Biographers of Apple icon faced tough Jobs
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GT: What was the greatest difficulty you faced during the writing of the book?
Simon: Jobs becomes very unhappy if anyone who has ever known him or worked for him talks to a writer. And he can be very strong in his language with anyone who does this. For an Apple employee, it can mean instant firing. Many, many of the people who have worked closely with Steve are afraid of getting him angry, and will not agree to be interviewed.
But in a way, this adds a fun element to the writing: It becomes a game of convincing people to talk. Obviously, if no one was willing to talk, the books would be very short, so obviously I and my coauthors have been successful.
We are all curious about the lives of famous people. When a person becomes famous, he or she needs to accept that they will be written about. A few famous writers and artists have been able to hide from writers and the public, but most have to put up with magazine articles, newspaper articles, television reports, and, today, blogs and Twitter. Famous people may not like being exposed in this way but it is part of the price of being famous.
GT: There have been scandals involving inaccurate or false claims in Chinese biographies. Does this occur in the US?
Simon: It can become a national scandal when an autobiography or memoir is published that turns out to have false information. The problem becomes difficult when a biography is written about a living person who then says that some of the statements are untrue. Of course the person will be unhappy that secrets have been revealed.
But it's almost unheard of for a person to sue a biographer claiming that statements are untrue. Biographers in general try very hard to get to the truth, and established writers make a great effort to be sure that the facts in their books are correct.
If an important biography has incorrect information, the newspaper and magazine book reviewers would be quick to point this out, destroying the chance for the book to sell well. Newspapers, magazines and television reports can make it very uncomfortable for any writer exposed for not being truthful.
As a result, this rarely happens in any significant way.
Unfortunately, the same is not always true of books about political figures. Writers about politics are too often concerned with convincing readers of their own viewpoint. These authors often write about people with opposite beliefs, and try to build a case that proves the person they are writing about is misguided or even in some way evil.
But with this one exception, I would say that people have high confidence in the accuracy of biographies.
GT: Is it ever possible to write a completely accurate and objective biogra-phy?
Simon: To be absolutely correct about every single fact can be difficult. Even with the best intentions, people remember an event differently.
Memories fail. An act by the subject of the biography may have been witnessed by some people who saw it as noble or brilliant, and others who saw it as mistaken or even dangerous.
On a grand scale, none of us is perfect; we all have some admirable qualities and some that we are less proud of. A biographer tries very hard to be accurate and truthful, yet may see his subject as admirable and virtuous, while another biographer, just as dedicated, may see the same person as a scoundrel.
In iCon, my coauthor and I wrote about Steve Jobs as a brilliant innovator who has greatly changed many things about the way we communicate and exchange information, yet we needed to include plenty of items that show him to be in ways to be a person who deals harshly with his employees, and who has committed some extremely.
