Thomas Mallon

Thomas Mallon
Born	(1951-11-02) November 2, 1951 Glen Cove, New York, U.S.
Education	Brown University (BA) Harvard University (MA, PhD)
Website
Official website

Thomas Mallon (born November 2, 1951) is an American novelist, essayist, and critic. His novels are renowned for their attention to historical detail and context and for the author's crisp wit and interest in the "bystanders" to larger historical events. He is the author of ten books of fiction, including Henry and Clara, Two Moons, Dewey Defeats Truman, Aurora 7, Bandbox, Fellow Travelers (recently adapted into a miniseries by the same name), Watergate, Finale, Landfall, and most recently Up With the Sun. He has also published nonfiction on plagiarism (Stolen Words), diaries (A Book of One's Own), letters (Yours Ever) and the Kennedy assassination (Mrs. Paine's Garage), as well as two volumes of essays (Rockets and Rodeos and In Fact).

He is a former literary editor of Gentleman's Quarterly, where he wrote the "Doubting Thomas" column in the 1990s, and has contributed frequently to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The American Scholar, and other periodicals. He was appointed a member of the National Council on the Humanities in 2002 and served as Deputy Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2005 to 2006.

His honors include Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, the National Book Critics Circle citation for reviewing, and the Vursell prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for distinguished prose style. He was elected as a new member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012.

Early life and education

Thomas Vincent Mallon was born in Glen Cove, New York, and grew up in Stewart Manor, New York, both on Long Island. His father, Arthur Mallon, was a salesman and his mother, Caroline, kept the home. Mallon graduated from Sewanhaka High School in 1969. He has often said that he had "the kind of happy childhood that is so damaging to a writer".

Mallon studied English at Brown University, where he wrote his undergraduate honors thesis on American author Mary McCarthy. He credits McCarthy, with whom he later became friends, as the most enduring influence on his career as a writer.

Mallon earned a Master of Arts and a Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he wrote his dissertation on the English World War I poet Edmund Blunden. On sabbatical from Vassar College in 1982–1983, Mallon spent a year as a visiting scholar at St. Edmund's House (later College) at Cambridge University, where he drafted most of A Book of One's Own, a work of nonfiction about diarists and diary-writing. The book's rather unexpected success earned Mallon tenure at Vassar College, where he taught English from 1979 to 1991.

Writing career

Mallon's writing style is characterized by wit, charm and a meticulous attention to detail and character development. His nonfiction often explores "fringe" genres—diaries, letters, plagiarism—just as his fiction frequently tells the stories of characters "on the fringes of big events".

A Book of One's Own, an informal guide to the great diaries of literature, was published in 1984 and gave Mallon his first dose of critical acclaim. Richard Eder, writing in the Los Angeles Times (28 November 1984) called the book "an engaging meditation on the varied and irrepressible spirit of life that insists on preserving itself on paper." In A Book of One's Own, Mallon covers a wide range of diarists from Samuel Pepys to Anais Nin. He explained his enthusiasm for the genre by saying: "Writing books is too good an idea to be left to authors." The success of A Book of One's Own won Mallon a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1986.

Mallon then began publishing fiction, a genre in which he had informally dabbled throughout childhood and young adulthood. Mallon published his first novel, Arts and Sciences, in 1988 about Arthur Dunne, a 22-year-old Harvard graduate student in English. Soon after its publication, in 1989, Mallon released a second nonfiction book called Stolen Words: Forays Into the Origins and Ravages of Plagiarism.

Henry and Clara, published in 1994, established Mallon as a writer of historical fiction from that point forward. The novel traces the lives of Major Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris, the young couple who accompanied Abraham Lincoln to Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865. A story of star-crossed lovers intermingles with personal and political tragedies and spans the couple's first meeting in childhood to their eventual derangement. Mallon's writing career took a dramatic turn when John Updike praised Henry and Clara in The New Yorker, calling Mallon "one of the most interesting American novelists at work."

Historical fiction, Mallon has declared in interviews, is the genre in which he is most interested as a writer. "I think the main thing that has led me to write historical fiction is that it is a relief from the self," he explains. American political history has been perhaps his main subject and interest; in 1994, he was the ghostwriter of former Vice President Dan Quayle's memoir, Standing Firm.

After the publication of Henry and Clara, Mallon went on to write seven more works of historical fiction, including his most recent novels, Watergate (2012), Finale (2015), and Landfall (2019). Watergate, a finalist for the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, is a retelling of the Watergate scandal from the perspective of seven characters, some familiar to the public memory, such as Nixon's secretary Rose Mary Woods, and some brought to light from the sidelines of the scandal, such as Fred LaRue. Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years, one of the New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2015, takes readers to the political gridiron of Washington in 1986; the wealthiest enclaves of southern California; and the volcanic landscape of Iceland, where President Ronald Reagan engages in two almost apocalyptic days of negotiation with Mikhail Gorbachev. Readers of Finale find themselves in the shoes of many characters both central and peripheral to the Reagan presidency – from Nancy Reagan to Richard Nixon to actress Bette Davis.

Landfall, Mallon's 2019 novel, takes place during the George W. Bush years against a backdrop of political catastrophe: the Iraq insurgency and Hurricane Katrina, in particular. At the center of the narrative, though, is a love affair between two West Texans, Ross Weatherall and Allison O'Connor, whose destinies have been intertwined with Bush's for decades.

Awards and nominations

• Phi Beta Kappa, 1972
• Rockefeller Fellowship, 1986–87
• Ingram Merrill Award (for outstanding work as a writer), 1994
• Great Lakes Book Award for Fiction, 1998, for Dewey Defeats Truman
• National Book Critics Circle Award (Nona Balakian Citation) for Excellence in Reviewing, 1998
• Guggenheim Fellowship, 2000–2001
• Dictionary of Literary Biography Award for Distinguished Criticism, 2002
• Finalist for 2007 Lambda Literary Award for Fellow Travelers
• American Academy of Arts and Letters' Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award for prose style ($10,000 prize; conferred May 2011)
• Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2012
• Finalist, PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (For Watergate, 2013)

Later life

Openly gay, Mallon currently lives with his longtime partner, William Bodenschatz, in Washington, DC, and is a professor emeritus of English at The George Washington University. He once described himself as a "supposed literary intellectual/homosexual/Republican." During the 2016 election he was actively involved in Scholars and Writers Against Trump, a group of disaffected conservatives. He left the Republican Party in November 2016.

See also

• List of historical novelists
• Fellow Travelers (opera)
• Fellow Travelers (miniseries)

Bibliography

Thomas Mallon in 2009

Books

Nonfiction

• Edmund Blunden. Boston: Twayne. 1983.
• A book of one's own : people and their diaries. Ticknor & Fields. 1984.
• Stolen words : forays into the origins and ravages of plagiarism. Ticknor & Fields. 1989.
• Rockets and rodeos and other American spectacles. Diane Publishing Co. 1993.
• In fact : essays on writers and writing. Pantheon. 2001.
• Mrs. Paine's Garage and the murder of John F. Kennedy. Pantheon. 2002.
• Yours ever : people and their letters. Pantheon. 2009.

Fiction

• Arts and Sciences : a Seventies seduction. Ticknor & Fields. 1988.
• Aurora 7. Ticknor & Fields. 1991.
• Henry and Clara. Ticknor & Fields. 1994.
• Dewey Defeats Truman. Pantheon. 1997.
• Two Moons. Pantheon. 2000.
• Bandbox. Pantheon. 2004.
• Fellow Travelers. Pantheon. 2007.
• Watergate : a novel. Pantheon. 2012.
• Finale : a novel. Pantheon. 2015.
• Landfall : a novel. Pantheon. 2019.
• Up with the sun. Knopf. 2023.

Essays and reporting

• "Bookmarks: Mrs. Paine's Garage and the murder of John F. Kennedy". The Wall Street Journal. January 18, 2002.
• "Transfigured : how Muriel Spark rose to join the crème de la crème of British fiction". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. 86 (8): 68–73. April 5, 2010.
• "Wag the dog : the making of Richard Nixon". The Critics. A Critic at Large. The New Yorker. 88 (46): 68–74. February 4, 2013.
• "Less said : a biographer speaks up for Calvin Coolidge". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. 89 (4): 66–71. March 11, 2013.
• "Restless realism : Mario Vargas Llosa's imagined lives". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. 91 (4): 78–82. March 16, 2015.
• "Frenemies: The combative camaraderie of Norman Mailer and William F. Buckley, Jr". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. 91 (15): 68–72. June 1, 2015.
• "Presumptive". The Critics. Life and Letters. The New Yorker. October 31, 2016.
• “Jack Be Nimble: Trying to Remember JFK.” The Critics. Life and Letters. The New Yorker, May 22, 2017.
• "The electric man : the rise and fall of Wendell Willkie". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. 94 (28): 59–64. September 17, 2018.
• "The normalcy election : what can we learn from the fears and longings of the 1920 campaign?". American Chronicles. The New Yorker. 96 (28): 26–30. September 21, 2020.

Critical studies and reviews of Mallon's work

• Bliven, Naomi (January 21, 1985). "Quiddities". The New Yorker. 60 (49): 92–93. Review of A Book of One's Own.
• Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (December 7, 1989). "Word thieves and what compels them". The New York Times. Review of Stolen words.
• Gingher, Marianne (February 17, 1991). "Through space and time". The Washington Post. Review of Aurora 7.
• Goodwin, Stephen (February 24, 1993). "Thomas Mallon's American Pie". USA Today: 20. Review of Rockets and rodeos and other American spectacles.
• Updike, John (September 5, 1994). "Excellent humbug". The New Yorker. 70: 102–105. Review of Henry and Clara.
• Wood, James (December 31, 1996). "Those little-town blues". Slate. Review of Dewey defeats Truman.
• Mitgang, Herbert (January 26, 1997). "Master of detail". Chicago Tribune. Review of Dewey defeats Truman.
• Weber, Katharine (April 9, 2000). "Starry-eyed". The Washington Post. Review of Two Moons.
• Pritchard, William H. (January 14, 2001). "The company he keeps". New York Times Book Review: 13. Review of In fact : essays on writers and writing.
• Upchurch, Michael (January 20, 2002). "How history happens". Chicago Tribune. Review of Mrs. Paine's Garage and the murder of John F. Kennedy.
• Gibbons, Kaye (February 8, 2004). "The '20s roar again with rollicking energy". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Review of Bandbox.
• Smith, Wendy (April 29, 2007). "Opportunism knocks". Los Angeles Times Book Review. Review of Fellow Travelers.
• Birns, Nicholas (2009). "Thomas Mallon". American Writers. Supplement (XIX): 131–47. Survey of Mallon’s career up to 2008.
• Schiff, Stacy (November 29, 2009). "Please Mr. Postman". New York Times Book Review: 13. Review of Yours Ever.
• Alabanese, Andrew Richard (November 30, 2009). "Man of letters". Publishers Weekly: 22–24.
• Maslin, Janet (February 15, 2012). "Nixon and friends, stalked with literary license : 'Watergate,' a novel by Thomas Mallon". Books of the Times. The New York Times.
• Andersen, Kurt (February 11, 2019). "A Comic Novel About the George W. Bush No One Knows". The New York Times. Review of Landfall.
• Swaim, Barton (February 15, 2019). "‘Landfall’ Review: How It Really Never Happened." The Wall Street Journal. Review of Landfall.

Interviews

• Daly, Gay (May 20, 1985). "In his own words". People.
• Coffey, Michael (January 20, 1997). "Thomas Mallon : picturing history and seeing stars". Publishers Weekly: 380–381.
• McGregor, Michael (December 2003). "An interview with novelist and critic Thomas Mallon". The Writer's Chronicle: 16–23.
• Morton, Paul (August 2007). "An interview with Thomas Mallon". Bookslut.
• Haskell, Arlo (February 9, 2008). "Plausible presence : a conversation with Thomas Mallon". Littoral : the blog of the Key West Literary Seminar.
• Kauffman, Bill (June 2009). "Moonstruck : a chat with novelist Thomas Mallon". The American Enterprise: 41–43.
• Smith, Evan (October 8, 2015). "Thomas Mallon." Overheard with Evan Smith.
• Akst, Daniel (March 1, 2019). "Fictionalizing History, With Republicans at Center Stage". The Wall Street Journal.

External links

• Thomas Mallon's Website
• Mostly Fiction Review of Bandbox
• Thomas Mallon: "Watergate: A Novel"
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• "Two Moons" by Thomas Mallon