Blake Bailey

Ramon de España, traductor de la obra de Blake Bailey, ens comenta aquesta biografia de John Cheever, un dels grans escriptors del segle XX. A l'Espai 1.

“Riveting from page one”, hails Booklist about Blake Bailey’s Cheever: A Life, calling it “the literary biography of the season.” A front page New York Times Book Review, calls Blake Bailey’s work a “stunningly detailed biography, exploring step by stumbling step the crooked path that Cheever ... (more)followed….” John Cheever was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and National Medal of Honor. But who was John Cheever, and why has his life and work eluded biographers for so long? Blake Bailey is the first biographer to be granted unprecedented access to Cheever’s primary sources, including his massive journal, of which only a fraction has ever been published.
Bailey portrays Cheever as a writer in conflict: a proud Yankee who told tales of his lineage while deploring the stifling provincialism of his family circle; a dire alcoholic who recovered to write what some consider his greatest work, Falconer; a bisexual who concealed his true sexual desires. We learn about Cheever’s rivalry with J.D. Salinger, his troubled relationship with his daughter, and his ongoing struggle with alcoholism that nearly cost him his life.Blake Bailey is the editor of a two-volume edition of Cheever’s work, published in 2009 by The Library of America. His last book, A Tragic Honesty, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He received a Guggenheim fellowship in 2005, and his articles and reviews have appeared in Slate, The New York Times, the New York Observer, and elsewhere. Discussion and Book Signing: Tuesday, April 7 at 7 p.m.

Noted literary biographer Blake Bailey, whose earlier book A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates, was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, makes this welcome visit for Cheever: A Life (Knopf), one of the big ones in a year that is also seeing/will see books coming on Flannery ... (more)O'Connor, Raymond Carver, and others.

Local author Blake Bailey discusses and signs his new biography of novelist John Cheever, Cheever: A Life, at Politics and Prose Bookstore, 202-364-1919.