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Mailer: His Life and Times

de Peter Manso

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THE DEFINITIVE, AUTHORIZED ORAL BIOGRAPHY OF THE AMERICAN ICON The winner of every major national literary award, the preeminent novelist of his generation, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a movie director, politician, pugilist, antiwar activist, hipster, philosopher, and enfant terrible, Norman Mailer has been maligned, loved, hated, belittled, idolized -- but never ignored. This sweeping biography captures the legend's extraordinary life and career in his own fascinating words and in vivid accounts by his famous peers, friends, enemies, wives, lovers, and family members. Mailer is an extraordinary tapestry, a portrait of an era as well as a man -- as protean as the subject himself and just as overflowing with life.… (més)
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Whether you admire him or abhor him, it's awfully hard not to be awed by him -- Norman Mailer. He may have been a megalomaniacal legend in his own mind, but his both brilliant and obnoxious life, if not all his novels and new journalism, will probably remain legendary for all time.

Peter Manso encyclopedically captures that life, from his childhood in Brooklyn; through Harvard; the army; the crafting and enormous sensation of The Naked and the Dead; Hollywood; politics; Marilyn Monroe; Vietnam and anti-war protests; failed marriages and spousal abuse; boxing; failed collaborations and embarrassing interviews; the out-of-nowhere success of The Executioner's Song (only to find out later that Mailer may have taken too much authorial -- and definitely, research -- credit for it!); to the desultory, poor-selling novels of the '90s (Harlot's Ghost, which I actually liked, and that Oswald disaster that was a second-rate Libra); and finally, to the bitter, cash-strapped, "Crap in the Forest"* end.

Thank goodness for Peter Manso that Mailer: His Life and Times was an oral biography, impeccably sourced and cited (if not recorded) by family, friends, and heavyweight literary and cinematic luminaries, when Mailer, after its publication, decided, even though he'd approved the final drafts, nevertheless to launch a smear campaign against Peter Manso and the accuracy of his Mailer-biography's claims.

Never mind that Manso and Mailer had been friends for decades; that Manso and his wife even lived with Mailer and his family for parts of two years during the biography's composition, and even took on a mortgage together for the construction of a new house that would be theirs, together; that rabies-ridden-rottweiler-of-a-man, amidst graceful greyhounds -- the chronically disloyal and myopic Mailer -- still badmouthed and lied and, lied so well about his good 'ol pal Manso, that crucial sources for Manso's next biography (that he was already entrenched in) on Marlon Brando, opted out and refused to be interviewed for it. Mailer had effectively blacklisted Manso through word-of-mouth and the press in an attempt to derail both the Brando biography and, more detestably, his career.

Manso reveals the complete drama -- and how he regained his good reputation as a truthful biographer -- in the latest edition of Mailer: His Life and Times' afterword, "Alas, Poor Norman (1985 - 2007)".

Even if you're not a Norman Mailer fan; even if you, for understandable and righteous reasons, hate the guy, I don't see how you can't love this book. It's fascinating to hear what people like E.L. Doctorow, James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg and others, thought of him.

*The real name for the novel is The Castle in the Forest. ( )
2 vota absurdeist | Mar 15, 2011 |
Based on interviews with more than 200 people, this gigantic book is not so much biography as a skillful compilation of multiple versions of events in the life of Norman Mailer. Not surprisingly, we are reminded that Mailer is often competitive, belligerent and drunk in public; on the other hand, in private he can be courteous and considerate.
  antimuzak | Apr 21, 2006 |
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The by-line is a kind of lie. Manso has not written this book. He has filled leagues, miles, versts, kilometers, of recording tape with reminiscences and observations from the people in Mailer's life. Because, in the manner of speech, this material is repetitive, vague, sometimes inaccurate, frequently slangy, and often obscene, Manso has done some editing, but he has not done much checking on matters of reliability...

Sighing, I admit that some sort of "portrait" comes out of this rough, synoptic gallimaufry. It is an image of an American intellectual (if a term not really applicable to the Anglo-American culture can be used here) trying to cope with life in the United States. This meant jumping the barrier that excluded poor Brooklyn Jewry, into the ASP fastness of Harvard (Anglo-Saxons are necessarily W), where lack of Latin made him a kind of centaur--hoofs in engineering, snout in English... The urge to be a kind of prophet--Lawrence's near undoing--explains Mailer's ventures into journalism and his hectoring, with jokes in doubtful taste, from various platforms. Add serial polygamy, multiple alimony, depression, pot, booze, scandal, and you have a fairly standard contemporary American literary life.
afegit per SnootyBaronet | editaThe Atlantic, Anthony Burgess
 
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The family? My father—Norman’s grandfather— was a rabbi, and the family ran a grocery store in Long Branch, New Jersey.
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THE DEFINITIVE, AUTHORIZED ORAL BIOGRAPHY OF THE AMERICAN ICON The winner of every major national literary award, the preeminent novelist of his generation, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a movie director, politician, pugilist, antiwar activist, hipster, philosopher, and enfant terrible, Norman Mailer has been maligned, loved, hated, belittled, idolized -- but never ignored. This sweeping biography captures the legend's extraordinary life and career in his own fascinating words and in vivid accounts by his famous peers, friends, enemies, wives, lovers, and family members. Mailer is an extraordinary tapestry, a portrait of an era as well as a man -- as protean as the subject himself and just as overflowing with life.

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