The nineteenth-century French critic Sainte-Beuve believed that to understand a writer it was necessary to know as much as possible about the exterior man, the details of his life. It is a beguiling  method, using the man to illuminate the work. It might ‘seem:unassailable. But Proust is able very convincingly to pick it apart.This method of Sainte-Beuve, Proust writes, "ignores what a very slight degree of self-acquaintance teaches us: that a book is the product of a different self from the self we manifest in our habits, in our social life, in our vices...Those words of Proust should be? with us whenever we are reading the biography of a writer or the. biography. of anyone who depends on what can be called: inspiration. All the details of the life and the quirks and friendships:can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain.:No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us:there. The biography of a writer - or even the autobiography- will:always have this incompleteness.