Norman Mailer: A Double Life [Nov 07, 2013] Lennon, J. Michael - Hardcover

J Michael Lennon,J. Michael Lennon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 184737672X ISBN 13: 9781847376725

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2013

Synopsis

HardCover. Pub Date :2013-11-07 Pages: 960 Language: English Publisher:. Simon & Schuster Norman Mailer was one of the most famous writers of his generation People who had never read a word that he wrote knew who he was because of his fame as a novelist or journalist. or his notoriety because of his womanising. his rivalries with other writers. his appearances on television. his political outspokenness and his prominence as a leading intellectual of his era. A provocative chronicler of the second half of the twentieth century. both as a journalist and a novelist works such as The Naked and the Dead and The Executioners Song vividly define a moment in American history. J. Michael Lennon was authorised by Mailer to write his biography. and as such has had access to family and friends. and to unpublished documents and letters Norman Mailer:. A Double Life reflects Mailers dual ...

About this title

About the Author:

J. Michael Lennon is Emeritus Vice President for Academic Affairs and Emeritus Professor of English at Wilkes University, Pennsylvania. Lennon has written and edited several books about Mailer. His work has appeared in numerous newspapers and international publications. He lives in Massachusetts.

Review:

“[A] sweeping full-scale biography. . . . A mighty undertaking befitting Mailer’s lifetime of protean output. . . . Lennon is a fluid writer, and he’s done his homework. There’s not a paragraph in this enormous book that doesn’t contain a nugget of something you should have known or wish you had known. Lennon has it all, and he has it down. And despite being his subject’s literary executor, he has not sanded the corners of a career and life, each of which has plenty of texture and lots of sharp edges. . . . Glorious.” (Graydon Carter The New York Times Book Review)

“In the hands of this superb biographer, Norman Mailer comes vividly to life—irresistible, brilliant, formidable, hungry for fame, and endlessly fascinating. Lennon’s great achievement lies in matching Mailer’s energy and talent with his own. This is surely one of the best biographies ever written of an American writer.” (Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of The Bully Pulpit and Team of Rivals)

“Lennon brings Mailer thoroughly alive in this great wallop of a book. His is the reporter’s eye, not the judge’s, and he captures the entirety of a man who embodied his era like no other.” (David Kirby The Washington Post)

“Lennon captures Mailer brilliantly—in all his guises and disguises. At the heart of Mailer’s writing was a selfishness to live as many lives as possible, coupled with a deep and elusive empathy. He kept slipping into new times, and geographies, losing himself there. The only things worth doing were the things that might break a heart—and indeed he broke many. Lennon looks at a literary life with great compassion and comprehensive accuracy. A biography for scholars and readers alike.” (Colum McCann, author of TransAtlantic and Let the Great World Spin)

"Mailer comes alive on every page, often in his own words, compulsive in his self-overcoming, in his ‘Napoleonic’ battling with peers and critics to become America’s number-one writer, and in his often self-destructive dealings with the world he wanted to analyze (and did) and conquer (not quite). This biography is brisk and electric, a vigorous panorama of the ‘singular, unprecedented and irreplaceable’ life that Norman Mailer lived." (William Kennedy, author of Changó’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes and Ironweed)

“I knew Mailer for more than a half-century; he was the most prolific and wide-ranging literary intellect of my lifetime. Thanks to Lennon’s biography, I am learning a lot that I never knew.” (Gay Talese, author of A Writer's Life and Thy Neighbor's Wife)

“[Lennon] adds many details and corrects some canards. He is especially good on the late, lion-in-winter years. . . .Lennon’s over-all argument seems right: ‘Mailer’s desire for fame, and his distaste for it, never abated over his long career.’” (Louis Menand The New Yorker)

“Norman Mailer lived a big, brash, bawdy, belligerent life, and J. Michael Lennon has captured every moment of it.” (Deirdre Bair, author of Saul Steinberg and Samuel Beckett)

"A must-read for students and admirers of Mailer's work." (Kirkus Reviews)

“In this meticulous authorized biography, Lennon offers a comprehensive and unflinching look at the life of the controversial American novelist, journalist, and filmmaker. . . . Lennon’s almost clinical perspective shows the author’s restless innovation, which was indispensable for understanding the U.S. in the second half of the 20th century.” (Publishers Weekly)

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 184737672X
• ISBN 13: 9781847376725
• Binding: Hardcover