Joe DiMaggio

February 1, 2011

A novelist's sympathetic meditation on the life of the legendary New York Yankee.

This latest in the publisher's Icons of America series is, perhaps, best understood as a response to Richard Ben Cramer's Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life (2000), a critical biography that, while acknowledging DiMaggio's preternatural gifts as a ballplayer, exposed the Yankee Clipper as an off-the-field nightmare of a person: friendless, greedy, and cheap. DiMaggio's mark on the game—three MVPs, 13-time All-Star, nine World Series championships, the untouchable 56-game hitting streak (see Kostya Kennedy's 56 for in-depth coverage)—and place in American cultural mythology endures. How was it that this splendid athlete lived a private life so appallingly at odds with his image? Charyn (The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson: A Novel, 2010, etc.) never contradicts Cramer's unsavory facts, but instead puts a kinder spin on them, painting Joltin' Joe as a baseball idiot savant, defined and ennobled by his isolation in centerfield and the batter's box, comfortable only within the confines of a game he perfectly understood, where his fierce will, intensity and pride drove him to win and made him, if not loved, certainly revered by the fans. The author identifies DiMaggio's need to be watched and desire for approval as the secret weakness of this shy, insecure man. Indeed, argues Charyn, DiMaggio's flaws—his morbid sensitivity, inability to bear mistakes and utter humorlessness—made him a better player. After baseball, this "legend without a purpose," whose only genuine language was "the lyricism of his own body," became a stilted spokesman and the central attraction of any memorabilia show lucky enough to secure the services of the Greatest Living Player. Otherwise, he spent his last four decades carrying a torch for the deceased Marilyn Monroe, once famously and briefly his wife, who baffled him completely.

Though sometimes over the top as he reimagines DiMaggio—"[Yankee] Stadium's suffering Christ"—Charyn supplies an intriguing, plausible take on this notoriously opaque hero.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 15, 2011
The late DiMaggio is one of the most revered figures in American sports history. He patrolled center field for the New York Yankees from 1936 through 1951. Among the many achievements in his Hall of Fame career, the 56-game hitting streak is the one that still resonates with fans today (see Kostya Kennedys 56). Esteemed novelist Charyn, who, as a boy, attended DiMaggios games whenever he could, develops the theory that the skills that made DiMaggio a great player damned him to an unhappy existence outside the sport. Symptomatic of DiMaggios postbaseball dysfunction was his nine-month marriageand lifelong devotionto Marilyn Monroe. It was a pairing literally conjured by Monroes publicists, but if it was only a means to an end for the movie star, it became an unhealthy obsession for DiMaggio. Charyn doesnt torch DiMaggio, as some other biographers have done, but he drives home the point that sports skill has little or nothing to do with life. DiMaggios only real satisfaction came while playing baseball. He retired in 1951. He died in 1999. Thats a lot of time to kill when you cant do what you love.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)