David Foster Wallace om det paradoksale med forfatterbiografier

There's an unhappy paradox in literary biographies. The majority of readers who will be interested in a writer's bio [...] will be admirers of the writer's work. They will therefore usually be idealizers of that writer and perpetrators (consciously or not) of the intentional fallacy. Part of the appeal of the writer's work for these fans will be the distinctive stamp of that writer's personality, predilections, style, particular tics and obsessions - the sense that these stories were written by this author and could have been done by no other. And yet it often seems that the person we encounter in the literary biography could not possibly have written the works we admire. And the more initimate the bio, the stronger this feeling usually is.

Fra Essayet «Borges on the Couch», i Both Flesh and Not.