Jeffrey Myers is a well-respected biographer who has written on a variety of poets, novelists, and other writers, but this is a classic example of an author making his materials fit his thesis. While this is a good read, Myers' work is shoddy on scholarship. I've read enough of the poetry and secondary sources on both Berryman and Lowell to know that this is a disservice to both of them and their work. The section on Randall Jarrell and Theodore Roethke I can say less about.
Manic Power: Robert Lowell and His Circle has an obvious debt to Nietzsche's Dionysian/Apollonian paradigm. By claiming that these writers "suffer" for their art, he discounts the importance and influence of mental illness, alcoholism, and other factors like family history. A fascinating case study, but I can't imagine that serious scholars of these poets would give his thesis much credence. It is a considerable critical leap.
A better work covering similar ground is Bruce Bawer's The Middle Generation: The Lives and Poetry of Delmore Schwartz, Randall Jarrell, John Berryman, and Robert Lowell.
Czar
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