The book, which doesn't credit a co-writer, is essentially a collection of lyrics, liberally footnoted and accompanied by biographical anecdotes and observations.
Though the ideas it explains are often complicated, the explanations it offers are limpidly clear, sparkling with biographical anecdote and counter-canonical observations, entirely free of those deserts of abstraction unrelieved by example often found in works of cultural theory.
The data are collected through a combination of direct and indirect means: unstructured observation while obtaining the biographical and social information, focused questions about current symptoms, and formalised psychological tests.
In addition to listing biographical and physical particulars, Mr. Darby frequently offered observations on the motives, attitudes and states of mind of activists with whom he dealt.
These free listing structured interviews were complemented with biographical interviews as well as with participant observation.
The observer effect distorts the biographical picture, too.
The biographical files were censored at the end of the observation period on January 1 , 2012
Organized by biographical milestones and itineraries, the novel encyclopedically recapitulates Casement's observations of "indescribable cruelties" (though Vargas Llosa describes them quite effectively) on two continents, brought about by men "driven by greed and base instincts in a lawless world".
Lumpe supplied bits of biographical information culled from the Concert Artist Web site and added his own observations.
In the ensuing trial, Asturias served as a legal secretary and so, as Gregory Rabassa's biographical sketch points out, he had the opportunity to base his own fictional leader the President on his observations of the disgraced Guatemalan dictator.
