Tough Guy
The Life of Norman Mailer
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- US$18.99
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The first biography to examine Mailer's life as a twisted lens, offering a unique insight into the history of America from the end of World War II to the election of Barack Obama.
Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, firstly in 1969 for The Armies of the Night and again in 1980 for The Executioner's Song, Norman Mailer's life comes as close as is possible to being the Great American Novel: beyond reason, inexplicable, wonderfully grotesque and addictive.
The Naked and the Dead was acclaimed not so much for its intrinsic qualities but rather because it launched a brutally realistic sub-genre of military fiction – Catch 22 and MASH would not exist without it. Richard Bradford combs through Mailer's personal letters – to lovers and editors – which appear to be a rehearsal for his career as a shifty literary narcissist, and which shape the characters of one of the most widely celebrated World War II novels.
Bradford strikes again with a merciless biography in which diary entries, journal extracts and newspaper columns set the tone of this study of a controversial figure. From friendships with contemporaries such as James Baldwin, failed correspondences with Hemingway and the Kennedys, to terrible – but justified – criticism of his work by William Faulkner and Eleanor Roosevelt, this book gives a unique, snappy and convincing perspective of Mailer's ferocious personality and writings.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bradford (Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires: The Life of Patricia Highsmith), research professor in English at Ulster University, tackles the work and life of novelist Norman Mailer in this brisk but thin biography. Bradford writes that Mailer's life "comes as close as is possible to being the Great American Novel; beyond reason, inexplicable, wonderfully grotesque and addictive." Few of those descriptors play out, however, as Bradford charts Mailer's life from his boyhood in late 1920s Brooklyn and his matriculation at Harvard, where he discovered literature and began to publish. Mailer was propelled to stardom upon the publication of his first novel, The Naked and the Dead, which was based on his own experiences in the military during WWII and employed what became his signature style of "ghoulish naturalism." A string of less successful writing followed, and violent encounters marked Mailer's personal life, including him stabbing and almost murdering his second wife, Adele, at a party and breaking the jaw of an actor who "dared to question" his film's themes. While Bradford offers a solid sense that Mailer could be unpleasant, he never quite digs into how, despite his wildly uneven output and appalling personal behavior, so many people championed him. There is no shortage of books on Mailer, and this one unfortunately doesn't bring much new to the table.
