Forty-One False Starts
By Sinéad Fitzgibbon.
Janet Malcolm loves people. This may seem an obvious thing to say about a biographer, especially one as prolific in ‘personality journalism’ as she is – but unlike other purveyors of the genre who concern themselves only with certain people (namely those who find themselves subjects of biographies), Malcolm’s writing is suffused with an intense fascination with the both the individual and the aggregate human conditions.