An affable memoir of superficial interest to those grappling with the Mailer mystique.
Norman Mailer’s daughter writes about her relationship with him.
“I had been born [in 1949] to a man who became a celebrity at the age of twenty-five,” writes the author, a psychoanalyst based in Santiago, Chile. In this subdued, reflective memoir about her famous author father, Norman (1923-2007), she psychoanalyzes herself as she offers up a conflicted portrait of their relationship. Her father married six times and had numerous affairs and nine children. It was all part of the “Mailer routine. One in, the other out.” He was always busy writing or enjoying his boisterous public image and didn’t have much time for his children. Her story, told in dry, lackluster prose, is about trying to find herself while under the large and imposing shadow of her father. When she was 8, he told her he “hadn’t really loved me when I was born.” Susan was hurt and developed a “tough-kid persona.” Her early years were spent in New York, with her father, and in Mexico, with her mother, Bea, whom Norman divorced in 1952. The author loved her life with her mother and new father, and she enjoyed school and learning Spanish. Eventually, she would marry happily and have children. She writes about her father’s drinking and pot smoking in the 1960s, his mood swings, and the “The Trouble”—when he stabbed his second wife, Adele, twice with a penknife. The author also discusses her father’s work. An American Dream both “repelled” and “fascinated” her. The Armies of the Night was “a brilliant piece of journalism and an innovative experiment.” The Executioner’s Song, her favorite, “blew me away.” While watching him edit his film Maidstone, she felt like an “unwilling witness” to his “sexual fantasies.” The author fondly recalls her annual visits to the Big House in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where the large Mailer family gathered and where her dying father sought forgiveness.
An affable memoir of superficial interest to those grappling with the Mailer mystique.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-937997-99-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Northampton House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
A real-life Frank Capra tale, just as corny, sentimental and inspiring as It's a Wonderful Life.
Hokey but charming memoir, reminiscent of an afternoon spent flipping through the pages of an antique photo album.
Although an autobiography, Coleman chronicles his life in the third person with a dispassion and modesty remarkable for a novice writer. It is perhaps the era that speaks through his prose—not a child of the "Me Decade," Coleman reminds us that the past was, indeed, more difficult than the present. And people certainly tended to whine a good deal less back then. The account begins chronologically, with his birth in 1902 to pioneer parents, their eighth child. By the time he was nine, the family had moved to their own homestead in Myrtle Creek, Ore. That summer he contracted polio and lost the use of his legs. Overcoming his crippled condition occupied a good portion of his youth, admirably marked by self-reliance and invention. He whittled his own crutches, made violins and, at 19, attempting to find a trade that would accommodate his physical condition, paid a jeweler $25 per month in order to serve as an apprentice to the watchmaker. As a young man in the '20s, he married and became a father, then established himself as sole proprietor of a jewelry store. The narrative is interspersed with photographs, newspaper clippings, Coleman's poems (an unfortunate weakness), musical scores (also not very solid), jewelry designs and the Coleman family tree. At a glance, Coleman’s history, aside from his disability, is not unusual. He becomes one of the leading merchants of a small town, state archery champion, and president of the Lion's Club. His would seem to be the unremarkable chronicle of a small-town success of interest to no one outside his family. Even so, it's his banality that is oddly compelling. Following the ups and downs of the Coleman jewelry store through the Depression, World War II, and the post-war era up until Coleman's death in 1972, is an enjoyable journey through the low-key strength and integrity that sustains middle-American lives. Coleman's son, John Coleman, today runs Coleman's Jewelers, the jewelry store founded by the author, in Corvallis, Ore. (Proceeds from the sale of this book, which has an endorsement from former senator Bob Dole, will go to Rotary International's "effort to eradicate polio" and to the Austin Family Business Program at Oregon State University.)
A real-life Frank Capra tale, just as corny, sentimental and inspiring as It's a Wonderful Life.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 0-9754140-0-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Meet Norma Hazelton, connoisseur and collector of swizzle sticks. If you're not impressed by a plastic Jackie Gleason long since separated from its maraschino cherry, take a look at Robert Cade, inventor of Gatorade and a collector of Studebakers (re the carmaker's Dictator line of the 1930s, he says: ``Dictator was a good name until Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin. They dropped the Dictator line in 1937 because of them''). Among the 20 collections that Tuchman and photographer Brenner cast their eyes on are caches of Civil War memorabilia (a banjo, a musket, a toothbrush); aquarium furniture (a lot of mermaids); and representations of the Last Supper (a clock, a saltshaker, a funeral-home fan). Tuchman's text, mostly a pastiche of comments from the collectors themselves, is informative—and just glib enough to keep the whole book from feeling like a spooky visit to your mad Aunt Mabel's attic.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8118-0360-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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