Thomas Mallon (born November 2, 1951)

[reviews_and_ramblings]

Thomas Mallon (born November 2, 1951) is an American novelist, essayist, and critic. His novels are renowned for their attention to historical detail and context and for the author’s crisp wit and interest in the “bystanders” to larger historical events. He is the author of eight books of fiction, including Henry and Clara, Two Moons, Dewey Defeats Truman, Aurora 7, Bandbox, Fellow Travelers, and most recently Watergate. He has also published nonfiction on plagiarism (Stolen Words), diaries (A Book of One’s Own), letters (Yours Ever) and the Kennedy assassination (Mrs. Paine’s Garage), as well as two volumes of essays (Rockets and Rodeos and In Fact).

He is a former literary editor of Gentleman’s Quarterly, where he wrote the "Doubting Thomas" column in the 1990s, and has contributed frequently to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The American Scholar, and other periodicals. He was appointed a member of the National Council on the Humanities in 2002 and served as Deputy Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2005-2006.

His honors include Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, the National Book Critics Circle citation for reviewing, and the Vursell prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for distinguished prose style. He was elected as a new member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012.

Thomas Vincent Mallon was born in Glen Cove, New York and grew up in Stewart Manor, N.Y., on Long Island. His father, Arthur Mallon, was a salesman and his mother, Caroline, kept the home. Mallon graduated from Sewanhaka High School in 1969. He has often said that he had “the kind of happy childhood that is so damaging to a writer.”

Mallon went on to study English at Brown University, where he wrote his undergraduate honors thesis on American author Mary McCarthy. He credits McCarthy, with whom he later became friends, as the most enduring influence on his career as a writer.

Mallon earned a Master of Arts and a Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he wrote his dissertation on the English WWI poet Edmund Blunden. On sabbatical from Vassar College in 1982-1983, Mallon spent a year as a visiting scholar at St. Edmund’s House (later College) at Cambridge University. It was here that he drafted most of A Book of One’s Own, a work of nonfiction about diarists and diary-writing. The book’s rather unexpected success earned Mallon tenure at Vassar College, where he taught English from 1979-1991.

Thomas Mallon’s writing style is characterized by charm, wit, and a meticulous attention to detail and character development. His nonfiction often explores “fringe” genres—diaries, letters, plagiarism—just as his fiction frequently tells the stories of characters “on the fringes of big events.”

A Book of One’s Own, a sort of guide to the great diaries of literature, was published in 1984 and gave Mallon his first dose of critical acclaim. Richard Eder, writing in the Los Angeles Times (28 November 1984) called the book “an engaging meditation on the varied and irrepressible spirit of life that insists on preserving itself on paper.” In A Book of One’s Own, Mallon covers a wide range of diarists from Samuel Pepys to Anais Nin. He explained his enthusiasm for the genre by saying: “Writing books is too good an idea to be left to authors.” The success of A Book of One’s Own won Mallon a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1986.

Mallon then began writing fiction, a genre in which he’d informally dabbled throughout childhood and young adulthood. Mallon published his first novel, Arts and Sciences, in 1988 about Arthur Dunne, a 22-year-old Harvard graduate student in English. Soon after its publication, in 1989, Mallon released a second nonfiction book called Stolen Words: Forays Into the Origins and Ravages of Plagiarism.

Henry and Clara, published in 1994, stamped Mallon as a writer of historical fiction from that point forward. The novel traces the lives of Major Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris, the young couple who accompanied Abraham Lincoln to Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. A story of star-crossed lovers intermingles with personal and political tragedies and spans the couple’s first meeting in childhood to their eventual derangement. Mallon’s writing career took a dramatic turn when John Updike praised Henry and Clara in The New Yorker, calling Mallon “one of the most interesting American novelists at work.”

Historical fiction, Mallon declares in interviews, is the genre in which he is most interested as a writer. “I think the main thing that has led me to write historical fiction is that it is a relief from the self,” he explains. After the publication of Henry and Clara, Mallon went on to write five more works of historical fiction, including his most recent novel and his fifteenth book, Watergate. American political history has been perhaps his main subject and interest; in 1994, he was the ghostwriter of former Vice President Dan Quayle’s memoir, Standing Firm.

Watergate, a finalist for the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, is a colorful retelling of the Watergate scandal from the perspective of seven characters, some familiar to the public memory, such as Nixon’s secretary Rose Mary Woods, and some brought to light from the sidelines of the scandal, such as Fred LaRue.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Mallon

Further Readings:

Fellow Travelers by Thomas Mallon
Series: Vintage
Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (May 6, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307388905
ISBN-13: 978-0307388902
Amazon: Fellow Travelers

It's 1950s Washington, D.C.: a world of bare-knuckled ideology and secret dossiers, dominated by personalities like Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, and Joe McCarthy. Enter Timothy Laughlin, a recent college graduate and devout Catholic eager to join the crusade against Communism. An encounter with a handsome State Department official, Hawkins Fuller, leads to Tim's first job and, after Fuller's advances, his first love affair. As McCarthy mounts a desperate bid for power and internal investigations focus on “sexual subversives” in the government, Tim and Fuller find it ever more dangerous to navigate their double lives. Moving between the diplomatic world of Foggy Bottom and NATO's front line in Europe, Fellow Travelers is a searing historical novel infused with political drama, unexpected humor, and genuine heartbreak.

More Spotlights at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Lists/Gay Novels

Comments

[mongrelheart.livejournal.com]

This sounds like a fascinating book, I'd definitely like to check it out.

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

It can be considered an historical ;-) I actually have this mind division, before WWII is historical, after WWII is contemporary, but now that the XXI century is well on, maybe I have to reconsider my standards.

[mongrelheart.livejournal.com]

*nodnod* Yes at first it sounds weird to think of the 1950s as "historical", but it does make sense, it was several generations ago in another time.

I'm personally interested in this book as well because my father was a diplomat working for the State Department, and we lived in Foggy Bottom when I was a young child. So he was very much a part of that world. Of course, it was a bit later (1970s) and my dad wasn't gay, hehe ;)

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

It has very good reviews, I have still to read it, I think it's quite serious, and I'm not in the mood now, but it's one of those books that I'm considering. Elisa

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

Fascinating topic!

At The Macaronis, we use Stonewall as our benchmark, though I think 50 years is more standard.

It's a curious feeling to know that part of your own life is now "historical," but I guess it happens to all of us if we live long enough.

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

Yes, it makes you feel old ;-) You can review this one for the SIN if it inspires you. Elisa

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

I don't do reviews, but this would be a good book to have on The List (Erastes' comprehensive list of gay historical fiction.)

[zamaxfield.livejournal.com]

I think I bought this book. I'll have to dig around and see if I can find it. If I didn't it's only because I was busy or something because it looked so intriguing at the time.

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

Ypu bought it but you haven't read it? It happens also to me, and sometime I read months later a book, and think, WOW, how is that it took me so long to read it? Elisa