Joe Dimaggio (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Richard Ben Cramer
- First Published: 2000
- Type of Work: Biography
- Time of Work: 1915-1999
- Setting: The United States, primarily New York City and San Francisco
- Principal Characters: Joseph Paul DiMaggio, Giuseppe, Vince, Dorothy (Olson) Arnold, Joseph Paul DiMaggio, Jr., Marilyn Monroe, Morris Engelberg, F. S. (Lefty) O’Doul, Vernon (Lefty) Gomez, Joe McCarthy
- Genres: Nonfiction, Biography
- Subjects: 1950’s, 1960’s, 1970’s, New York, United States or Americans, Twentieth century, 1940’s, 1910’s, 1920’s, 1930’s, 1980’s, California, San Francisco, Heroes or heroism, Baseball, 1990’s
- Locales: New York, NY, United States, San Francisco, CA
Richard Ben Cramer teeters adroitly between the startling and the sympathetic in this blockbuster psychobiography of the legendary Joe DiMaggio, who died in 1999 at eighty-four. In effect, Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life chronicles a variation on the Greek myth of Narcissus. The young DiMaggio falls in love with his own image, but so do hordes of worshipers who transform him not into a flower but into a split personality.
In matters of seeing and being seen, the “Yankee Clipper” (as DiMaggio was christened by broadcaster Arch McDonald, who likened the...
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