Following allegations by Elon Musk’s estranged daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson that Musk’s authorized biographer engaged in unethical behavior, memoirist Kelly McMasters and biographer Iris Jamahl Dunkle join co-hosts VV Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss the ethics of biography. Dunkle, the author of Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babbtalks about using archives to restore the story of Babb, the writer whose notes John Steinbeck used for research Fruits of Wrath, and how women’s lives are often portrayed incorrectly or incompletely. McMasters, a memoirist whose latest book The farewell season: A memory profiles many people close to her, talks about the impossibility of writing honestly about her life without including her children, the two people she spends most of her time with. Dunkle and McMasters discuss Wilson’s accusations against Walter Isaacson, who she says did not ask her directly for comment on his recent book about her father, even though his book largely relates to her life. The group also discusses recent revelations that Alice Munro did not act when she learned that her second husband had abused her daughter, and how authorized biographies often omit the full truth. Dunkle and McMasters read from her works.
Watch video excerpts from our interviews on Lit Hub’s Virtual Book Channel, Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube channel, and our website. This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.
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From the episode:
Whitney Terrell: We’ve all read, and many others, about Vivian Jenna Wilson, Elon Musk’s estranged daughter. She doesn’t want to be associated with him, as do many others… like me, for example, but he’s not the only person she’s angry with. She recently posted – this is the literary side of the matter – a series of messages about Musk’s biographer, Walter Isaacson, who she believes behaved unethically when writing about her. She says Isaacson used her first name and said that when he tried to reach her, he deliberately failed because “you knew what approach you were aiming for and that my statement would have messed up your pretty little portrayal of an incorrigible human being.” What should Isaacson, Elon Musk’s authorized biographer, have done? Called you at the end of researching the book? At the beginning? What are the ethics here? Iris, let’s start with you.
Iris Jamahl Dark: Well, there is a lot of ethics involved in this kind of thing, because on the one hand a woman’s voice is being suppressed, and on the other hand a male figure is being idolized.
It’s very similar to what happened with Jack London. I wrote a biography of Jack London’s wife, and all the biographers put him on a pedestal, and nobody really looked at his wife. They couldn’t talk to her because she was dead. That’s the difference in writing about dead people, but they didn’t delve into her voice, her diaries, her letters, and so they didn’t find out that she was actually a major part of the publishing machine that was Jack London. She actually helped write his books and led them on the adventures that they had throughout their lives.
And that’s how biographies have typically been written in the past. It’s been, “This is the story I’m going to tell over and over again. And no matter what the evidence says, I’m sticking to this story.” In my opinion, that’s completely wrong because it limits it to a single narrative and silences the people whose stories we need to hear and help us understand that that single narrative is actually false in most cases.
WEIGHT: I agree, but I was also trying to explain this to my son last night at dinner, who I’m dropping off at college. We were talking about this topic and he said, “Why would Isaacson do this?” And I said, “Well, if he doesn’t have access to Musk, he doesn’t have a biography.” He’s motivated by the fact that he has to write a biography about a famous guy who gives him access, and if he upsets Musk with the way he portrays him, Musk will deny him that access. And Isaacson isn’t exactly making a whole lot of money off this book. Am I wrong?
IJD: No, you’re absolutely right. I mean, that’s the catch-22 when you’re writing a biography about a living person who controls their story. I think that really makes it almost impossible to tell an unbiased story because you have that influence unless you rely on other people in that life. And in most cases, especially with a controversial figure like Musk, he has so much money that he can control the story no matter what.
WEIGHT: Kelly, you nodded. Was there anything else you wanted to add?
Kelly McMasters: I just find it interesting, the disconnect between the reader’s interpretation of what a biography is or should be and the author’s. I think the same is true of memoirs. But when it comes to biographies, I’m not a biographer, mainly because of all these thorny issues. I love research, I love the archives, but it’s a different kind of obligation to the reader. And I think that’s the difference, right? An author has to decide who they’re primarily obliged to: the reader or their subject.
(…)
VV Ganeshanthan: I want to change a little. Kelly, you mentioned earlier that there are reasons why you don’t write biographies. You are a memoirist and I was very interested in your argument. I read your LitHub Essay on the ethics of writing about family, and you were really compelling when you wrote about the importance and necessity of, in your case, including your children in your work, and how family ties make writing about other people difficult? For example, what if Musk wrote about Vivian Jenna Wilson? I mean, the horrible thing about that idea is…
KM: Wow. That never occurred to me. I don’t think he could keep it up…
WEIGHT: Isn’t it more likely that Vivian Jenna Wilson is writing a memoir? I mean, that was the pattern with Salinger, who I mentioned earlier – his daughter wrote a book about him.
VVG: Yeah, I mean, if you look at the whole thing, she’s a very interesting writer. She’s posted on threads about not using X for obvious reasons, and she’s got quite a voice.
WEIGHT: She’ll get a huge advance and write a book. I hope so.
VVG: I tried to ask the most horrific version of the question, but yeah, let’s stick with this more reasonable one: What if Vivian Jenna Wilson wrote her memoirs?
KM: Well, I would hope that it’s about Vivian and not Musk, right? I think that’s the power of memoir, that you can create your own and control your own narrative, your own point of view, your own story. And I think there’s a tension there.
I like what Iris said about digging through the archives. Responsibility, right? The idea that there’s so much out there to find, right? So it’s about: what can I include? But there’s also a tension against: what do I leave out? And I think both biographies and memoirs ask that question.
I was at a literary festival this weekend and someone came up to me and looked at my book and said, “Oh, memoir. You look too young to be writing a memoir.” And I said, “Actually, this is my second one.” And she just thought that was hilarious, right? I think there’s a concept and a misunderstanding about what the point of memoir is. It’s very different from a biography. It’s not cradle to grave, and even a biography isn’t cradle to grave, is it?
The idea that what we leave out is as difficult a decision as what we include, but if you’re going to include something, you have to do that for my purposes… I think you have to include it fully, and then the responsibility lies in that. So I decided to leave my children on the pages. Then I had to grapple with how to do that responsibly. They’re the two people who mean the most to me in the world. And they’re also the two people I spend the most time with. So a biography about me would be completely disingenuous if they were missing.
My book is very much about becoming a mother, isn’t it? I became a mother biologically, but in my heart I didn’t become the mother I am today, whatever the word means to me, until much later. And that was a big part of the book. What had to happen. I had to make the right decision, to leave my family. I had to leave before I could step into and take on the role of a mother.
They were very young at the time, which I think puts an even greater responsibility on me in terms of the craft. So it’s not just about ethics, it’s about the craft, right? I think those are two different questions. Sometimes I’d write a draft and it wouldn’t feel right. Something wasn’t right, and I’d realize, oh, I’m embodying their point of view, and I don’t want that. I use my narrator as a vehicle and all the observations so I can observe them, but I’ll never know what they were really thinking, what was in their hearts and minds. I wanted that truth, that honesty. I also hope that maybe one of them will write their own memoir. That’s my story. That’s not their story. And I think that’s what I mean by that, that if Vivian writes a memoir, and I hope she does, my hope would be that it would be her story, not her story just in terms of who Musk is compared to her.
Transcribed by Otter.ai. Condensed and edited by Keillan Doyle. Photo by Iris Jamahl Dunkle by Theresa Sawyer. Photo by Kelly McMasters by Sylvie Rosokoff.
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Iris Jamahl Dark
Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb • West: Fire: Archive • Charmian Kittredge London: Pioneer, Author, Adventurer • Find lost voices | Substack
Kelly McMasters
The farewell season: A memory • Welcome to Shirley: Memories from a Nuclear City • This Is the Place: Women write about home •“The Ethics of Writing Difficult Things in Family Memoirs”, Literary Hub
More:
Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson • “Musk’s daughter attacks her father’s biographer: ‘You threw me to the wolves’” by Dan Ladden-Hall | Daily Beast • J.D. Salinger • Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck • “What do we know now about Alice Munro?” by Contance Grady | Vox • The Beautiful Noise • The Hyacinth Girl: TS Eliot’s Hidden Muse by Lyndall Gordon • Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclaim by Emily Van Duyne • Jackson Pollock • “What Virginia Woolf’s ‘Dreadnought Hoax’ Tells Us About Ourselves” by Danell Jones | January 25, 2024 | Literary Center • Fiction/Non/Fiction, Season 6, Episode 19: “The Lives of Wives: Carmela Ciuraru on marriage, writing and equality”
