In the Jan. 21 issue, there was an article on the filmmaker Donnersmark's biopic of the artist Gerhard Richter. It quotes Donnersmark saying, "There's a German word, übergriffig, which means reaching into a space that isn't really yours. You know how some people just do not respect your space? It's usually people whose space was violated in a meaningful way. They don't recognize the difference between me and you, and just go right into your soul."
He was saying it about Richter but, ironically, Richter could say the same about him.
The author, Dana Goodyear, mused later on that "Charting the underpinnings of one's own creative impulses is a murky, perhaps counterproductive, business. That's what interpreters--journalists, biographers, filmmakers, shrinks--are for." As interpreters, we think we are doing a service, but are we?