Kirjahaku

'Superlative... definitive and genuinely gripping' SUNDAY TIMES'Utterly engrossing' EVENING STANDARD'Compulsively readable... Beautifully written... Definitive' OBSERVER Appointed by Philip Roth and granted complete access and independence, Blake Bailey spent years poring over Roth's personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers, and colleagues, and engaging Roth himself in breathtakingly candid conversations. The result is an indelible portrait of an American master and of the post-war literary scene. Bailey shows how Roth emerged from a lower-middle-class Jewish milieu to achieve the heights of literary fame, how his career was nearly derailed by his catastrophic first marriage, and how he championed the work of dissident novelists behind the Iron Curtain. Bailey examines Roth's rivalrous friendships with Saul Bellow, John Updike and William Styron, and reveals the truths of his florid love life, culminating in his almost-twenty-year relationship with actress Claire Bloom, who pilloried Roth in her 1996 memoir, Leaving a Doll's House. Tracing Roth's path from realism to farce to metafiction to the tragic masterpieces of the American Trilogy, Bailey explores Roth's engagement with nearly every aspect of post-war American culture.*A 'BOOKS OF 2021' PICK IN THE OBSERVER, GUARDIAN, FINANCIAL TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, EVENING STANDARD, SPECTATOR AND NEW STATESMAN*

Blake Bailey's A Tragic Honesty is the first biography of acclaimed American novelist and story writer Richard Yates Celebrated in his prime, forgotten in his final years, only to be championed anew by our greatest contemporary authors, Richard Yates has always exposed readers to the unsettling hypocrisies of our modern age. Classic novels such as Revolutionary Road and The Easter Parade are incomparable chronicles of the quiet and not-so-quiet desperation of the American middle-class. Lonely housewives, addled businessmen, desperate career-girls and fearful boys and soldiers, Yates's America was a panorama of high living, self-doubt and self-deception. And in the tradition of other great realistic writers of his time (Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Cheever and Updike), Yates's fictional world mirrored his own. A manic-depressive alcoholic and unapologetic gentleman, his life was a hornets' nest of childhood ghosts, the horrors of war, money woes, and ebullient cocktailed evenings in New York, Hollywood, and the Riviera. A Tragic Honesty is a masterful evocation of a man who in many ways embodied the struggles of the Great American Writer in the latter half of the twentieth century. Fame and reward followed by heartbreak and obscurity, Richard Yates here stands for what the writer must sacrifice for his craft, the devil's bargain of artistry for happiness, praise for sanity.

Appointed by Philip Roth and granted independence and complete access, Blake Bailey spent years poring over Roth's personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers, and colleagues, and engaging Roth himself in breathtakingly candid conversations. The result is an indelible portrait of an American master and of the postwar literary scene. Bailey shows how Roth emerged from a lower-middle-class Jewish milieu to achieve the heights of literary fame, how his career was nearly derailed by his catastrophic first marriage, and how he championed the work of dissident novelists behind the Iron Curtain. Bailey examines Roth's rivalrous friendships with Saul Bellow, John Updike, and William Styron, and reveals the truths of his florid love life, culminating in his almost-twenty-year relationship with actress Claire Bloom, who pilloried Roth in her 1996 memoir, Leaving a Doll's House. Tracing Roth's path from realism to farce to metafiction to the tragic masterpieces of the American Trilogy, Bailey explores Roth's engagement with nearly every aspect of postwar American culture.

John Cheever spent much of his career impersonating a perfect suburban gentleman, the better to become one of the foremost chroniclers of postwar America. Written with unprecedented access to essential sources--including Cheever's massive journal, only a fraction of which has ever been published--Bailey's Cheever is a stunning example of the biographer's art and a brilliant tribute to an essential author.

John Cheever was one of the foremost chroniclers of post-war America, a peerless writer who on his death in 1982 left some of the best short stories of the twentieth century, a number of highly acclaimed novels, and a private journal that runs to an astonishing four million words. Cheever was a soul in conflict who hid his contradictions – alcoholism, secret bisexuality - behind the screen of genial family life in suburbia. In this luminous, definitive work, one of the most gifted biographers of his generation reveals the troubled but strangely lovable man behind these disguises, a creator of timeless fiction. ‘An instant classic’ Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph Books of the Year ‘Lively, funny, informative, astute, masterly. It’s impossible to imagine how anyone could have done a better job’ Blake Morrison, Guardian ‘The highlight of my reading year’ Observer ‘I simply can’t imagine a better literary biography than this one’ Spectator

A canceled bestselling author’s highly personal account of his public scandal—a scandal that was reported on the front page of the New York Times and throughout the world. Blake Bailey grew up in the shadow of his father, Burck, an eminent litigator—president of the Oklahoma Bar Association and widely considered a sort of real-life Atticus Finch: “His conduct, honesty, integrity, and courtesy best exemplify and represent the highest standards of the legal profession,” his colleagues commended him in a 1989 award citation. As for Blake, he was a late bloomer who finally came into his own as a writer. His fourth literary biography, Philip Roth, was published on April 6, 2021, and hailed as “a narrative masterwork” by Cynthia Ozick on the front page of the New York Times Book Review. The 900-page book debuted at #12 on the Times Nonfiction Bestseller list. But success came at a terrible price: because of revelations in Bailey’s biography, many were calling for Roth and his work to be “canceled,” while others thought Bailey had been overly sympathetic and even “complicitous” with his subject’s worst failings. Soon rumors exploded on the internet about Bailey’s own private life, and within days he himself was roundly canceled. Canceled Lives is the story of a father and son who had much in common—for better and for worse—and who supported each other in the midst of terrible family strife, including the drug addiction and suicide of Blake’s older brother, Scott. Having achieved a success in life that Blake, at least, never expected, both father and son were ravaged by the ordeal of Blake’s spectacular public humiliation.