Troubles of Biographers: V is for Vocal Von Trapps

These final posts on the A-Z List 5 will tackle, "What is a biography?"

Trouble: Is a biography a lesson?

My subject was, at first, Maria von Trapp, and she did write an autobiography. Surprisingly, there aren't that many biographies of Maria alone. I rather suspect that the movie speaks for itself.

There are far more books about the family. I ended up reading a children's book:

Metten, Patricia. The Power of Family: Featuring the Story of the Trapp Family. Eagle Systems, 1984.

I checked the book (and the movie) against a biography of the movie:

Santopietro, Tom. The Sound of Music Story: How a Beguiling Young Novice, a Handsome Austrian Captain, and Ten Singing von Trapp Children Inspired the Most Beloved Film of All Time. St. Martin's Press, 2015.

I came to the conclusion, as I often do, that the "mistakes" or "changes" or "poetic license" made by the movie were not nearly as extreme as the mythology purports. Maria was by all accounts far more energetic and robust even than the lively and willowy Julie Andrews. But a core toughness manifests in both cases. The marriage was less a romance at first than a mutually beneficial contract. But romance did follow. The marriage was impressively successful. The family wasn't chased out of Austria by Nazis but  got awfully close. The captain and the children were rapidly gaining enemies and rebukes for refusing to sing the new anthem and for making far more pointed anti-Nazi statements than they do in the movie. 

Both books mention Father Wasner who temporarily lived with the von Trapps in Austria and who, together with Maria, was largely responsible for the children's musical training. Father Wasner and Maria were ambitious soul mates. The movie leaves him out. Yet he doesn't appear to have minded.

One of the most enduring myths is that Maria was cheated out of the movie rights, meaning the musical movie's rights. This is incorrect. She did more or less give away her movie rights to Wolfgang Reinhardt for $9,000 (no royalties). The musical rights were a different story. Lindsay and Crouse, who started the process, approached Maria separately for those rights and then bought the movie rights from the Germans. The second time around, the von Trapps did get royalties (and still do).

All things considered, although the von Trapp family wasn't rich when they arrived in America--and did spend some years in Vermont camping out when they were not on the road--they didn't exactly end up poor either. 

I gleaned most of the above details from both books. So why would I question if they are biographies?

The second doesn't purport to be. The first two chapters cover the von Trapps but the focus is on the movie. 

The first book ostensibly is. 

I loathed it. 

No offense to the writer (in fairness, some of my revulsion could come from the pictures), the book made me want to claw out my heart and shed my skin. It was reasonably accurate but unbelievably cloying.

SEE HOW IMPORTANT FAMILY IS! SEE HOW GOOD THE VON TRAPPS WERE TO EACH OTHER! SEE HOW SWEET AND FAMILY-ORIENTED THEY WERE! 

I got through the book, set it down, and nearly spit up. 

Don't get me wrong--I love the movie. I love the movie Bread & Tulips where a mother and son find and form a family of their own with fellow oddballs in Venice. I love Bones & Booth from Bones. Yay, family! 

But treacle is not my style. And ignoring individual differences with a tale of FAMILY BELONGING is not, to my mind, a biography. Streamlining--or rather, flattening--the quirks and oddities of people, experiences, hardships, and triumphs is an agenda, not a complex story of complex individuals.

So I will tentatively claim that a biography is not a message or lesson.