Review by Choice Review
Rollyson, author of three other literary biographies, presents an accessible critical biography of Mailer, which will prove interesting to a general readership but provides somewhat less new information for Mailer scholars. Rollyson draws extensively from the two biographies that precede his Hilary Mills's Mailer: a Biography (CH, Mar'83) and Mailer, His Life and Times ed. by Peter Manso (CH, Nov'85) and from interviews in Conversations with Norman Mailer, ed. by J. Michael Lennon (1988), adding information from his own interviews and research. Similarly, he collates readings of Mailer's works from the many critical studies published during the past 22 years, and in synthesizing these contributes his own. Because Manso's book is limited to transcribed interviews, and Mills's offers little literary criticism, Rollyson provides a useful service here, despite an occasional error (e.g. Cherry's hideaway in An American Dream is not in Harlem). Although the book presents some harsh judgments of Mailer's personal notoriety, these are tempered by flashes of perceptive praise, as in the recognition that "There is a peculiar integrity to Maidstone that is like Mailer's own." This book, in its potentially controversial treatment of a decidedly controversial and significant author, ultimately seeks its own version of the elusive truth. Photographs, notes. For college, university, and public libraries.-B. H. Leeds, Central Connecticut State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Rollyson, a professor of literature and art history, is the author of best-selling biographies of Marilyn Monroe, Lillian Hellman, and Martha Gellhorn. His current biography, also sure to be a hit with readers, distills information from two other current books on Norman Mailer's life (Mailer: A Biography by Hilary Mills and Mailer: His Life and Times by Peter Manso) and then goes beyond those works by including new facts and insights gleaned from archival materials, such as Mailer's manuscripts and letters, and from interviews with Mailer's mother, friends, acquaintances, and Harvard classmates, as well as colleagues Max Lerner and William Styron, among others. But what really sets this book apart is Rollyson's provocative critiques of Mailer's major novels, essays, and reportage and the author's attempt to link Mailer's art with real events in Mailer's life in order to prove his thesis that this larger-than-life and highly controversial, if not downright repugnant, contemporary writer has invented multiform identities for himself precisely to be controversial. In Rollyson's view, Mailer equates rebelliousness with individuality, and Rollyson makes a very good, if not airtight, case to help explain Mailer's erratic behavior and fascination with violence (Mailer exulted in stabbing his second wife, Adele). A raw, earthy account that, while very well written, grates on the reader in its apologia-like defense of its subject. ~--Mary Banas
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The lives of Mailer, like the facets of his character, are many, because he keeps inventing himself. That is the underlying premise of Rollyson's attempt to grapple with this large literary talent cum bully-boy cum Jewish leprechaun, a rebel with many causes, who from his stunningly successful early novel The Naked and the Dead to his current Harlot's Ghost has bobbed and jabbed in combat with his critics and his times. Mailer's an aggressor with charm, a star performer with a penchant for shooting himself in the foot. Novelist, essayist, journalist, movie director (of his film Tough Guys Don't Dance a critic said, ``Tough guys shouldn't direct''), amateur pugilist, reputed misogynist six times married, Pulitizer Prize winner--Mailer has been all these; and in this amply researched and sharp-eyed study there's nourishing fare for both his admirers and his detractors. Rollyson, biographer of Marilyn Monroe, Lillian Hellman and Martha Gellhorn, aptly does a good deal of jabbing and weaving himself in trying to catch a man who seems to have made flight from the gentility of his background an obsession, who has kept inventing himself perhaps because he has never quite found himself. But Rollyson may go too far in calling his subject a genius. Photos. 25,000 first printing; $35,000 ad/promo. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Rollyson is in fine fettle in this first literary biography of Norman Mailer. Doted on as a child by his mother, Mailer has constantly had to ``reinvent'' himself to prevent a crippling sense of failure after the heady success of his first novel, The Naked and the Dead (1948). Since then, Mailer's fiction, reportage, and essays (notably ``The White Negro'' of the ``hip'' Fifties) has extolled the individual's struggle against postwar conformity--while at the same time snubbing women. Unfortunately (aside from such things as stabbing his second wife), his excessive need to live what he writes has resulted in an uneven portrayal of the American Dream. The author suggests Mailer may have had his last success, but his story is definitely ``To Be Continued.'' Copious notes, photographs, and a bibliography are included. Index not seen. Recommended for both lay readers and scholars.-- Kenneth Mintz, Hoboken P.L., N.J. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Literary biography of Mailer by the well-received author of Nothing Ever Happens to the Brave: The Story of Martha Gellhorn (1990) and Lillian Hellman (1988). Rollyson (Art History and Literature/Baruch) firmly engages the reader in a swift life of Mailer as if from 30 years hence rather than in the ``now'' vein of earlier biographies by Hilary Mills and Peter Manso. A touchstone event in Mailer's life took place in 1954 when Mailer's friend, editor John Maloney, stabbed his mistress in Greenwich Village, leaving Mailer aswim in Dostoevskian thought and envying Maloney: ``God, I wish I had the courage to stab a woman like that. That was a really gutsy act.'' What he envied, according to Rollyson, was the rebel act against received morality in which ``the shits are killing us''; when he later did stab his wife Adele, he found it morally indefensible. An oddly charming Brooklyn prodigy, Mailer went through childhood and early youth in a terribly professional way (building elaborate model planes), entered Harvard as a skinny little runt of 16, took up engineering, then was bitten by the James T. Farrell bug and began methodically engineering the short story and novel. In the army, he baldly interviewed troops for his future great war novel and, as at Harvard, tried to define himself against a larger entity--as he did in Ancient Evenings and is still doing in his current novel, Harlot's Ghost (see above). Mailer's life is all highlights, some of them abysmal, as with his abortive run for mayor of New York and later the Jack Abbott fiasco. On a literary level, Rollyson's best pages tie Mailer privately into the themes of Ancient Evenings, though his remark that Mailer hasn't had a major success since The Executioner's Song and at this late date may be past producing another triumph is unjust regarding both Ancient Evenings and Harlot's Ghost, which some already see as the high-water marks of Mailer's career. Mailer bounding larger than life--though the last word will be his in his long-promised autobiography, when and if.... (Eight pages of photographs--not seen.)
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Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
