Literary biography is a cruel genre. The authors of these books—by which I mean not just biographies about literary figures but also those that aspire to writerly excellence—have been described by the writer Janet Malcolm as “professional burglars.” After rifling through a person’s affairs, they must conjure inside their pages a living, breathing human being—and then, inevitably, they’ll have to close the coffin on their resurrected subject. But I like to think the “literary” element can temper the sting of these dastardly deeds, insofar as the author is tasked with perpetrating them in the most humane way possible: with the appropriate amount of reverence, style, and, yes, love. This is, at least, what I tried to do in my own literary biography, Baldwin: A Love Story, about James Baldwin’s life and relationships. I was inspired by other biographers, including the great Robert Caro, who has immortalized Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert Moses. I followed the essential dictums from his memoir, Working (turn every page, for example, and visit every setting possible)—but I was perhaps guided …