And so it Goes…
There are two observations that are worth making in conclusion to the foregoing. The first is that The Guardian article was randomly selected for review merely because its publication was contemporaneous with the initiation of this post.
The second observation is that if The Guardian article is read after considering the foregoing points – don’t stop there. When superfluous and gratuitous statements are offered as fact, do a gut check on the veracity of the claim. A good example is The Guardian reference to a love affair between Lee and Picasso. Where is the evidence? There are few lives that have been examined more closely than Picasso, yet no biographer or commentator has suggested a love affair between Picasso and Lee prior to 1985.
A sharp line must be drawn between pre-1985 source material and the 1985 publication of Lives and its prodigy. Take a look at The Guardian article again and see what you think of the baubles that have been dangled after reading the foregoing. If you choose, you may google articles published about Lee over the last few decades and you will observe writer after writer stepping into the footprints made by Lives attracted by the shiny things in the road ahead. A brief update since the initiation of this post reveals an article in Vogue itself dated October 28th, 2022, following the same storylines, like a greyhound chasing a mechanical rabbit around a racetrack. The phenomenal absence of challenge is not limited to newspapers and magazines. It is also not found in books, movies, documentaries, museum exhibitions, fictional novels, academic dissertations, art and literary reviews…. and so it goes.