Tough Guy

November 7, 2022
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.

November 15, 2022
Contentious biography of acclaimed, controversial novelist Norman Mailer (1923-2007). One need not like--or even respect--one's subject to write a biography, else the Hitler shelves would be bare. However, British academic Bradford seems to thrive only when sniping, deriding perceived flaws of style and soul, and discovering where the feet of clay are planted, as with his recent attempted takedown of Patricia Highsmith. Here, he wrestles with a man who "served more as a cook than as a combatant" in the Pacific in World War II and therefore, presumably, should not have written The Naked and the Dead. Mailer's second book, The Barbary Shore, "a na�ve, self-absorbed portrait of American left-leaning politics set in a Brooklyn rooming house, achieved the unenviable status of being scorned by almost every critic who reviewed it," and The Deer Park "was subjected to similar derision." Few of Bradford's observations are particularly original--he relies heavily on other secondary sources--but occasionally, he hits on a good one. For example, he notes that "Mailer would spend most of his life involved in relentless attempts to spread consternation....He would become a chameleon, choosing to bludgeon the truth into what he thought suitable for the occasion, usually involving an attempt to shock." More often, Bradford falls into Albert Goldman-esque sanctimony, as when he writes of Mailer's infamous essay "The White Negro," "All that prevailed when he put together this horrible accident of prose writing was his ego. He wanted fame and he was determined to shock." True, but perhaps Mailer also wanted to call out the hyperconformity of the racist-to-the-bone era, however ham-fisted the result. What about when Mailer got it right? Then, to name one instance, "critics who saw themselves as occupying the intellectual high ground celebrated The Executioner's Song." It all seems a pointless exercise, but superciliousness is the coin of this particular critical realm. Of quaternary rank in the library of work devoted to Mailer.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

November 1, 2022
Bradford, biographer of Martin Amis and Patricia Highsmith, opens his absorbing account of Norman Mailer's life with the recognition that were this story presented as fiction, it would be hard to believe. Biographical subjects rarely provide such a treasure trove of jaw-dropping, head-scratching, and utterly memorable stories. Mailer was Jewish, of Lithuanian descent, raised in a modest Brooklyn home by his adoring mother and gambling father. His IQ was off the charts, and he matriculated at Harvard. He fancied himself a pugilist, a political impresario, a mobster, a hipster, and a spy, but was, in reality, a serial adulterer, an abuser, a racist, and a homophobic, delusional misogynist. Married six times, he stabbed his second wife, causing life-threatening injury, and once got in a fight with two sailors who thought his poodle looked "queer." He twice ran for mayor of New York City. A literary genius, winner of two Pulitzers and a National Book Award, Mailer was also capable of creating execrable, nonsensical, cringe-inducing prose. Bradford draws from myriad sources to craft an indelible portrait of the artist as a fascinating, never-boring man.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.