Tough Guy encompasses all other serious biographies such as those by Peter Manso, J Michael Lennon and Carl Rollyson, and Bradford is careful to cite all his references. It is smoothly done. But if this lively biography ends up being a damning speech for the prosecution, well, pugilistic old Norman is simply receiving a dose of his own medicine.
Bradford’s contention is that Mailer’s obstreperous life was the novel he didn’t have the time or the talent to produce. It’s a flippant misjudgment ... Bradford... after spending a few pages on Mailer’s war novel The Naked and the Dead dismisses all of his subsequent work, which he variously calls unreadable, ludicrous, incomprehensible, atrocious and hilariously terrible; critics who disagree are accused of writing gibberish. This kind of 'wet job' – a CIA euphemism for assassination – is Bradford’s speciality ... Even at his maddest, Mailer deserves a better memorial.
This book is appropriately action-packed. The way Bradford accumulates detail effectively reflects Mailer’s protean, and too-frequently nihilistic, character ... On a production note, words are occasionally dropped from the text, and on page 189... the pioneering linguist Noam Chomsky is called Norman. Tough Guy is well-written and lurid, its subject a cautionary tale.
Bradford goes into excruciating detail in dethroning the famed novelist. At times, the reader suffers from too much information. We are exposed even to Mailer’s very early sexual urges. There is something off-putting — voyeuristic — about this, and one wonders at its point ... The book contains a bibliography but no list of archives, papers, or periodicals, nor any persons interviewed. Instead, Bradford seems to have relied almost exclusively on secondary sources. There are no end notes or footnotes, either ... The index, too, is curiously inadequate ... Still, in the end, Tough Guy adequately charts the controversies, the scandals, the successes, and the failures — in literature and in life — of its complicated subject.
Tough Guy is put together using what might best be regarded as a redundant template for each of the book’s 282 pages. The author delivers a quick and often condescending summary of an event in Mailer’s life, follows that with scornful commentary on whatever Mailer book coincides with the biographical moment, and then moves on ... Bradford’s sneering attitude makes for tedious, often exasperating reading ... Tough Guy comes off as part hatchet job, part poorly sourced Wikipedia entry, and part personal pettifoggery—all masquerading as thoughtful literary biography. Bradford doesn’t even bother with endnotes to back up his research.
Bradford seems to thrive only when sniping, deriding perceived flaws of style and soul, and discovering where the feet of clay are planted ... Few of Bradford’s observations are particularly original—he relies heavily on other secondary sources—but occasionally, he hits on a good one ... More often, Bradford falls into Albert Goldman–esque sanctimony ... It all seems a pointless exercise, but superciliousness is the coin of this particular critical realm.
... brisk but thin ... While Bradford offers a solid sense that Mailer could be unpleasant, he never quite digs into how, despite his wildly uneven output and appalling personal behavior, so many people championed him. There is no shortage of books on Mailer, and this one unfortunately doesn’t bring much new to the table.
