Books September 1997
On The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography by A. J. A. Symons
In 1925, A. J. A. Symons came across a peculiar novel called Hadrian the Seventh and, transfixed by the tale, determined to learn everything he could about its even stranger author. He finally published his findings nine years later as The Quest for Corvo, a singular book now handsomely reissued.
Modestly subtitled An Experiment in Biography, The Quest for Corvo still stands as one of the genres most notableif also quirkiesttriumphs. The experiment to which Symons alluded had several parts. First, he set out to reconstruct, largely by inquiring letters, the wretched life of a shadowy, already half-forgotten man who had died twelve years earlier, leaving few fingerprints. Second, he decided that, far from obliterating the traces of his sleuthwork, the hunt itselfalong with its dead ends and frustrationswas to be woven into the narrative. Third, and perhaps trickiest of...
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