Tag: Times

This book amply proves that size still matters: a big life needs a big book, in this case 948 authorised pages. For 60 years, from 1948 when he published The Naked and the Dead to his death in 2007, Mailer hardly stopped to draw breath. The sheer egotistical excess of written and oral material is both a biographer’s dream and nightmare; but Lennon, unlike his subject, resists getting punch drunk, keeping the literary wild man caged though still capable of self harm.