Calderonia is an experiment in biography through a blog. It tells the story of George and Kittie Calderon’s lives from 30 July 1914 to 30 July 1915 from day to day as it happened, but exactly 100 years afterwards. It therefore feels like a biography in real time. When no facts were known for a particular day, the author posted on subjects ranging from the Edwardians, recently published biographies and his own problems as a biographer, to translating Chekhov and the Commemoration of World War I.
The blog-biography can be accessed in various ways. To read it from the beginning, go to the top of the column on the right and click the appropriate link. You can then read forward in time by clicking the link at the end of each post. If you wish to start at a particular month, scroll down the column on the right to Archive at the bottom. Posts can also be selected through Search Calderonia and the Tags on the right. An update on the complete biography of George Calderon always follows this introduction.
Note: if you were inadvertently unsubscribed when Calderonia changed its address, you may re-subscribe at the top of the column on the right.
19/5/16. Putting them all together, the number of themes that my consultants (see previous post below) feel should be addressed in my Introduction is considerable; impractically so. I have spent some time, therefore, working out the overlap and identifying what they see as the core substance that must go in. I have completely recast the Introduction in my head, written what I think is a strong beginning, and words are beginning to present themselves for the rest. But I keep rearranging the themes mentally, dipping into the introductions of brilliant recent biographies, pursuing all kinds of ideas. I am determined to keep an open mind about this for a week or two longer. I am in no hurry with it, already have my doubts about the ‘strong beginning’, and know I shall have to let the new Introduction lie for a month or so after I have finished it… Perhaps it will then go the way of the first two drafts. But surely it will be an improvement on them?
It would be reasonable to ask why I don’t just write what I want to write. The answer is in what I said in my last post about things that ‘bug’ the writer rather than address and interest the reader. Examples of the former in my case would be (a) my obsession with all the people who over the years have said to me ‘George Calderon? Never heard of him!’ and frankly told me I was wasting my time, (b) the delicate question of the ‘tourbillions of time’ in my biography, i.e. the non-linear way I am telling it, and (c) the fact that it is a biography of Kittie and the whole Calderon set as well as principally of George.
I’m encouraged that several of my consultants — all of whom have read at least one chapter — feel I do have to tackle (a). None of them has mentioned (b) and (c). But I must at least touch on (b) and (c) in the Introduction, as they are aspects that readers need warning about; they are risks that I have taken in the book.
In that connection, I am encouraged by something that Ruth Scurr wrote in The Guardian on 6 February:
I decided to write Aubrey’s life in the form of a first-person diary. For a long time I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing in case they thought I had gone mad. I think good books result from taking risks. My advice to younger women is to write only about what most interests you, and if an agent or publisher tries to persuade you to write a safe book on a suitable topic, run as fast as you can from that poisoned apple.
Absolutely true, in my opinion, and I find my efforts strangely re-energised by thinking of myself as a ‘younger woman writer’!
Related
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
George Calderon, 1912
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Captain of the 11
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
George Calderon c.1901
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Watch this Space
Calderonia is an experiment in biography through a blog. It tells the story of George and Kittie Calderon’s lives from 30 July 1914 to 30 July 1915 from day to day as it happened, but exactly 100 years afterwards. It therefore feels like a biography in real time. When no facts were known for a particular day, the author posted on subjects ranging from the Edwardians, recently published biographies and his own problems as a biographer, to translating Chekhov and the Commemoration of World War I.
The blog-biography can be accessed in various ways. To read it from the beginning, go to the top of the column on the right and click the appropriate link. You can then read forward in time by clicking the link at the end of each post. If you wish to start at a particular month, scroll down the column on the right to Archive at the bottom. Posts can also be selected through Search Calderonia and the Tags on the right. An update on the complete biography of George Calderon always follows this introduction.
Note: if you were inadvertently unsubscribed when Calderonia changed its address, you may re-subscribe at the top of the column on the right.
19/5/16. Putting them all together, the number of themes that my consultants (see previous post below) feel should be addressed in my Introduction is considerable; impractically so. I have spent some time, therefore, working out the overlap and identifying what they see as the core substance that must go in. I have completely recast the Introduction in my head, written what I think is a strong beginning, and words are beginning to present themselves for the rest. But I keep rearranging the themes mentally, dipping into the introductions of brilliant recent biographies, pursuing all kinds of ideas. I am determined to keep an open mind about this for a week or two longer. I am in no hurry with it, already have my doubts about the ‘strong beginning’, and know I shall have to let the new Introduction lie for a month or so after I have finished it… Perhaps it will then go the way of the first two drafts. But surely it will be an improvement on them?
It would be reasonable to ask why I don’t just write what I want to write. The answer is in what I said in my last post about things that ‘bug’ the writer rather than address and interest the reader. Examples of the former in my case would be (a) my obsession with all the people who over the years have said to me ‘George Calderon? Never heard of him!’ and frankly told me I was wasting my time, (b) the delicate question of the ‘tourbillions of time’ in my biography, i.e. the non-linear way I am telling it, and (c) the fact that it is a biography of Kittie and the whole Calderon set as well as principally of George.
I’m encouraged that several of my consultants — all of whom have read at least one chapter — feel I do have to tackle (a). None of them has mentioned (b) and (c). But I must at least touch on (b) and (c) in the Introduction, as they are aspects that readers need warning about; they are risks that I have taken in the book.
In that connection, I am encouraged by something that Ruth Scurr wrote in The Guardian on 6 February:
Absolutely true, in my opinion, and I find my efforts strangely re-energised by thinking of myself as a ‘younger woman writer’!
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