National Book Critics Circle finalists / Biography & Memoir

One of the enduring mysteries in literary history is how a bright but unsophisticated Stratford lad became the supreme writer in the English language. Greenblatt explains this extraordinary phenomenon with skillful argument and gracefully supple style. Each chapter pursues myriad paper trails - historical accounts by many hands; religious, legal, and literary documents; and official pronouncements. Perhaps Greenblatt's most cogent explanation for how Shakespeare became Shakespeare is his examination of what the dramatist learned from writing "Hamlet," "Othello," "King Lear," and "Macbeth" between 1600 and 1606. Shakespeare was always leery of easy explanations for human behavior. By a device of opacity that Greenblatt calls "the radical excision of motivation," Will learned to represent inwardness, the inner life of his heroes. What is endearing about Greenblatt's examination is his obvious affection for his subject. And a study as fine as this one can only encourage more devotion. (Full review Oct. 19)

Though she lived just 40 years - 19 of them in prison - Mary Queen of Scots is one of the most studied figures in the pantheon of royals. Until now, Antonia Fraser's celebrated 1969 biography has been the standard text. But in his fabulously readable account, Cambridge historian John Guy returns to Mary's letters and crafts a biography wiped free of mythologizing and shot through with new interpretations. Here, Mary Queen of Scots rises up as a woman of conflicting impulses. She was a Scottish patriot, yet she grew up in France. She reportedly led with her heart but conducted her affairs with the calculation of a master chess player. Born six days before the death of her father, James V of Scotland, she was already a hot potato in power plays involving France, England, and Scotland in the mid-1500s. From day one, Mary had her hands full with plotters determined to orchestrate her downfall. Guy has dredged up scores of letters, essentially giving readers a paper trail of the machinations that surrounded Mary, who was eventually beheaded on Elizabeth's orders in 1587. Guy never lets us doubt where his sympathies lie: Mary is alternately "masterful" and "beguiling," while her nemesis is "a spider." By John Freeman

The first thing said about the 20th-century painter Willem de Kooning at the start of this massive biography is that he was "stubborn." No one - except himself - was allowed to interfere with his concentration. He endured years of "painter's block" and actual poverty, but he never gave up. His hard-won success - well after World War II - was the fruit of a national change of attitude that his art had helped foster. Movement, tension, doubt, and a reckless, daring belief in the need to disrupt good taste or fashion were integral to the vitality of the very paint he applied. He found ways of keeping paintings wet and fluid because, he felt, once a painting dried, it would be dead. That attitude made it extraordinary difficult for him to determine when a painting was finished. The authors of this compellingly written biography characterize his late paintings as "airborne," differentiated from earlier phases when his elements were earth or water. Did these final works signify a loss of vitality or a new, lighthearted tranquility? De Kooning's relish of ambiguity lives on. He was never an artist who could be pinned down. (Full review Dec. 7)

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