If you’re able to carve enough time out of your hectic holiday season for some lengthy reading, Nanci “Knuckles” McCloskey has, as a prelude to her best-of-the-decade list, composed a voluminous dialectic concerning the importance of the literary biography. The author deftly examines her compulsion toward the form, while acknowledging the enigma of how and why one is edified by a specific medium. Now, without further ado, I give you Ms. McCloskey:

I’ve been on a literary biography kick lately.  I don’t know why.  These are my favorites:

1-Tete-a-Tete: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre by Hazel Rowley
2-Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford
3-Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch
4-The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers by Virginia Spencer Carr
5-A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates by Blake Bailey