Book Review/Tour: Joe DiMaggio:The Long Vigil by Jerome Charyn

Title: Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil (Icons of America)
Author: Jerome Charyn
Publisher: Yale University Press
Publication Date: March 8, 2011
Hardcover: 192 pages
ISBN: 978-0300123289
Genre: Non-Fiction, Biographies & Memoirs

Synopsis provided for the book tour:

As the New York Yankees’ star centerfielder from 1936 to 1951, Joe DiMaggio is enshrined in America’s memory as the epitome in sports of grace, dignity, and that ineffable quality called “class.” But his career after retirement, starting with his nine-month marriage to Marilyn Monroe, was far less auspicious. Writers like Gay Talese and Richard Ben Cramer have painted the private DiMaggio as cruel or self-centered. Now, Jerome Charyn restores the image of this American icon, looking at DiMaggio’s life in a more sympathetic light.

DiMaggio was a man of extremes, superbly talented on the field but privately insecure, passive, and dysfunctional. He never understood that for Monroe, on her own complex and tragic journey, marriage was a career move; he remained passionately committed to her throughout his life. He allowed himself to be turned into a sports memorabilia money machine. In the end, unable to define any role for himself other than “Greatest Living Ballplayer,” he became trapped in “a horrible kind of minutia.” But where others have seen little that was human behind that minutia, Charyn in Joe DiMaggio presents the tragedy of one of American sports’ greatest figure

My Review:

Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil by Jerome Charyn provides readers with a very interesting account of the late baseball great’s life, especially of his life after his illustrious baseball career.  I must admit that I do not follow baseball and have not read any baseball biographies and therefore have no basis on which to judge this biographical piece with respect to other works on DiMaggio.  That said, Charyn gives a compelling account of the pressures of being a celebrity as well as some of the rather unnerving obsessive behavior DiMaggio displayed throughout and after his tumultuous relationship with Marilyn Monroe.  In one sense, the author tells of how DiMaggio was driven by the need to be driven, a seemingly circular process, but then again, I think this may have been one of the underlying points Charyn was trying to make about the star.  All told, this is an intriguing biography of the baseball great, Joe DiMaggio, one that delves deep into his personal struggles with fame, love, loss, and the dichotomy of public celebrity and privacy.  I would recommend Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil to biography enthusiasts and to anyone with an interest in sports celebrities.

About the Author:

Jerome Charyn is the author of Johnny One-Eye, The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson, and The Seventh Babe, a novel about a white third baseman on the Red Sox who also played in the Negro Leagues. He divides his time between New York and Paris.

I received a complimentary copy of Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil by Jerome Caryn from Tribute Books to be a part of this tour and offer my honest review of the book. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned book.

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