Tuesday, March 11, 2008

A few things about Doctored Bios

Has anyone ever had a bio doctored/edited by a magazine? As in, added to?

I offer the below as a sample:

Ryan Daley is a writer after the hearts of those of us who aren’t particularly interested in stuffy poetry and rigid form. He creates his own languages and forces us to read between the lines. Ryan is a crabby hermit who lives in a sometimes version of Florida, 7.0, which seems to be prone to crashes around/during Presidential Elections. He also lives in what is otherwise known as a stupor, in Providence, Rhode Island. When we last caught up with the writer he had this to say, "Writing is a god to me. My only begotten sin. I am a four letter word." After relaying this quote in graphically mouthed smoke signals from his now defunct habit involving an on again off again usage of Camel Lights, he retreated to the other side of the tinted windows of his running car, and ran.

Now, most of my bios appearing online are "silly" yet true. They focus on tidbits of things that I find fascinating --believing that these morsels reveal more than hair color, height, books I like, etc-- and some even attempt to edge into literary territory themselves. But of the above, two sentences were added that I didn't write. I don't know how I feel about this, even after the two years since this particular bio appeared.

I would probably never write, "Ryan Daley is a writer after the hearts of those of us who aren’t particularly interested in stuffy poetry and rigid form. He creates his own languages and forces us to read between the lines." And with good reasons: I don't claim to speak for anyone, much less those who aren't interested in "stuffy poetry and rigid form," and I don't know what it means to be a writer "after the hearts of those of us who." I don't follow hearts n' minds. I don't know what I follow.

Let's beg it a bit: what is stuffy? What is rigid? I mean, what are the characteristics of each, and whose definition are we going to use?

But I'm also not interested in forcing anyone to read between the lines. I want the lines. The space between the lines is space. It's still the lines you should be focusing on. Geesh.

So, what to do? In this case, and because that bio was published "long ago," there's not much I want to do. But in general...doctored bios...what say you?

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