Gould, a Village bohemian and self-proclaimed genius, was Mitchell's most enigmatic subject: an "ancient, spectral figure;" "a banished man".
In "Howard Hughes: The Biography of a Texas Billionaire" (Random House; revised edition, 1972), he leavened his enigmatic subject's life with a dose of pity.
The contrast between these prologues gives a sense of the different tones of these two companion volumes, or rather the different tones that Shapiro discerns in the life and mood of his enigmatic subject.
The author of a stirring fiction trilogy about the Haitian revolution, Bell has also written an empathetic biography of its rebel leader, Toussaint L'Ouverture, another contradictory and enigmatic subject of Napoleonic bent.
The play and the transcripts and the tapes all sat in a drawer in Mr. Wright's New York apartment for five years while he concentrated on other projects, including his play "Quills," which opened Off Broadway in late 1995 and examined the life of another enigmatic subject, the Marquis de Sade.
Two of the Mighty Dead have been brought back to life in exemplary fashion: Shakespeare in Lois Potter's The Life of William Shakespeare: A Critical Biography (John Wiley), which very cleverly uses expert theatre-knowledge as a way of making her enigmatic subject seem plausibly substantial; and Keats in Nicholas Roe's John Keats: A New Life (Yale), which puts the poet properly in his place.
Friends and acquaintances of Monroe's are also "played" by familiar movie faces — Adrien Brody is Truman Capote David Strathairnn is Arthur Miller — so that the film becomes a heady cocktail of journalistic rigor and show business flair, a blend that seems, in the end, just right for its blazingly famous, endlessly enigmatic subject.
It truly lays the perfect foundation for a video focusing solely on such an enigmatic subject.
It's a tricky and enigmatic subject that neuroscience, art, psychology, philosophy, folklore, and religion all attempt to grapple with.
Los Angeles-based artist Rachel Lord has chosen to work in the ambiguous tones of gray for her latest show Safeworld, on at The Composing Rooms, Berlin, with the colors reflecting the enigmatic subject matter that the images explore. .
