Thomas Mallon

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Thomas Mallon
Born (1951-11-02) November 2, 1951 (age 72)
Glen Cove, New York, U.S.
EducationBrown University (BA)
Harvard University (MA, PhD)
Website
Official website

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.

the Kennedy assassination
(Mrs. Paine's Garage), as well as two volumes of essays (Rockets and Rodeos and In Fact).

He is a former

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 to 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.[2]

Early life and education

Thomas Vincent Mallon was born in Glen Cove, New York, and grew up in Stewart Manor, New York, both 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".[3]

Mallon studied 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.[4]

Mallon earned a

tenure
at Vassar College, where he taught English from 1979 to 1991.

Writing career

Mallon's writing style is characterized by wit, charm 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".[5]

A Book of One's Own, an informal guide to the great diaries of literature, was published in 1984 and gave Mallon his first dose of critical acclaim.

Rockefeller Fellowship in 1986.[6]

Mallon then began publishing fiction, a genre in which he had 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, established 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.[7] 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."[8]

Historical fiction, Mallon has declared 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.[9] 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.[10]

After the publication of Henry and Clara, Mallon went on to write seven more works of historical fiction, including his most recent novels, Watergate (2012), Finale (2015), and Landfall (2019). Watergate, a finalist for the 2013

President Ronald Reagan engages in two almost apocalyptic days of negotiation with Mikhail Gorbachev.[13] Readers of Finale find themselves in the shoes of many characters both central and peripheral to the Reagan presidency – from Nancy Reagan to Richard Nixon to actress Bette Davis.[14]

Landfall, Mallon's 2019 novel, takes place during the George W. Bush years against a backdrop of political catastrophe: the Iraq insurgency and Hurricane Katrina, in particular. At the center of the narrative, though, is a love affair between two West Texans, Ross Weatherall and Allison O'Connor, whose destinies have been intertwined with Bush's for decades.

Awards and nominations

Later life

Openly gay, Mallon currently lives with his longtime partner, William Bodenschatz, in Washington, DC, and is a professor emeritus of English at

The George Washington University.[15] He once described himself as a "supposed literary intellectual/homosexual/Republican."[16] During the 2016 election he was actively involved in Scholars and Writers Against Trump,[17] a group of disaffected conservatives.[18] He left the Republican Party in November 2016.[citation needed
]

See also

Bibliography

Thomas Mallon in 2009

Books

Nonfiction

  • Edmund Blunden. Boston: Twayne. 1983.
  • A book of one's own : people and their diaries. Ticknor & Fields. 1984.
  • Stolen words : forays into the origins and ravages of plagiarism. Ticknor & Fields. 1989.
  • Rockets and rodeos and other American spectacles. Diane Publishing Co. 1993.
  • In fact : essays on writers and writing. Pantheon. 2001.
  • Mrs. Paine's Garage and the murder of John F. Kennedy. Pantheon. 2002.
  • Yours ever : people and their letters. Pantheon. 2009.

Fiction

Essays and reporting

Critical studies and reviews of Mallon's work

  • Bliven, Naomi (January 21, 1985). "Quiddities". The New Yorker. 60 (49): 92–93. Review of A Book of One's Own.
  • Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (December 7, 1989). "Word thieves and what compels them". The New York Times. Review of Stolen words.
  • Gingher, Marianne (February 17, 1991). "Through space and time". The Washington Post. Review of Aurora 7.
  • Goodwin, Stephen (February 24, 1993). "Thomas Mallon's American Pie". USA Today: 20. Review of Rockets and rodeos and other American spectacles.
  • Updike, John (September 5, 1994). "Excellent humbug". The New Yorker. 70: 102–105. Review of Henry and Clara.
  • Wood, James (December 31, 1996). "Those little-town blues". Slate. Review of Dewey defeats Truman.
  • Mitgang, Herbert (January 26, 1997). "Master of detail". Chicago Tribune. Review of Dewey defeats Truman.
  • Weber, Katharine (April 9, 2000). "Starry-eyed". The Washington Post. Review of Two Moons.
  • Pritchard, William H. (January 14, 2001). "The company he keeps".
    New York Times Book Review
    : 13.     Review of In fact : essays on writers and writing.
  • Upchurch, Michael (January 20, 2002). "How history happens". Chicago Tribune. Review of Mrs. Paine's Garage and the murder of John F. Kennedy.
  • Gibbons, Kaye (February 8, 2004). "The '20s roar again with rollicking energy". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Review of Bandbox.
  • Smith, Wendy (April 29, 2007). "Opportunism knocks". Los Angeles Times Book Review. Review of Fellow Travelers.
  • Birns, Nicholas (2009). "Thomas Mallon". American Writers. Supplement (XIX): 131–47. Survey of Mallon’s career up to 2008.
  • Schiff, Stacy (November 29, 2009). "Please Mr. Postman".
    New York Times Book Review
    : 13.     Review of Yours Ever.
  • Alabanese, Andrew Richard (November 30, 2009). "Man of letters". Publishers Weekly: 22–24.
  • Maslin, Janet (February 15, 2012). "Nixon and friends, stalked with literary license : 'Watergate,' a novel by Thomas Mallon". Books of the Times. The New York Times.
  • Andersen, Kurt (February 11, 2019). "A Comic Novel About the George W. Bush No One Knows". The New York Times. Review of Landfall.
  • Swaim, Barton (February 15, 2019). "‘Landfall’ Review: How It Really Never Happened." The Wall Street Journal. Review of Landfall.

Interviews

Notes

  1. ^ Sayers, Valerie (August 21, 1994). "Sunday Book Review of Henry and Clara by Thomas Mallon". NY Times.
  2. ^ Online version is titled "Mario Vargas Llosa’s mad Peru".
  3. ^ Online version is titled "Can the G.O.P. ever reclaim Wendell Willkie’s legacy?".
  4. ^ Online version is titled "How the promise of normalcy won the 1920 election".

References

  1. ^ "Atlantic Unbound | Interviews | 2004.01.09". www.theatlantic.com. Retrieved December 12, 2019.
  2. ^ "Thomas Mallon Elected to American Academy of Arts & Sciences." GW Today (April 19, 2012) Retrieved 2012-06-08
  3. ^ Michael McGregor, "Thomas Mallon," Twenty-First-Century American Novelists, Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 350. Gale Cengage Learning.
  4. ^ André Bernard, "An Interview with Thomas Mallon," Five Points, vol. XIII (January 2009): 97–114.
  5. ^ André Bernard, "An Interview with Thomas Mallon," Five Points, vol. XIII (January 2009): 97-114.
  6. ^ Thomas Mallon, "Introduction," A Book of One's Own. Ticknor and Fields (1984).
  7. ^ Thomas Mallon. Henry and Clara. Picador: August 15, 1995.
  8. ^ John Updike, "Excellent Humbug," New Yorker, 70 (5 September 1994): 102-105.
  9. ^ Michael Coffey, "Thomas Mallon: Picturing History and Seeing Stars," Publishers Weekly (January 20, 1997): 380–381.
  10. ^ Joe Queenan, "Ghosts in the Machine," The New York Times (20 March 2005). Retrieved 2009-11-16.
  11. ISSN 0190-8286
    . Retrieved May 4, 2023.
  12. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved February 22, 2023.
  13. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved December 12, 2019.
  14. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved December 12, 2019.
  15. ^ "Mallon, Thomas: English Department: Columbian College of Arts & Sciences: The George Washington University". The George Washington University. Retrieved April 3, 2024.
  16. ^ [failed verification]Mallon, Thomas (March 21, 2016). "Battle Cry of the Elite". New York Magazine (March 21-April 7, 2016): 27. Retrieved April 1, 2016.
  17. ^ Schaub, Michael (November 8, 2016). "Authors in support of Donald Trump are conservative thinkers and academics; plus one radical Marxist". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved September 16, 2022.
  18. ^ "Scholars and Writers Against Trump". Scholars and Writers Against Trump. Retrieved September 16, 2022.

External links

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