Ziff: A Life?: A Novel [Hardcover]

Alan Lelchuk (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 22, 2003

Ziff: A Life? is the latest tour de force by an extraordinary novelist with explosive verbal energy and intelligence, sexual sensibility, and drive, who has been acclaimed by Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and Wallace Stegner. 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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A writer on the skids must decide whether to betray his mentor, a Jewish giant in the world of letters, in Lelchuk's (Playing the Game) clever literary cat-and-mouse game. Daniel Levitan is the fading 60-year-old novelist whose career is in an extended slump when he gets a six-figure offer to write a tell-all biography about Arthur Ziff, the charismatic, libertine author who gave Levitan his first break (and is still alive and well). Enticed by the money, Levitan overcomes his reluctance to dish the dirt on his friend and plunges into the research. His first break comes when Ziff's ex-wife, a famous French actress, supplies him with a ready-made, typed copy of her journal, then takes Levitan to Ziff's purported favorite bondage club in Manhattan. A trip to Europe to meet one of Ziff's former lovers provides some unprovable stories about Ziff's scandalous sexual behavior. But the arrogant, inimitable Ziff fires back, threatening his former prot‚g‚ with libel and then mocking Levitan in a savage short story that runs in a national literary magazine. The duel between biographer and subject culminates with a battle of the books: the publication of Ziff: A Life coincides with the appearance of Ziff's crowning work, a Holocaust novel. Lelchuk's sendup of literary catfights and author egos is often amusing, though the book could have been pared down, and there may be too many in-jokes for those who don't follow the works and exploits of aging American Jewish novelists closely. There will be speculation about Ziff's resemblance to a certain well-known writer.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Dimming literary light Danny Levitan takes a last shot at glory by penning a biography of his onetime mentor and sometime friend, Arthur Ziff, a great American writer whom many Jews consider a traitor, and whose sex-charged novels have been overlooked by the Pulitzer and Nobel committees. What gives this story frisson is author Lelchuk's similar relationship with Philip Roth. It's a dynamite setup, unfortunately sabotaged by prose that's often self-indulgent, repetitive, and flat. As he tracks Ziff, Levitan raises interesting questions about the nature of biography, friendship, and literary careers but mostly fails to answer them. Instead, we get meandering sections of the biography draft, absurdly romanticized research trips, and a home life that veers between Levitan's charming boys and a two-dimensional wife we mostly pity. But whenever the sly, profane, brilliantly manipulative Ziff shows up, the story crackles--suggesting this material would have made a superb novella. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf; 1St Edition edition (January 22, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786711159
• ISBN-13: 978-0786711154
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,210,637 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A roman à clef for which I didn't have the key, May 18, 2003

By 

J Scott Morrison (Middlebury VT, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ziff: A Life?: A Novel (Hardcover)

I can admire Alan Lelchuk's craft; he is a good writer. The structure of the book is clever and the plotting is expert. But the subject matter here - the kind of ambition and duplicity that apparently obtains amongst older Jewish-American novelists - is tiresome, to me at least. I am fairly sure that this is a roman à clef, but since I don't keep up with what's going on in the world of East Coast Jewish authorial circles, the wink-and-a-nudge references were nonetheless frustratingly obscure. That, coupled with the distasteful self-absorption of the characters themselves, made this book a slog for me.

My advice: If you read the New York Review of Books, if you have an interest in the politics, in-jokes and gossip of that world, this might be for you. Otherwise I'd really suggest you give it a pass.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Serious Novel Needing Serious Attention, May 20, 2003

By 

Marianna Vieira - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ziff: A Life?: A Novel (Hardcover)

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.