An exception to most rules

Waiting for the second volume of a good biography is a painful process. I feel very sorry for anyone who read Brian McGuinness’s excellent Young Ludwig (part one of the life of Wittgenstein) when it was published in 1988. The philosopher’s exciting story broke off in 1921 and fans have been left dangling ever since in an 18-year state of suspended expectation of a sequel. As far as I know Dr McGuinness is alive and kicking and still regarded as the world’s greatest expert on Wittgenstein, but too much time has passed and slowly we must adjust our sights to the sordid possibility that there may never be a second volume. Perhaps that is marginally better than what happened in the case of Martin Stannard who, in the six years between the publication of his two volumes of Evelyn Waugh, developed a mysterious hatred for his subject that became so pathological that by the end of his second tome (No Abiding City, 1992), the voice of Waugh was scarcely audible above the grating clamour of Stannard’s private insecurities.