{"id":8077,"date":"2021-02-13T17:16:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-13T16:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/?p=8077"},"modified":"2021-02-14T17:18:13","modified_gmt":"2021-02-14T16:18:13","slug":"a-life-being-lived","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/?p=8077","title":{"rendered":"A life being lived"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/539746\/tom-stoppard-by-hermione-lee\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/tom_stoppard-701x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8078\" width=\"227\" height=\"332\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/tom_stoppard-701x1024.jpg 701w, https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/tom_stoppard-205x300.jpg 205w, https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/tom_stoppard-768x1122.jpg 768w, https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/tom_stoppard.jpg 975w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 227px) 85vw, 227px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>&#8220;Tom Stoppard &#8211; A Life&#8221; by Hermione Lee, pub. Knopf, 2021<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I would not necessarily seek out a biography of Tom Stoppard, renowned as he may be and as interesting as his life has been and is (and tragically more so than even he realised for a long time); but when the biographer is Hermione Lee one&#8217;s curiosity must be piqued, and for reasons as noted in <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/02\/13\/books\/tom-stoppard-biography-hermione-lee.html?smid=url-share\" target=\"_blank\">this very good piece<\/a> in <em>The New York Times<\/em> in anticipation of the forthcoming release of <em>Tom Stoppard &#8211; A Life<\/em> in the United States.  Firstly, while she has previously brought her craft only to women and secondly, only to the dead; Stoppard doesn&#8217;t fit the bill on either of those counts. It should also be said Stoppard pointedly sought out Lee, and not just because she is the best, but because he wanted it to be read &#8211; which sort of suggests he may have been thinking of a reader like me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The <em>NYT <\/em>piece is about the Stoppard work to be sure, but more generally it is also very enlightening about Hermione Lee&#8217;s way of telling a life &#8211; way<em>s<\/em> (<em>pl.<\/em>) really, because for each she works at adopting a voice particular to that of her subject. The book has actually been out for some time in the UK, and <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2020\/oct\/01\/tom-stoppard-a-life-by-hermione-lee-review-an-exceptional-biography\" target=\"_blank\">this review<\/a> in<em> The Guardian<\/em> is well worth a read. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I would not necessarily seek out a biography of Tom Stoppard, renowned as he may be and as interesting as his life has been and is (and tragically more so than even he realised for a long time); but when the biographer is Hermione Lee one&#8217;s curiosity must be piqued, and for reasons as noted &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/?p=8077\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;A life being lived&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[71,197],"class_list":["post-8077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-hermione-lee","tag-tom-stoppard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8077"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8085,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8077\/revisions\/8085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}