Stay With the Trouble!

Revisiting the Biographical Method

Abstract

This article revisits the question of the biographical method in literary studies and argues that, in the age of the internet, #metoo and identity politics, it can no longer be ignored. Drawing on the work of Claire Dederer and Gisèle Sapiro, I propose a middle ground between aesthetic autonomy and moral condemnation. To exemplify the stakes involved, I recount a personal reading experience of V. S. Naipaul’s novel The Enigma of Arrival, in which biographical knowledge about the author—including his problematic behaviour and the erasure of his wife from the narrative—significantly affected my interpretation. Inspired by Dederer, I outline an “aestetico-moral calculator” that measure parameters such as intensity, monstrosity, and the cultural significance of the interference between life and work in the case of problematic authors. The article argues that readers and scholars must “stay with the trouble”—that is, embrace the complexity of loving works created by problematic individuals—and insists that affect and personal investment are central to literary understanding. The biographical method is thus reformulated as a reflexive practice that accommodates both love and critique—and which is as much about the reader as “the man behind the work”.