An open book and pale quill sit beside small brass scales and an ink pot beneath a golden beam of light.

Original artwork, not a still

Time and Tide  ·  1941

Rebecca West

All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin, of our inherent disposition to choose death when we ought to choose life.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

The speaker argues that serious biography and fiction share one underlying subject: original sin, meaning a built-in human tendency to pick death when life was the better choice. It is a stern claim that writing about people is really an examination of moral failure and self-destruction.

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