David Maraniss, biograaf van onder andere Barak Obama, spreekt zich in een interview met Bowdoin College uit over de kunst van de biografie in het internettijdperk. Wikipedia en social media zijn van grote invloed op non-fictie, in goede en kwade zin. Hoe heeft het internet de biografie veranderd?
“First of all, nothing was online, for better or for worse. As I said, you get a lot of misinformation online, but you get a lot of archival documentary information that is online now that’s invaluable. So rather than spending three weeks going to a library and going through old clips, you can find a lot of that online in old newspaper articles. The level of misinformation has increased because of the Internet, so you can go down more rabbit holes if you’re not careful now. But I think the basic process for me is the same. I will say one difference, when I started with that Clinton book I organized it on index cards. I had shoeboxes full of thousands of index cards, and now it’s all organized online.”
Het hele interview is hier na te lezen.
