Because Shark Attacks ARE Fascinating

I just caught from last week in The New York Observer a book review of Meryle Secrest’s Shoot The Widow: Adventures Of A Biographer In Search Of Her Subject. Secrest has published biographies on Frank Lloyd Wright, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Richard Rodgers, Joseph Duveen, and Salvador Dali, among others. Which got me thinking, if I were to write a biography about someone, who would it be?

So, here now, in no particular order and without any concern as to whether biographies already exist about them, my Top Five Pretty Darned Interesting (But Not The Most Interesting Because I Wouldn’t Disclose On The Internet My Ideas For The Most Interesting) Subjects For A Biography:

1. Rodney Fox, Australian “miracle survivor of one of the world’s worst shark attacks”
2. Robbie Robertson
3. Angelina Jolie
4. Mary Phelps Jacob, New York socialite and recipient of the first patent in 1903 for a brassiere
5. Antoni Gaudí, Spanish architect best known for his unfinished masterpiece Sagrada Família in Barcelona

Who would you write about if you were to write a biography?

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