotlighted and explored for their value — which is to provide the rounded, multi-dimensional portrait that these complicated characters deserve.
If there’s anything to learn from comparing and contrasting Leonardo and Grant, it’s that the path to greatness is full of pitfalls — challenges to overcome, doubters to persuade, debilitating personal idiosyncrasies to battle, societal norms and expectations to bash up against. Luck, timing, perseverance and self-confidence all have something to do with it as well. Isaacson and Chernow are both good at identifying precise, pivotal moments when the course of history could have been altered had circumstances been only slightly different.
Leonardo is in some respects a more difficult life to capture. He was preternaturally brilliant in so many ways that it’s hard for us less-gifted mortals to comprehend. Even Isaacson seems occasionally daunted by the task of appropriately limning the breadth and depth of Leonardo’s interests, ideas, accomplishments and talents. Yet he transports us about as far as one can hope to journey into the cosmos-embracing mind of what Isaacson called “the archetype of the Renaissance Man.”
Because he had so much going on, Leonardo chronically left things unfinished, careening off to another project before completing the one he was working on. His mind was so alive with questions and possibilities that a wandering attention span seems understandable.
Our views of other people’s lives often begin with caricatures and stereotypes that we may be loath to have dispelled. They are convenient, non-demanding and easily perpetuated. The biographer’s job is to use mere words in creating a three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood human being who may defy many of our expectations while also confirming our perceptions of what constitutes greatness. Isaacson and Chernow take their time doing that, which makes it worth the reader’s effort.
