Tough Guys Don't Dance: A Novel
3/5
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About this ebook
Norman Mailer peers into the recesses and buried virtues of the modern American male in a brilliant crime novel that transcends genre. When Tim Madden, an unsuccessful writer living on Cape Cod, awakes with a gruesome hangover, a painful tattoo on his upper arm, and a severed female head in his marijuana stash, he has almost no memory of the night before. As he reconstructs the missing hours, Madden runs afoul of retired prizefighters, sex addicts, mediums, former cons, a world-weary ex-girlfriend, and his own father, old now but still a Herculean figure. Stunningly conceived and vividly composed, Tough Guys Don’t Dance represents Mailer at the peak of his powers.
Praise for Tough Guys Don’t Dance
“As brash, brooding and ultimately mesmerizing as the author himself . . . [Mailer strikes a] dazzling balance between humor and horror.”—New York Daily News
“A first-rate page-turner of a murder mystery . . . full of great characters, littered with dead bodies and replete with plausible suspects.”—Chicago Tribune
“[Tough Guys Don’t Dance] has that charming Mailer bravado.”—The New York Times
Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer (1923-2007) ha sido uno de los mayores escritores norteamericanos contemporáneos, así como una figura central en el panorama cultural: novelista, periodista, director de cine, activista político, aspirante a alcalde de Nueva York y enfant terrible todoterreno. Su primera novela, Los desnudos y los muertos, sobre la Segunda Guerra Mundial, que lo catapultó a la fama, ha sido publicada por Anagrama, donde también han aparecido Los ejércitos de la noche (Premio Pulitzer y National Book Award), La Canción del Verdugo (Premio Pulitzer), Oswald. Un misterio americano, Los tipos duros no bailan, El parque de los ciervos, El Evangelio según el Hijo, El fantasma de Harlot, ¿Por qué estamos en guerra?, América y El castillo en el bosque.
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Reviews for Tough Guys Don't Dance
177 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Set in 1984 in a New England seaside resort once the tourist season has finished,The main character is Tim Madden he wakes up covered in blood after a very heavy drunken night..A woman's head is discovered where he grows his hash, then another head.He doesn't think he committed these murders.There are a few dodgy characters and the chief of Police is actually the murderer. Very confusing book, I didn't like the characters and was glad to finish it.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tim Madden awakens from a night of drunken excess, still groggy and unable to recall anything of last night.
As the hangover clears he finds his car's passenger seat sticky with blood, a new tattoo with an old flame's name and the discovery of not one but two severed heads in the nearby woods, next to his secret marijuana stash.
Was he responsible for the murder of two women, or was the crooked police chief setting him up? Madden, a failed writer, has the story of a life time to write if he can sleuth his way through it and live. A couple of ex-cons and a pissed off homosexual, his own former cell-mate, all want him dead.
In Tough Guys Don't Dance, Mailer gives us many colorful characters, in his usual descriptive style, but don't be fooled. Through all the hard-nosed Irish and Portuguese on the streets of Cape Cod this book is worht the read for the flowing narrative language alone, and besides Madden is a tough guy, so why not give him the last dance. - Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Norman Mailer was quite a gifted writer. I say that having actually only read in full one of his books, this one. I have read excerpts of several of his other books and writings, and having also read in its entirety his recently published collected letters. The man had talent with the written word. He also had imagination, being able to craft a complex story and tell it from the perspective of a narrator who is fully immersed in that story. The problem, the singular problem with this book, is it's completely amoral position in regard to all of action of the story, action which has a decidedly moral aspect to it. The story is full of sex and violence yet not a one of the characters, form the narrator on down, ever seem to have a second thought about it. It happened. They did it. And then they proceed to whatever happens next. This book was written 31 years ago, so it is unlikely that a review written at this late date will carry any weight. In a sense this book is totally post-modern in its outlook on life. There is no sense of right or wrong, of good or bad, according to any standards outside those of the character at the moment. I usually pass along books I have read to a person or place where they may find another reading. Not this one. My copy has been removed from circulation, so to speak. Save yourself from wasting your time. If you want to read Mailer then pick something else. Myself, I haven't given up. I'm going to try to find a copy of the Executioner's Song.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A murder mystery that had the potential to be well done but failed in the end. Set in Provincetown, RI where Tim Madden is in a bit of depression from his wife having left him recently. He begins his night in a bar where he begins talking with a couple only to discover that in the morning they are both missing. Unable to remember the previous nights happenings he discovers the seat of his car is covered in blood and his arm stings from a tattoo with the name of a previous lover. He begins to piece together events of the night but he is still in a fog as to what occurred. The plot becomes entangled with corrupt police, criminals, and past lovers, all of which have a role to play. The book began out very intense but by the end I thought this was too unbelievable and was sadly disappointed. Plus it is very sexually explicit with many details I don't care to read about (skipped over those parts) and were in no real relevance to the story except to say that certain characters were sex addicts.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Not much fun and not much of a mystery. I can't for the life of me think of why Mailer would have taken what must have been at least a certain amount of time to write this book. For money is the only answer I can come up with. Did he make any? I guess so, since they made a movie out of it and that must have put something into his pocket.