Robert Caro, Nearing The End Of His Epic L.B.J. Bio, Eyes A Trip To Vietnam

John Williams at the New York Times offers a piece on Robert Caro, the author of a series of books on the late Lyndon Johnson.

An epic biography is nearing its close. Slowly but surely.

Those waiting for the fifth and final planned installment of Robert A. Caro’s award-winning life of Lyndon B. Johnson might be both heartened and frustrated by the historian’s most recent update on his progress.

In an interview recorded in New York on May 18 with C-Span’s Brian Lamb (to air on the news channel sometime this summer), Mr. Caro said he had most of the research and 400 typed pages of the manuscript for the next book done. But “one more big thing” remains, he said: A trip to Vietnam.

Mr. Caro lived in the Texas Hill Country while writing and researching the first volume, which covered Johnson’s youth.

“I’m not going to change the way I do it just because I’m getting older,” Mr. Caro, 81, said of the process. “I don’t know what the point would be of that.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/books/robert-caro-nearing-the-end-of-his-epic-lbj-bio-eyes-a-trip-to-vietnam.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbooks&action=click&contentCollection=books&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

Note: I’ve read all four of Robert Caro’s excellent books on Johnson. I recommend them highly to anyone interested in history and biography. I am eager to read the fifth volume.    

Something New Under The Sun: A Hemingway Biography That's Original

Ron Capshaw offers a good review in National Review of James M. Hutchisson's Ernest Hemingway: A New Life.

Norman Mailer once located courage in Ernest Hemingway's manic depression. Proof of this, according to Mailer, was that Papa was able to produce classic works despite daily struggles with that crippling condition.

James Hutchisson tales off from that point and advertises that his is the first "balanced" view of Hemingway in years. Others, he argued, have either portrayed the writer as the persona he created for himself - that of a rugged adventurer with a genius for words - or as an alcoholic womanizer.

Hutchinsson justifies this latest attempt of explaining Hemingway by announcing that he would view the author's work through several prisms: his medical condition that grew worst over the years (like others, Hutchisson sees an air of inevitability about Hemingway's putting that fatal shotgun in his mouth and pulling the trigger); his obsession with life and death, which was grist to his creative mill; and his relationship with women.        

You can read the rest of the review via the below link: 

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439437/ernest-hemingway-new-life-james-hutchisson-book-review

True Reagan: What Made Ronald Reagan Great And Why It Matters

Fred J. Eckert offers a review in the Washington Times of James Rosebush's True Reagan: What Made Ronald Reagan Great and Why it Matters.

“This is the book that Ronnie couldn’t write about himself,” Nancy Reagan said shortly before she died.

As someone who considers it one of the great blessings of his life to have been a friend and political ally of Ronald Reagan‘s, I, too, am grateful to author James Rosebush for giving us what is without a doubt the most insightful work yet about this truly great president who ranks among the world’s top leaders of the 20th century. If you yearn to understand Ronald Reagan — what exactly was it deep down inside that made him such a great leader? — read “TrueReagan.”

Ronald Reagan, an intensely private person, not only was not one to speak boastfully he was also reticent to even talk about himself, especially if it might be too revealing of his innermost thoughts and feelings, deliberately and skillfully avoiding doing so to an extent absolutely remarkable for someone who spent most of his life in the public eye.

Such careful guardedness combined with his genuine humility and surprising shyness made the inner Reagan an enigma even to most of those quite close to him. It explains why his official biographer, Edmund Morris, who had authored such a brilliant Pulitzer-Prize-winning biography of Theodore Roosevelt and was afforded unparalleled access to Mr. Reagan, utterly failed to capture him in the bizarre volume he produced, making the ludicrous excuse that Mr. Reagan was “one of the strangest men who’s ever lived.”

In fairness to Mr. Morris, producing an accurate and truly insightful portrayal of Ronald Reagan is one of the most challenging tasks a biographer could undertake. It explains why — while there are many good books covering some specific phase of Mr. Reagan’s life or zeroing in on such central topics as his religious faith or his long crusade against communism and while aides and friends and his two sons have written informative recollections about him — there are only a couple books that can truthfully be labeled a biography and not yet a great one.

Many books about Mr. Reagan are good renderings of what Mr. Reagan said and did and explain how it was received and what impact it had, as does this book, but what makes “True Reagan” so very special, such a must-read, is that no other work to date is anywhere near as insightful.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/12/book-review-true-reagan/

Biopic Of Former Spy And Spy Novelist John Le Carre Could Be Subject Of New Film

Nick Clark at the British newspaper the Independent reports that the film rights to Adam Sisman's biography of  John le Carre have been optioned by the spy novelist's sons.

Viewers settling in to enjoy the next episode of The Night Manager may soon get a chance to see the man behind the BBC1 espionage thriller. A biopic of the book’s author John le Carré, who worked for MI5 and MI6, could be headed for the screen. 

Adam Sisman, who wrote John le Carré: The Biography, told The Independent Bath Literature Festival last week that the film rights to his book had been snapped up. 

The Ink Factory, the production company behind the BBC’s adaptation of The Night Manager and several other Le Carré novels, has secured the rights, he revealed. 

Simon and Stephen Cornwell, the sons of Le Carré, whose real name is David Cornwell, founded the company in 2010. “David has quite a say in what the Ink Factory do,” Mr Sisman said. “I had to sell it to them, really. What was I selling? The rights to someone else’s life.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/john-le-carr-biopic-of-mi5-spy-could-be-subject-of-new-film-a6914541.html

You can also read my Washington Times review of Sisman's biography of John le Carre via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2015/12/my-washington-times-review-of-john-le.html

The New Tsar: The Rise And Reign Of Vladimir Putin

Gary Anderson at the Washington Times offers a review of Steven Lee Meyers' The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin.  

Some traditional American allies are beginning to view the United States as a nation of lions led by a sheep, and Russia as a nation of sheep led by a lion. For several years now, Russian President Vladimir Putin has consistently outthought and outmaneuvered a seemingly hapless President Obama on the world stage. Perceptions are everything, and Mr. Obama’s foreign policy is in tatters; it is too late to salvage that. The next American president will have to show our allies that our country still has resolve and can be trusted. To do that, our next commander-in-chief must be able to deal firmly with Mr. Putin. If knowing your adversary is key to dealing with him, our next president should read “The New Tsar,” Steven Lee Myers’ biography of Mr. Putin.

Mr. Myers traces Mr. Putin’s rise from the only surviving child of a poor Russian war hero workingman in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) of the defunct Soviet Union to the leadership of a newly assertive Russia. The author does so in a no-nonsense narrative that largely avoids hyperbole while explaining the development of the psyche of a world leader.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link: 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/25/book-review-the-new-tsar-the-rise-and-reign-of-vla/  

'Hitchcock' By Michael Wood Is A Beautifully Turned Survey

John Timpane, my editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, offers a good review of Michael Wood's book on the late great film director Alfred Hitchcock.

It's a rare pleasure for a book to carry you from cover to cover with wit, verve, and profit. That's what happens with this new overview by Michael Wood.

Wood is emeritus professor of comparative literature at Princeton. Erudition is not what he wants to show you - it's Alfred Hitchcock's life and movies. In this quick tour, there's much to cover in little space, much written in countless books. But in Wood's hands, it all seems unrushed, easy, and fresh.

There is Hitchcock's middle-class family, the beginnings of what would become "a frightened man who got his fears to work for him on film." There is his Jesuit schooling, his early days in the just-starting English film industry, and his crucial, life-making union with Alma Reville, wife and collaborator of a lifetime. Of her, Woods writes: "He would have been something without her, no doubt, but he would not have been the director we know as Hitchcock."

... Thanks to his command of suspense, his knack of anticipating audience reactions, Hitchcock became famous, beyond his films, for mastery of human psychology. His work probed friendship, guilt, patriotism, love, obsession, the communal mania that attends war - and the communal shell-shock that follows.

 

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/literature/20150322__Hitchcock__by_Michael_Wood_is_a_beautifully_turned_survey.html

A Review of "A Life"

My friend and former editor Frank Wilson offers a review of  A Life for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

You can read the review via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/literature/20140504_The_upper-case_life_of_a_lower-case_poet.html 

You can also read Frank Wilson's popular literary blog, Booksinq, via the below link:

http://booksinq.blogspot.com

My Crime Beat Column: A Mysterious Something In The Light, A Q & A With Raymond Chandler Biographer Tom Williams

Raymond Chandler is one of my favorite writers. I read all of his crime novels and short stories as a teenager and I've reread them again and again over the years.

I was wearing my powdered blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaven and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars. - from Chandler's novel The Big Sleep.

I've also seen and enjoyed the films based on his novels and the films Chandler himself wrote. I especially like the 1969 film Marlowe, based on Chandler's The Little Sister, and starring James Garner as Philip Marlowe.

James Garner comes nearest to my image of the wise-cracking and tough private eye from Raymond Chandler's novels.

In addition to Chandler's fiction, I've also read Chandler's letters and a couple of biographies of the late crime writer. And I've recently read and enjoyed the newest biography of Chandler,  A Mysterious Something in the Light: The Life of Raymond Chandler, by Tom Williams.

Tom Williams, a British literary agent and writer, takes a fresh, interesting and in depth look at the great writer.

I contacted Tom Williams and my Q&A with him is below:

 DAVIS: Why did you write this book? How does it differ from earlier books on Raymond Chandler?

WILLIAMS:  I wrote the book because I felt that the Chandler I discovered in the letters and the Chandler I read about in the previous biographies didn't gel. I wanted to understand why. That is what motivated me at the beginning. The deeper I got into the subject, the more I discovered and the more my views on Chandler changed and shifted. I think my book is the first to look in detail at Chandler's early years. I discovered some really interesting letters that predated material other biographies had access to. I also think that I went into more detail into the way some of the books were written. I tried to answer the question: how did Chandler come write The Big Sleep..

DAVIS: How did you research the book? Who did you interview?
 

WILLIAMS: The Chandler archive is split between the US and the UK. I spent three months living in Los Angeles, working in the Special Collection Department of UCLA. Then I spent a lot of time in Oxford, at the Bodelian library where there is more material. All in all, the research took about 5 years. During that time I met Natasha Spender (who died sadly before the book came out). I interviewed her and she was extremely useful, shedding valuable light on Chandler's last years.

DAVIS: How would you describe Raymond Chandler?

WILLIAMS: A very good question. I guess, had I been able to describe him in a sentence I should not have written a book on him. Seriously though, to my mind Chandler was a man of huge talent but who suffered greatly from alcoholism and this, eventually, undid him. He loved his wife deeply and he produced some fine novels. Had we met, I am not sure we would have hit it off in person. He was not an easy man to get to know. But, I hope that had we corresponded via letter (or email if he was alive now), I think our exchange would have been interesting.
 

DAVIS: Can you explain and identify connections between Chandler's life and his fiction?  
 

WILLIAMS: This is another difficult question. It is always dangerous to draw too tight a comparison between and author and his work and is the cause of many an undergraduate mis-step. That said, I think lives leach into pieces of art unavoidable and unconsciously. Chandler was no different. His uncomfortable relationship with his mother is, I think, reflected in his dealing with Mrs Murdoch in the High Window. I also think that the troubles he had making a connection and being able to articulate what it was to be a good friend in LA are refigured and explored in Philip Marlowe.
 

DAVIS: How would you describe his wife Cissy and their marriage?

WILLIAMS: Complicated. There is no doubt Chandler loved Cissy very deeply at times in the marriage. When she died he was brought to ruination. But he could be cruel to her too. It is not clear if he ever actually had affairs or not but at one point in the very early 30s they separated, suggesting that he could make her unhappy. When they were together she was something of an enabler to his alcoholism too. This can not have made things easy. And, of course, the Chandlers likely had an odd sexual relationship too. Chandler was naive and innocent and probably a virgin when they married. Cissy, in contrast, was experienced (Chandler was her third husband) and knowledgeable. Chandler claimed that they had a 'hot' sex life however his poetry to Cissy suggests an attitude of worship, one that should sullied by sex. So I questions whether Chandler can be trusted on how good their sex life really was.

DAVIS: What do you think of Chandler as a novelist?

WILLIAMS: He was a novelist of great talent. His ambition to move beyond crime fiction and his failure to do so made him test the boundaries of what was possible with the genre.

DAVIS: In your view, how does Chandler stack up against Dashiell Hammett and other crime writers?

WILLIAMS: Personally, I prefer Chandler to Hammett. The Maltese Falcon is a good novel but it doesn't quite have the lyricism for me that Chandler achieved so well. 

DAVIS: What Chandler novel do you believe is the best, and which novel is your favorite?
 

WILLIAMS: Hahaha. The truth is, this changes all the time. If pushed, right now, I would my favorite is Farewell, My Lovely. Interestingly it was Chandler's favorite too. 

DAVIS: How would you describe Chandler's iconic character Philip Marlowe?

WILLIAMS: Complex and human; sad and lonely. To me he is the typical LA man -- disconnected from the world -- but, at the same time, he has a nobility that comes from elsewhere. It is that nobility that pushes him to go to places he knows he shouldn't. That is his sadness.

DAVIS: Do you have a favorite Chandler film?
 

WILLIAMS: It has to be The Big Sleep from 1946. 
 

DAVIS: What actor do you believe best portrayed Philip Marlowe? 

WILLIAMS: It's hard to beat Bogie but I have a soft spot too for Elliott Gould.
 

DAVIS: Elliot Gould is not the Philip Marlowe I envision from the novels, and Robert Altman's somewhat loose adaptation of The Long Goodbye is not a typical Chandler/Marlowe film, but I too have a soft spot for Gould. I've read that Gould does a fine job on the audio adaptations of the Chandler novels.   
       

I recall watching an episode of the Dick Cavett talk show some years ago in which Evan Hunter (Ed McBain), P.D. James, Robert Parker and Mickey Spillane were asked what writer most influenced them.
 

All but Spillane quickly replied that Raymond Chandler most influenced them. (Spillane mentioned a comic book writer). Michael Connelly and other contemporary crime writers also site Chandler as an influence.
 

Why do your think Chandler was and is such an influence on crime writers, as well as film makers?

WILLIAMS: I think he showed the world that a crime writer could have a literary sensibility too. He took crime out of the gutter and made it art. 
 

DAVIS: What do you think of the Philip Marlowe continuation novel The Black Eye Blonde by Benjamin Black (John Banville). 

WILLIAMS: I enjoyed it and respect John Banville for not trying too hard to mimic Chandler.
 

DAVIS: Do you believe Chandler will continue to be read and appreciated in the future?

WILLIAMS: Of this I have no doubt.

DAVIS: Thanks for taking the time to talk about Raymond Chandler and your book. 

 

A Mysterious Something in the Light: The Life of Raymond Chandler is published in the U.S. by the Chicago Review Press.

 

You can also read my Crime Beat column on Raymond Chandler via the below link:  

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2009/11/on-raymond-chandlers-influence-on-crime.html