The private thoughts of a public man: the ambitions and insecurities of literary giant Norman Mailer.
James Wolcott shares some thoughts on Norman Mailer and the bio.
Did Norman Mailer live it instead?
Dear Friends,
Happy New Year!
Some new events have been added to the last leg of the book tour for Norman Mailer: A Double Life, which has been reviewed widely, and named as one of the best books of the year by Amazon, Kirkus Reviews, Washington Post, The Saturday Evening Post, Irish Times, (London) Telegraph, and Ed Champion of The Bat Segundo radio show. It was also an “Editors Choice” selection in the New York Times Book Review.
Upcoming events has been updated.
Links to Reviews and Interviews (In case you missed them.)
- The Boston Globe
- The San Francisco Chronicle
- Publishers Weekly
- The State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL)
- Examiner
- Barnstable Patriot
- Financial Times (London)
- The New York Times
- The Spectator
- Jewish Book Council
- Times Literary Supplement (TLS): Elaine Showalter reviewed the biography in the December 20-27 issue, No. 5777/8.
- The Independent (Dublin)
- The Irish Times
A recent biography of the literary legend’s life largely ignores a fascinating part of Mailer’s life and career: his deep love for sports like baseball, bullfighting, and boxing.
J. Michael Lennon, a mild-mannered retired English professor, will forever be linked to the combative Norman Mailer. His 900-page biography, “Norman Mailer: A Double Life” (Simon & Schuster), was published this past fall to wide acclaim, and Lennon is now in the throes of editing 50,000 of Mailer’s letters for a book to be published in the fall of 2014. It was a letter, after all, that first joined Lennon’s life to Mailer’s.
On balance, Lennon does, however, reveal his subject’s double life, his honesty and deceitfulness, and his remarkably self-deluding but self-aware sensibility. If not the last word on Norman Mailer (what could be?), this book is likely to be the standard biography for this generation.
J. Michael Lennon’s “Norman Mailer: A Double Life” is a perceptive biography, one with a keen understanding of his work, his mind and his darkest impulses (notably, the stabbing of his second wife).
