Previous three posts in this series.
Until some interloper writes an unauthorized biography — until someone is possessed by the specifically fannish kind of hatred that drives a biographer to round up every disgruntled former student, dismissive ex, pissed-off landlord, disgusted former roommate, or wronged tenant of a great writer, and issue the sort of book where you quote one of their most beautiful sentences and then say something like “Things weren’t so euphonious at home, where Marilynne’s bad habit of clipping her toenails in the bathtub resulted in visits from several Iowa City plumbers, one of whom describes her as ‘real high-maintenance’ and ‘a total pain in the ass’” — there’s only so much we can know about our greatest writer’s personal life.