Ziff: A Life?: A Novel

By Alan Lelchuk

Book Overview

Who is Arthur Ziff? One of our greatest living writers or an impertinent provocateur? A true literary master or a clever tactician who seduces the reading public? It is narrator Danny Levitan's job to find out who Ziff really is, in a compelling novel about the writing life that is at once comic and provocative, producing a memorable reading experience. Sensational publishing and serious literature collide when Levitan, a has-been writer, is offered a hefty advance to write a biography of Ziff, the scourge of myriad Jewish-American readers and a titan among the world's literary giants. For years, Ziff has been sharing secrets, manuscripts, and sexual escapades with his longtime and less successful friend Danny. But, old friendships aside, Ziff hardly welcomes an incendiary study of his life and is determined to thwart Danny, with legal roadblocks and personal humiliation. Danny must decide whether to accept the advance and risk the rollercoaster of recriminations that will surely follow. He recounts with humor and often wrenching anguish his journey of discovery into the land of Ziff, and the hard-won truths he finds there -- original insights into a man who has crafted his novels, often savagely, from the lives of his friends, including Danny's life. An unabashed look at the ruthless forging of literary careers and a heady brew of books within a book, Ziff: A Life? will enthrall readers of great fiction everywhere and anyone eager for a peek through the keyhole of contemporary literary celebrity.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786711159
• ISBN13: 9780786711154
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.3" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

A Serious Novel Needing Serious Attention

No serious reader of contemporary American fiction should pass this novel by. It's a splendid investigation of important themes like identity, celebrity, mortality,and personal authenticity. Unlike so many contemporary novelists, Lelchuk is truly and boldly self-revealing, not childishly exhibitionistic. ZIFF: A LIFE?, as it title suggests, is full of questions; its mood is one of frank skepticism, and its focus one of intense scrutiny of the self and the world, of assigned vs. achieved morality, of what it is to be a man, a writer, a friend, a mortal.There is no piety in this book and no currying for literary favor. It's not surprising that some publications and some critics are threatened by its interrogation of the literary status quo. I strongly urge those who are interested in the true cutting edge -- that of the original artist having his say without concern for passing fashion and passing authority -- buy this book today. Buy two -- give one to a friend.