Saturday, April 23, 2011

Blog Tour - Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil by Jerome Charyn

Welcome to the




Book Info:

ISBN #: 978-0-300-12328-9 (dj)
Page Count: 170
Released: March 8, 2011


Book & Buy Links:



Book Trailer:




Mandy's Review:

Cover

I love the picture on the cover.  The photographer captured a moment in time where DiMaggio seems almost content and happy with his second wife, Marilyn Monroe.

Plot/Main Character

Watching baseball is one of my favorite pasttimes.  To get to know more about one of the greatest players, Joe DiMaggio, was a bonus for me.

Jerome Charyn has given readers a glimpse into the emotionally reclusive life of the Dago.  I almost feel sorry for him.  But then I think, "How much of the reclusiveness could he control?"  There's no doubt that DiMaggio was one of the greatest and most revered players of our time, but I believe he was emotionally reclusive because he chose to be so.  How can one feel sorry for a person who chooses that life?

I did not know, however, about his obsessiveness with Marilyn Monroe.  That was a surprising and interesting fact to read about.

Overall

I don't know that this was an enlightning book, but it was informative and interesting to read.  This would be a book for baseball fans everywhere ... those that loved the game's players before they became so commercialized.


About the Author

Author's Website
Author's Facebook
Author's Twitter
Jerome Charyn (born May 13, 1937) is an award-winning American author. With nearly 50 published works, Charyn has earned a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life. Michael Chabon calls him “one of the most important writers in American literature.”

New York Newsday hailed Charyn as “a contemporary American Balzac,” and the Los Angeles Times described him as “absolutely unique among American writers.”

Since the 1964 release of Charyn’s first novel, Once Upon a Droshky, he has published 30 novels, three memoirs, eight graphic novels, two books about film, short stories, plays and works of non-fiction. Two of his memoirs were named New York Times Book of the Year. Charyn has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He received the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has been named Commander of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture.

Charyn was Distinguished Professor of Film Studies at the American University of Paris until he left teaching in 2009.

In addition to his writing and teaching, Charyn is a tournament table tennis player, once ranked in the top 10 percent of players in France. Noted novelist Don DeLillo called Charyn’s book on table tennis, Sizzling Chops & Devilish Spins, "The Sun Also Rises of ping-pong."

Charyn lives in Paris and New York City.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for reading Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil, and for your interesting review. The true story of Joe and Marilyn is romantic and sad, but not widely known - it explains a lot about why Joe became the man he was after baseball. I invite you to come visit the book's facebook page: http://on.fb.me/JoeDiMaggioFacebook

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Mandy for the great review and for hosting a stop on the blog tour.

    You raise some interesting points - Was Joe's reclusive status a choice or not? What has the commercialization of baseball done to the game itself?

    As a fellow baseball fan, I hope you're enjoying the beginning of the 2011 season.

    ReplyDelete

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