Tough Guy
- Author Richard Bradford
- Narrator Eric Meyers
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
- Run Time 12 hours and 37 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Biography and non-fiction prose, Biography: arts and entertainment, Biography: writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers.
Titles Purchased
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Price p/Title
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Listen to a sample
What to expect
Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, firstly in 1969 for The Armies of the Night and again in 1980 for The Executioner's Song, Norman Mailer’s life comes as close as is possible to being the Great American Novel: beyond reason, inexplicable, wonderfully grotesque and addictive.
The Naked and the Dead was acclaimed not so much for its intrinsic qualities but rather because it launched a brutally realistic sub-genre of military fiction – Catch 22 and MASH would not exist without it. Richard Bradford combs through Mailer’s personal letters – to lovers and editors – which appear to be a rehearsal for his career as a shifty literary narcissist, and which shape the characters of one of the most widely celebrated World War II novels.
Bradford strikes again with a merciless biography in which diary entries, journal extracts and newspaper columns set the tone of this study of a controversial figure. From friendships with contemporaries such as James Baldwin, failed correspondences with Hemingway and the Kennedys, to terrible – but justified – criticism of his work by William Faulkner and Eleanor Roosevelt, this book gives a unique, snappy and convincing perspective of Mailer’s ferocious personality and writings.
Critics Review
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Bradford offers a solid sense that Mailer could be unpleasant.
Publishers Weekly -
British academic Bradford seems to thrive […] when sniping, deriding perceived flaws of style and soul.
Kirkus Reviews -
absorbing […] Bradford draws from myriad sources to craft an indelible portrait of the artist as a fascinating, never-boring man.
Booklist -
… the book’s very existence attests to a more complicated reality. It would be naïve to suppose that the renewed attention on Mailer has nothing to do with the scandals attached to his name. It would also be naïve to pretend that he was not a great American writer.
The New Yorker -
… if this lively biography ends up being a damning speech for the prosecution, well, pugilistic old Norman is simply receiving a dose of his own medicine. You can imagine Mailer’s ghost becoming suitably energised to rise from his sulphurous grave to box Bradford’s lights out.
The Times -
compulsively readable…[a] solid multifaceted critique of Mailer
The National Review
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