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Sleeping With Bad Boys: A 1956 Playboy Model's Escapades with James Dean,  Hugh Hefner, Norman Mailer and the famous writers of the 1950's beat generation
 
 
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Sleeping With Bad Boys: A 1956 Playboy Model's Escapades with James Dean, Hugh Hefner, Norman Mailer and the famous writers of the 1950's beat generation (Paperback)

~ Alice Denham (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

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Customers buy this book with Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir by Joyce Johnson

Sleeping With Bad Boys: A 1956 Playboy Model's Escapades with James Dean,  Hugh Hefner, Norman Mailer and the famous writers of the 1950's beat generation + Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Denham, an essayist, television writer and the only woman whose fiction and breasts have appeared in the same issue of Playboy, offers up a fast-paced memoir that chronicles how a pretty girl from suburban Washington ended up on a bar stool at the storied Lion's Head. Run-ins with notorious figures-Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, Marlon Brando, Hugh Hefner-pepper nearly every page, though readers interested in the hot dirt promised by the flap copy will be disappointed, as the "bad boys" here come off as little more than horny juveniles, and Denham skimps on the steam when she sacks with, say, James Dean. Most of the narrative is consumed with her slow-out-of-the-gate literary career that limps along; as her peers became icons, Denham modeled until the gigs dried up, and then wrote freelance. Though Denham reveals little that isn't widely known (Roth is a perv, Mailer is a freak), the sheer number of names dropped and follies recounted make for a fast and fun read.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


Product Description

Alice Denham's lusty memoir is a juicy tell-all about a time when male writers were gods and an aspiring and gorgeous female novelist tries to win respect—and sometimes more. Caught between the sheets are James Dean, Norman Mailer, Hugh Hefner, Philip Roth, and William Gaddis. The steam rises page by page as Denham—the only Playboy Playmate to have her fiction published in the same issue as her centerfold—chases her dream of writing as a young, oversexed beauty in the literary swirl of 1950s Greenwich Village, New York City.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Cardoza (November 7, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1580422063
  • ISBN-13: 978-1580422062
  • Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #818,930 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Denham, Alice
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Customer Reviews

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Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Lit Celeb Sex, November 5, 2006
The title of this book promises lots of steamy sex, and it delivers in spades. Denham loved sex, and makes no bones about it. From a strategic location in Greenwich Village she knew the leading literary lights of the fifties and sixties, and slept with any of them she cared to. Her descriptions are not so much graphic as emotionally complete. Some of her flights of lyricism are so wonderful that the male reader gets to experience what he can never experience, how it feels to a woman in the throes of ecstacy.
But, although Denham slept with a lot of stars, she was no starjumper. She politely turned down some of the biggest lit stars of the era, and managed to maintain good friendships with them at the same time. Her morality was not conventional, but nonetheless it was there. In the sixties when swinging came into vogue, and Plato's Retreat was the new hot thing in New York she was simply turned off by that scene. She did not require love, but she did require at least friendship and chemistry.
But, in spite of the title, and in spite of the beauty of the way it's rendered, sex is not the best thing about this book. The description of the lit life of the era surpasses that, and the description of the difficulties of being female at a time when women were second class, not thought worthy of their typewriters surpasses that. The best chapters of this book describe her friendship with Katherine Anne Porter. This is fine writing, deeply touching, and a great story.
Denham has never been given the credit she deserves as a serious writer. She is not merely good. She is magnificent.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Sleeping With Bad Boys: Alice Denham's excellent, fun and intriguing memoir, November 7, 2006
By Maria Arrillaga (Woodstock, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Sleeping With Bad Boys, Alice Denham's memoir about literary NY in the 1950s and 60s, reads like an intriguing, absorbing novel. Her talent for creating characters, not only the whole gallery of interesting people that appear in the book, but her very own narrative voice, is excellent. The well developed story line, with its twists of fate and suspense, creates an incredibly moving, tight, awesome under current of that so very special combine of the struggle for creativity, love, life itself.

Maria Arrillaga
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Invaluable Literary History, November 6, 2006
By Steven Moore (Ann Arbor, Michigan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Though this smart, well-written book will mostly be bought for its gossip, "Sleeping with Bad Boys" is an invaluable literary history source for certain American writers who emerged in the 1950s. We learn much about underappreciated novelist David Markson, for example, and especially about William Gaddis, for whom little biographical info exists. (Two of his letters are quoted in their entirety.) There are eye-opening passages about Mailer, Roth, Heller, Porter, and others, and shocking accounts of how old-boy misogyny persisted in the publishing community throughout the Sixties. This is probably the only work of literary history with a photo-insert of pinup images, but this an enlightening, impassioned book that deserves a wide readership.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Sex, Truth, and Books: The Apprenticeship of Alice Denham
SLEEPING WITH BAD BOYS is a provocative, titillating title, to be sure. Sex sells, and Alice Denham doesn't disappoint with this book. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Wim Coleman and Pat Perrin

5.0 out of 5 stars Boys and Girls Together
If you love the AMC TV series THE MAD MEN, with its highly stylized picture of Manhattan life circa 1960, you have to read this book! Alice Denham is a trip! Read more
Published on October 19, 2007 by Kevin Killian

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic read!
An excellent retelling of her literary and sexual exploits during the 50s. Because she knew so many famous authors, it's also a fun look through a different angle of the beat... Read more
Published on August 14, 2007 by Louisa Berk

5.0 out of 5 stars Utterly absorbing from cover to cover and enthusiastically recommended.
Author Alice Denham, whose writings have appeared in "The New York Times", "New York" magazine, "Cosmopolitan", and "Playboy" (her fiction was published in the same issue as her... Read more
Published on May 12, 2007 by Midwest Book Review

3.0 out of 5 stars Carl
Her struggle to succeed in publishing her writing is admirable, but the titillating bits of sexual exploits though interesting detract from the main story.
Published on February 6, 2007 by Carl Eugene Wilson

5.0 out of 5 stars Fools are they who kiss and tell
Fools are they who kiss and tell the wise poet once sung. Man can hold many a place if he can only hold his tongue. Because of that, I usually avoid kiss and tell books. Read more
Published on December 31, 2006 by Bernard M. Patten

2.0 out of 5 stars No Exley, Alice?!?
Unfortunately, like the rest of the world, Miss Denham has forgotten poor Fred Exley!

Otherwise, this is a fun, breezy read.
Published on December 6, 2006 by Mr. Blue

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