Literary Lives [Hardcover]

Edward Sorel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 4, 2006

Award-winning caricaturist Edward Sorel uses his distinctive style to illustrate the strange and eccentric lives of ten iconic literary figures.

Literary Lives features the brief, unauthorized biographies of ten larger-than-life literary figures: Tolstoy, Sartre, Eliot, Proust, Yeats, Brecht, Jung, Rand, Mailer, and Hellman. Amusing and sometimes hard to believe (but always absolutely true), Sorel's vignettes depict, among other sparkling moments, Proust investing in a male brothel so he can peep at its clientele through a keyhole; Rand launching a torrid affair with a protégé half her age; Hellman pleading the Fifth in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities; Yeats attending his first séance; Simone de Beauvoir supplying Sartre with her students for his pleasure; Jung cozying up with the Nazis; Norman Mailer's disastrous candidacy for Mayor of New York; and Tolstoy setting his peasants free (and they, in turn, refusing to be emancipated).

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review.If caricaturist Sorel's goal with this series of short, illustrated biographies is to deflate the bloated personas of Proust, Sartre, Tolstoy and seven other of prominent literary figures, he has surely succeeded. Sorel, whose work appears in the New Yorker, the Atlantic and Vanity Fair, among others, sweeps through the portraits by focusing most of his attention on embarrassing foibles. There's a great deal to laugh at in his satirical take on this sexually promiscuous group of bombastic literati, such as the indelible images of an aging Ayn Rand enveloping her young male protégé, W.B. Yeats proposing repeatedly to the same woman for 25 years, or Norman Mailer plunging an ice pick into his wife at the 1960 announcement of his New York mayoral candidacy. As if Sorel's squiggly caricatures of wide-eyed figures prone to frequent fits of rage and grandeur aren't enough to cut his subjects down to size, his short lines of text further puncture with wrath. ("Still in pursuit of true Christianity, Tolstoy decides to give away his wealth by making his novels free of copyright. His wife is less than supportive" and "Yeats edits 'The Oxford Book of Modern Verse.' It includes three poems by Ezra Pound, three by W.H. Auden, and seven by a 29-year-old actress named Margot Ruddock, his current mistress.") The scathing effect of this quick read is best described in an introduction from E.L. Doctorow: "never have authors of such magnitude been so casually eviscerated."
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About the Author

Edward Sorel is an internationally known caricaturist and satirist, whose drawings have been exhibited in galleries and museums in Europe and the United States. In 1998, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., exhibited their large collection of his caricatures. Sorel is a regular contributor to the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, and Vanity Fair. Born in the Bronx, he now lives in Harlem with his wife, the writer Nancy Caldwell Sorel.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; First American Edition edition (April 4, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159691064X
• ISBN-13: 978-1596910645
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 6.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,053,380 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From now on, all lit crits must draw!, May 24, 2006

By 

MARGOT SHEEHAN (Gotham City) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Literary Lives (Hardcover)

Edward Sorel has always annoyed me because most of his stuff is political, and his politics are predictable. (I never liked Jules Feiffer, for the same reason.) But Sorel's inimitable line and color--ah! This is a guy whose aim is to produce the appearance of doodle-book spontaneity, and he's willing to redraw something a hundred times to get that effect.

So I love his art but hate his potted, derivative opinions. But this is a different kettle of beans.

Turns out he's got a very original wit, once you get him away from politics. His low-down anger and meanness skewer Ayn Rand, Sartre, Proust, Jung, Lillian Hellman and others, with a viciousness I've never seen displayed in by a--how you say?--purely typographical critic.

The seeming randomness of the selection itself borders on genius. Making fun of Sartre and Hellman--okay, fish in a barrel, right? But Proust, Tolstoy, Yeats, Jung? It's like satire planned by a nutritionist.

Most of these little illustrated bios were first printed in The Atlantic Monthly, where I saw one or two. Stitching a number of them together like this enhances rather than dilutes the effect of each one. You get the definite sense of a clear point-of-view, rather than a one-off ha-ha at the expense of a someone far grander than the lowly cartoonist.

I suppose he's getting on in years now, Sorel; he was doing political caricatures in Esquire when I was a little girl in the 60s. But I hope this Stracheyesque satire is the herald of a new career phrase, rather than just a small but gorgeous valedictory.

(POSTSCRIPT: I was trying to damn with faint praise when I wrote this, I think. Actually I'm a huge Sorel fan and chagrined to know he read my condescending words. I know he read them because he sent me a postcard of thanks (oof!) to my New York address. I am not fit to fill his inkwell. Thanks, Ed...and I'll let my foregoing embarrassment stand as mute testimony to my capacity for blather. Speaking of which, I've been looking over the old Esquire stuff, and it holds up very well.)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pure gold, February 8, 2007

By 

Lionel G. Standing (Sherbrooke, Quebec) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Literary Lives (Hardcover)

Although short, this brilliant little book is replete with merciless venom, skillfully directed towards literary celebrities who indeed deserve it, and with a visual skill worthy of comparison with the great caricaturists of the past like Hogarth or Daumier. So far as I can judge, everything he says is literally true. He does not show his targets 'warts and all', but rather as warts, period. Altogether this makes for an exhilarating romp through the depths of human credulity, cupidity and perversity. Totally delightful!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Literary Lives--Illegal Transport, August 16, 2006

By 

Judith A. Foosaner (Sacramento, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Literary Lives (Hardcover)

More fun than is probably legal, Literary Lives is Edward Sorel at his very best. The writing is robust, irreverant and spicy; the drawing ferociously alive. I read this in the dentist's chair, on a fast train, in a darkened room and in other unnameable places. I love it, my dentist loves it and my friends love it. A marvelous vista and a delicious read.