Biography: Life after Death

In active pursuit of Johnson, the biography focuses on the present with Boswell often admitting his own unreliability, unable to remember important statements or moments with Johnson. The life of a subject not only lives on but in a biography also changes when it identifies the contradictions, surprises, and often failures of an individual. The loss of life or beauty creates either despondency or rebellion, Freud observed. Biography is a form of rebellion which records at the same time it reveals the life of its subject. A biography recreates a life, turning the past into a narrative present and possibly a future. Biography is a form of rebellion which records at the same time it reveals the life of its subject. In its rewriting and reanimating of lives lost, biography prevents erasure and destruction; it keeps the reader from the abyss.