吾自絕倫：塞繆爾·皮普斯傳Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin 2022；羅恩·切爾諾 (Ron Chernow)《馬克吐溫》MARK TWAIN, 2025
吾自絕倫：塞繆爾·皮普斯傳Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin 2022；羅恩·切爾諾 (Ron Chernow)《馬克吐溫》MARK TWAIN, 2025
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self is a 2002 historical biography by Claire Tomalin. It charts the life of Samuel Pepys, a 17th-century English diarist and naval administrator. The main source for the biography is the diary which Pepys wrote between 1660 and 1669, though Tomalin also draws in various other sources, including letters and other contemporary records.
The book was generally reviewed positively. The Guardian's Joanna Griffiths felt that Tomalin could have included more of Pepys' words from the diary, and opined that Pepys was a difficult subject for a biographer due to his diary revealing so much of himself, and the comparative lack of sources for periods of his life before and after the diary. Griffiths describes the biography as "notable for its generosity to the Pepysian fan."[4] Reviewing for the New York Times, Charles McGrath also stated that "You don't always hear as much of Pepys himself as you would like", but also called Tomalin "an excellent summarizer".[5]
A New Biography of Mark Twain Doesn’t Have Much of What Made Him Great
Ron Chernow traces the life of a profound, unpredictable and irascibly witty writer.
Mark Twain in 1902, visiting his childhood home in Hannibal, Mo.Credit...Mark Twain Papers and Project, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
Ron Chernow’s new biography of Mark Twain is enormous, bland and remote — it squats over Twain’s career like a McMansion. Chernow, who has previously written lives of financial titans, war heroes and founding fathers, misses the man William Faulkner called “the father of American literature” almost entirely. He demonstrates little feeling for the deeper and least domesticated regions of Twain’s art, or for the literary context of his era. His book is an endurance test, one that skimps on the things that formed Twain and made him the most lucid, profound, unpredictable and irascibly witty American of his time. Hardy will be the souls who tour this air-conditioned edifice all the way through and glimpse the exit sign.
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