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Tough Guys Don't Dance
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
“Spectacular . . . [Norman Mailer] makes every word count, like a master knife thrower zinging stilettos in a circle around your head.��People
“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
Praise for Norman Mailer
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.��The New York Times
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.��The New Yorker
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.��The Washington Post
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.��Life
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.��The New York Review of Books
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.��Chicago Tribune
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.��The Cincinnati Post
From the Paperback edition.
Praise for Tough Guys Don’t Dance
“Spectacular . . . [Norman Mailer] makes every word count, like a master knife thrower zinging stilettos in a circle around your head.��People
“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
Praise for Norman Mailer
“[Norman Mailer] loomed over American letters longer and larger than any other writer of his generation.��The New York Times
“A writer of the greatest and most reckless talent.��The New Yorker
“Mailer is indispensable, an American treasure.��The Washington Post
“A devastatingly alive and original creative mind.��Life
“Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance.��The New York Review of Books
“The largest mind and imagination [in modern] American literature . . . Unlike just about every American writer since Henry James, Mailer has managed to grow and become richer in wisdom with each new book.��Chicago Tribune
“Mailer is a master of his craft. His language carries you through the story like a leaf on a stream.��The Cincinnati Post
From the Paperback edition.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1984
184 people are currently reading
2,109 people want to read
About the author
Norman Mailer
305books1,360followersNorman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.
Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe, Mailer is considered an innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism, but which covers the essay to the nonfiction novel. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award once. In 1955, Mailer, together with Ed Fancher and Dan Wolf, first published The Village Voice, which began as an arts- and politics-oriented weekly newspaper initially distributed in Greenwich Village. In 2005, he won the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from The National Book Foundation.
Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe, Mailer is considered an innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism, but which covers the essay to the nonfiction novel. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award once. In 1955, Mailer, together with Ed Fancher and Dan Wolf, first published The Village Voice, which began as an arts- and politics-oriented weekly newspaper initially distributed in Greenwich Village. In 2005, he won the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from The National Book Foundation.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 249 reviews
August 25, 2021
Tough Guys Don't Dance is an attempt at post-noir. It is bloody. It is gory without glory. It reads like a parody. Probably it is one. Even if inadvertently�
Tough guys don't dance. Tough guys don't think either�
I could merely ponder the waves. The waves outside the lounge-room window on this chill November night had become equal in some manner to the waves in my mind. My thoughts came to a halt and I felt the disappointment of profound drunken vision. Just as you waddle up to the true relations of the cosmos, your vocabulary blurs.
Tough guys don't dance. Tough guys don't think either�
February 26, 2025
A reread of one of my favorite novels. It is sexist, homophobic and unbelievably dirty but also entertaining, hilarious and memorable (hohoho!).
Think about an acclaimed writer and public intellectual taking on the crime fiction genre. Mailer had listed The Postman Always Rings Twice as one of the five best American novels of the 20th century. He had also liked The Friends of Eddie Coyle. With Tough Guys Don't Dance, Mailer bestows the genre with his grandness, his ideas, his perversions and his intellectual pollution (Mailer's own words). We get an awesome and dirty crime fiction novel of place (it is set in the seaside town of Provincetown) with a preposterous plot filled with murderous characters locked together in orgiastic relationships.
A chain smoking alcoholic writer suspects that he might have murdered a few people after he wakes up from a drinking binge. When he finds the decapitated heads (!) of his wife and another woman inside the burrow on his marijuana patch, he decides to find out what is going on.
There are not one, but three femme fatales. There are two of the most hilariously over the top badass characters that most crime fiction and movie writers wished they could create. And a couple of fake gays (Mailer did not think much of homosexuals) one of whom is a villain. Of course, they are all just mouthpieces for Norman Mailer to express his ideas. Every single one of them. Including the half-Irish half Jewish hero Tim Madden - the book's narrator who often goes off on a tangent with his thoughts and ideas. Fans of crime fiction looking for a tight little novel should avoid this. But Mailer created something truly unique and also stretched the boundaries of the crime fiction genre.
I thought I'd gather some of the memorable quotes from this novel in one place:
"Certain dames ought to wear a T-shirt that says: ‘Hang around. I’ll make a cocksucker out of you.�
�I took my three years in the slammer without a fall. They called me Iron Jaw. I wouldn’t take cock.�
"You’re an old-line fanatic. You’d put all the faggots in concentration camps including your own son if he ever slipped. Just cause you were lucky enough to be born with tiger’s balls.�
�I think about faggots and you know what I believe? For half of them, it’s brave. For the wimps, it takes more guts to be queer than not. For the wimps. Otherwise they marry some little mouse
who’s too timid to be a dyke and they both become psychologists and raise whiz kids to play electronic games. Turn queer, I say, if you’re a wimp. Have a coming-out party. It’s the others I condemn. The ones who ought to be men but couldn’t show the moxie. You were supposed to be a man, Tim. You came from me. You had advantages.�
"Schizophrenics in looney bins only get cancer half as often as the average population. I figure it this way: either your body goes crazy, or your mind. Cancer is the cure for schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is the cure for cancer. Most people don’t know how tough it is out there. I was brought up to know. I got no excuse.�
"How many times over these last few years had I come to the edge of battering Patty Lareine with my bare hands? And each time I resisted the impulse, had not a sense of oncoming illness
settled more firmly into me? Yes, like my father I had been living in a harsh environment. I thought once more of the impulse that led me to climb the tower. Had that been the night when I hoped to keep the first switch from being thrown?"
"When I started my first job as a bartender, he had given me a schedule. “Son,� he had said, “keep this in mind. In New York, on the streets, it’s Peeping Toms from twelve A.M. to one A.M., fires from one to two, stickups two to three, bar fights three to four, suicides four to five, and
auto accidents from five A.M. to six A.M.� I had kept it in my head like a typed schedule. It had proved useful."
�Good people kill for duty, or for honor. Not for money. A sleazo kills for money. A coked-up greed bag slays for money. But not you. Do you stand to benefit from her will?�
"No cop likes to work with a fellow professional who makes him uneasy. You can’t give orders that are resented, or you make an enemy. A guy with a legal weapon has too many opportunities to shoot you in the back. So when cops have to put up with a crazy, they don’t try to fire him. They fob him off. Make him Head-of-the- Universe in Twin Acres, Montana. Pee-town, Mass."
�What’s the good of being a Mick if you can’t welcome senility?�
"If you want to find true lack of compassion, give me a good Christian every time.�
�I always thought,� I said, “that a man becomes a cop to be shielded from his own criminality.�
�I’ve had all the action I wanted. Life gives a man two balls. I’ve used them. Let me tell you. It’s a rare day when I don’t bang two women. I don’t sleep well at night if I haven’t gotten my second bang in. Do you read me? There’s two sides to one’s nature. They both got to express themselves before I can sleep.�
"I glared at him. When our eyes locked, I felt like a small craft cutting too near the bow of a ship."
"Such prodigies of will were not easy to watch as they came apart now. Was this how a man looked just before he had a stroke?"
"With anger such as ours, murder—most terrifying to say—could prove the cure for all the rest."
�Call it a question of Comparative Fellatio, dear heart. You, Madeleine, used to take a cock into your mouth with a sob, or a sweet groan, as if hell were impending over this. It was as beautiful as the Middle Ages. And Patty Lareine was a cheerleader and ready to gobble you up. Albeit with innate skill. It came down to whether you wished your lady to be demure or insatiable. I chose Patty Lareine. She was as insatiable as good old America, and I wanted my country on my cock.�
"At dawn, if it was low tide on the flats, I would awaken to the chatter of gulls. On a bad morning, I used to feel as if I had died and the birds were feeding on my heart. Later, after I had dozed for a while, the tide would come up over the sand as swiftly as a shadow descends on the hills when the sun lowers behind the ridge, and before long the first swells would pound on the bulkhead of the deck below my bedroom window, the shock rising in one fine fragment of time from the sea wall to the innermost passages of my flesh. Boom! the waves would go against the wall, and I could have been alone on a freighter on a dark sea."
"There could be no other town like it. If you were sensitive to crowds, you might expire in summer from human propinquity. On the other hand, if you were unable to endure loneliness, the vessel of your person could fill with dread during the long winter."
�He must have the longest prick in Christendom.�
"All my life, I would remind you, I’ve been trying to regain property rights to my rectum.�
"During Colonial times, there had been a gallows at a clearing in these woods, and through the drizzle, every overhanging branch looked to have a man dangling from it."
�I kept my mouth shut on too many things for too many years. Maybe it started to rot inside. One of the causes of cancer, says the choipy boids, is a harsh environment.�
Think about an acclaimed writer and public intellectual taking on the crime fiction genre. Mailer had listed The Postman Always Rings Twice as one of the five best American novels of the 20th century. He had also liked The Friends of Eddie Coyle. With Tough Guys Don't Dance, Mailer bestows the genre with his grandness, his ideas, his perversions and his intellectual pollution (Mailer's own words). We get an awesome and dirty crime fiction novel of place (it is set in the seaside town of Provincetown) with a preposterous plot filled with murderous characters locked together in orgiastic relationships.
A chain smoking alcoholic writer suspects that he might have murdered a few people after he wakes up from a drinking binge. When he finds the decapitated heads (!) of his wife and another woman inside the burrow on his marijuana patch, he decides to find out what is going on.
There are not one, but three femme fatales. There are two of the most hilariously over the top badass characters that most crime fiction and movie writers wished they could create. And a couple of fake gays (Mailer did not think much of homosexuals) one of whom is a villain. Of course, they are all just mouthpieces for Norman Mailer to express his ideas. Every single one of them. Including the half-Irish half Jewish hero Tim Madden - the book's narrator who often goes off on a tangent with his thoughts and ideas. Fans of crime fiction looking for a tight little novel should avoid this. But Mailer created something truly unique and also stretched the boundaries of the crime fiction genre.
I thought I'd gather some of the memorable quotes from this novel in one place:
"Certain dames ought to wear a T-shirt that says: ‘Hang around. I’ll make a cocksucker out of you.�
�I took my three years in the slammer without a fall. They called me Iron Jaw. I wouldn’t take cock.�
"You’re an old-line fanatic. You’d put all the faggots in concentration camps including your own son if he ever slipped. Just cause you were lucky enough to be born with tiger’s balls.�
�I think about faggots and you know what I believe? For half of them, it’s brave. For the wimps, it takes more guts to be queer than not. For the wimps. Otherwise they marry some little mouse
who’s too timid to be a dyke and they both become psychologists and raise whiz kids to play electronic games. Turn queer, I say, if you’re a wimp. Have a coming-out party. It’s the others I condemn. The ones who ought to be men but couldn’t show the moxie. You were supposed to be a man, Tim. You came from me. You had advantages.�
"Schizophrenics in looney bins only get cancer half as often as the average population. I figure it this way: either your body goes crazy, or your mind. Cancer is the cure for schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is the cure for cancer. Most people don’t know how tough it is out there. I was brought up to know. I got no excuse.�
"How many times over these last few years had I come to the edge of battering Patty Lareine with my bare hands? And each time I resisted the impulse, had not a sense of oncoming illness
settled more firmly into me? Yes, like my father I had been living in a harsh environment. I thought once more of the impulse that led me to climb the tower. Had that been the night when I hoped to keep the first switch from being thrown?"
"When I started my first job as a bartender, he had given me a schedule. “Son,� he had said, “keep this in mind. In New York, on the streets, it’s Peeping Toms from twelve A.M. to one A.M., fires from one to two, stickups two to three, bar fights three to four, suicides four to five, and
auto accidents from five A.M. to six A.M.� I had kept it in my head like a typed schedule. It had proved useful."
�Good people kill for duty, or for honor. Not for money. A sleazo kills for money. A coked-up greed bag slays for money. But not you. Do you stand to benefit from her will?�
"No cop likes to work with a fellow professional who makes him uneasy. You can’t give orders that are resented, or you make an enemy. A guy with a legal weapon has too many opportunities to shoot you in the back. So when cops have to put up with a crazy, they don’t try to fire him. They fob him off. Make him Head-of-the- Universe in Twin Acres, Montana. Pee-town, Mass."
�What’s the good of being a Mick if you can’t welcome senility?�
"If you want to find true lack of compassion, give me a good Christian every time.�
�I always thought,� I said, “that a man becomes a cop to be shielded from his own criminality.�
�I’ve had all the action I wanted. Life gives a man two balls. I’ve used them. Let me tell you. It’s a rare day when I don’t bang two women. I don’t sleep well at night if I haven’t gotten my second bang in. Do you read me? There’s two sides to one’s nature. They both got to express themselves before I can sleep.�
"I glared at him. When our eyes locked, I felt like a small craft cutting too near the bow of a ship."
"Such prodigies of will were not easy to watch as they came apart now. Was this how a man looked just before he had a stroke?"
"With anger such as ours, murder—most terrifying to say—could prove the cure for all the rest."
�Call it a question of Comparative Fellatio, dear heart. You, Madeleine, used to take a cock into your mouth with a sob, or a sweet groan, as if hell were impending over this. It was as beautiful as the Middle Ages. And Patty Lareine was a cheerleader and ready to gobble you up. Albeit with innate skill. It came down to whether you wished your lady to be demure or insatiable. I chose Patty Lareine. She was as insatiable as good old America, and I wanted my country on my cock.�
"At dawn, if it was low tide on the flats, I would awaken to the chatter of gulls. On a bad morning, I used to feel as if I had died and the birds were feeding on my heart. Later, after I had dozed for a while, the tide would come up over the sand as swiftly as a shadow descends on the hills when the sun lowers behind the ridge, and before long the first swells would pound on the bulkhead of the deck below my bedroom window, the shock rising in one fine fragment of time from the sea wall to the innermost passages of my flesh. Boom! the waves would go against the wall, and I could have been alone on a freighter on a dark sea."
"There could be no other town like it. If you were sensitive to crowds, you might expire in summer from human propinquity. On the other hand, if you were unable to endure loneliness, the vessel of your person could fill with dread during the long winter."
�He must have the longest prick in Christendom.�
"All my life, I would remind you, I’ve been trying to regain property rights to my rectum.�
"During Colonial times, there had been a gallows at a clearing in these woods, and through the drizzle, every overhanging branch looked to have a man dangling from it."
�I kept my mouth shut on too many things for too many years. Maybe it started to rot inside. One of the causes of cancer, says the choipy boids, is a harsh environment.�
July 24, 2011
okay, at this point i just flat-out love norman mailer, but his endings are really letting me down. his voice is so wild and burning and furious, so full of madness and spiritual and intellectual yearning, but then somehow his stories always devolve into just a bunch of people sitting around and baldly explaining the story to each other in the least interesting way conceivable. he makes a big show of being an anti-rationalist, but as far as stories go, he's a total realist; all this lip service to ghosts and god and the beyond goes out the window in favor of neatly tying things up like a b-grade detective story circa 1952. HERE'S HOW I KILLED THESE PEOPLE AND WHY; NOW WASN'T THAT ALL INCREDIBLY BORING? at this point i'm really starting to suspect that has gotta be the one! or maybe -- somewhere he's gotta be able to break through "reality" enough to allow the storyworld to form according to his actual beliefs... reading these books is like watching someone with wings NOT JUMP OFF A CLIFF over and over and over again... JUST JUMP OFF THE GODDAMN CLIFF, NORMAN MAILER!!! I WANNA SEE YOU FLY!!!!!
either that, or i should just stick to his journalism... i love when he rants about plastic...
either that, or i should just stick to his journalism... i love when he rants about plastic...
January 23, 2024
In the first couple of chapters, this murder-mystery seemed simple-minded. I thought this book was merely a vehicle for Mailer to show-off his similes ("as if" occurs 109 times). That was a misjudgment. The plot turned out to be convoluted. Maybe a better word is messy. Mailer needed to cheat to make sense of the mess: coincidences, convenient suicides, far-fetched alcohol-induced blackout activities, and in the end the bad guy confesses all the details to you while holding you at gunpoint. To top it off, the killer's motive turned out to be an undersupply of .
August 8, 2022
Τρίτο βιβλίο του Νόρμαν Μέιλερ που διαβάζω μετά το εξαιρετικό "Ο αγώνας" που διάβασα το 2017 και το επικό και καταπληκτικό "Οι γυμνοί και οι νεκροί" που διάβασα τον Ιανουάριο του 2021, και μπορεί αυτή τη φορά να μην βάζω πέντε αστεράκια όπως στις προηγούμενες δυο, πάντως σίγουρα ήταν μια πολύ δυνατή και ιδιαίτερη αναγνωστική εμπειρία, οπωσδήποτε το βιβλίο με κράτησε στην τσίτα χάρη στην τρέλα του και την απολαυστική πρόζα του Μέιλερ, με τη χειμαρρώδη και σε σημεία αρκετά καθηλωτική αφήγηση να με παρασέρνει σε ένα βίαιο και σκοτεινό κόσμο. Ο Μέιλερ γράφει ένα σκληρό νουάρ (με λίγη σατιρική διάθεση ίσως), αρκετά βίαιο και με τρελούς χαρακτήρες, αγγίζοντας διάφορα θέματα που έχουν να κάνουν με τους Νεοϋρκέζους και τις ψυχώσεις τους, με το σεξ, το χρήμα, την ανθρώπινη ματαιοδοξία και την τρέλα, με την πολιτική ορθότητα να είναι πιο απούσα από ποτέ και το βιβλίο ικανό να ταράξει πολλά ευαίσθητα στομάχια, ειδικά στην εποχή μας. Τι να κάνουμε, μιλάμε για τον Μέιλερ τώρα, ορισμένα πράγματα είναι αναμενόμενα. Επίσης η πλοκή νομίζω ότι έχει τα θεματάκια της, εδώ κι εκεί είναι ίσως πιο μπερδεμένη και περίπλοκή απ' όσο θα χρειαζόταν και κάποια ερωτήματα μάλλον μένουν αναπάντητα, αλλά μπροστά στην καταπληκτική γραφή, την απίθανη ατμόσφαιρα και την τρέλα των χαρακτήρων, ποιος νοιάζεται για τις όποιες αστοχίες της πλοκής; Εγώ, πάντως, όχι και τόσο. Δεν το προτείνω με κλειστά μάτια σε όλους, πάντως εγώ μια φορά δηλώνω ικανοποιημένος.
February 26, 2020
I'm a huge Norman Mailer fan.
(As an aside, let me just divulge something here. I have no idea, really, why I have a huge affinity for certain writers that are notoriously misogynistic in nature: Phillip Roth, John Updike, Mailer, to name a few. I don't consider myself a misogynist. I'm actually pretty pro-feminist in my views. So why I like these particular authors, who spend a good portion of their time writing about their sexual exploits and/or odes to their penis is beyond me. Except to say that, perhaps, I envy them a bit in their ability to be honest about their masculinity. I actually consider myself pretty honest about my own masculinity, but there are even places I won't go in my writing. I'm not a prude. I guess I just think that there should be some limits and taboo subjects in my own writing. But I'm perfectly okay with reading writers who don't think that, apparently. I know, I'm a contradiction. Whatever.)
That said, of all the Mailer books I have read, "Tough Guys Don't Dance" was my least favorite. I was really hoping to like it, too, because it pays homage to a kind of dark, gritty roman noir by great pulp writers (and fellow alleged misogynists) like Jim Thompson and Mickey Spillane.
It has all the elements: an alcoholic anti-hero, a murder of the anti-hero's wife, morally questionable cops, a femme fatale. Something about it just rubbed me the wrong way.
Granted, I read this years ago, when I was in a very different place in my life, so I have a feeling that my take on it now may be a lot different.
I may re-read this again later, as I plan on doing with a lot of Mailer's fiction, as well as Roth's and Updike's, mainly to see how different my views on masculinity have changed, if at all, since I've gotten married. Marriage will do that to a guy. It may actually make tough guys dance...
(As an aside, let me just divulge something here. I have no idea, really, why I have a huge affinity for certain writers that are notoriously misogynistic in nature: Phillip Roth, John Updike, Mailer, to name a few. I don't consider myself a misogynist. I'm actually pretty pro-feminist in my views. So why I like these particular authors, who spend a good portion of their time writing about their sexual exploits and/or odes to their penis is beyond me. Except to say that, perhaps, I envy them a bit in their ability to be honest about their masculinity. I actually consider myself pretty honest about my own masculinity, but there are even places I won't go in my writing. I'm not a prude. I guess I just think that there should be some limits and taboo subjects in my own writing. But I'm perfectly okay with reading writers who don't think that, apparently. I know, I'm a contradiction. Whatever.)
That said, of all the Mailer books I have read, "Tough Guys Don't Dance" was my least favorite. I was really hoping to like it, too, because it pays homage to a kind of dark, gritty roman noir by great pulp writers (and fellow alleged misogynists) like Jim Thompson and Mickey Spillane.
It has all the elements: an alcoholic anti-hero, a murder of the anti-hero's wife, morally questionable cops, a femme fatale. Something about it just rubbed me the wrong way.
Granted, I read this years ago, when I was in a very different place in my life, so I have a feeling that my take on it now may be a lot different.
I may re-read this again later, as I plan on doing with a lot of Mailer's fiction, as well as Roth's and Updike's, mainly to see how different my views on masculinity have changed, if at all, since I've gotten married. Marriage will do that to a guy. It may actually make tough guys dance...
September 21, 2015
Dark, violent and really really good! One of my most read books (and the movie, sadly underrated, is one of my most seen as well). Read the book first! Also, I read it most in its translated to Swedish form and while there is nothing wrong with the translation, the original text really surpasses that one.
December 3, 2012
Extraño libro. Como si David Lynch hubiera hecho una peli de un guión de Bukowski.
Sórdida historia con todos los ingredientes del género negro: escritores que le dan a la frasca y no recuerdan porque se hicieron un tatuaje la noche anterior, rubias ricas, despampanantes y muy viciosas, polis corruptos y millonarios bisexuales que se aburren mucho.
Con todos estos ingredientes, Mailer hace una novela dura, sin concesiones, pero también algo pasada de vueltas. Casi tirando a la sicodelia en algunos momentos.
Es entretenida, pero no tiene la profundidad suficiente para impactar realmente.
Recomendada a todos aquellos que alguna vez han encontrado la cabeza de su mujer en una bolsa de plástico.
Sórdida historia con todos los ingredientes del género negro: escritores que le dan a la frasca y no recuerdan porque se hicieron un tatuaje la noche anterior, rubias ricas, despampanantes y muy viciosas, polis corruptos y millonarios bisexuales que se aburren mucho.
Con todos estos ingredientes, Mailer hace una novela dura, sin concesiones, pero también algo pasada de vueltas. Casi tirando a la sicodelia en algunos momentos.
Es entretenida, pero no tiene la profundidad suficiente para impactar realmente.
Recomendada a todos aquellos que alguna vez han encontrado la cabeza de su mujer en una bolsa de plástico.
July 12, 2016
8 días y 323 páginas después.
Lo primero que tengo que decir es que es una pésima edición. Probablemente una de las peores que haya leído, le hacen falta montones de espacios para poder comprender todo; tal vez no haya sido la edición, sino la forma tan "abultada" de escribir del autor.
Esta novela intenta describir lo ajetreado de una noche de borrachera. Se tiene al escritor Tim Madden, él es azotado por el recuerdo de su mujer que lo ha dejado hace 24 días. En el día 25 el se pone una tremenda borrachera, y al día después borbotones de sangre aparecen en su auto deportivo. Al no poder recordar lo sucedido la noche anterior, el intenta seguir sus pasos hasta que llega a la cabeza decapitada de una rubia en uno de sus escondites de droga.
Durante toda la primera mitad el libro se tambaleaba entre 2 y 3 estrellas, no le tomaba sabor. Me costó demasiado avanzar, la escritura es demasiado aleatoria y abultada, es mucho relleno y mete a personas sin sentido para la historia, parecen maniquies sin sentimientos. El personaje principal se devana montones.
En la segunda mitad todo comienza a aclararse y a tomar sabor, todo mejora y se vuelve más conciso, gracias a un par de "vueltas de tuerca" la historia mejora y se gana cuatro estrellas.
Es un libro muy intense, el cual no se recata en el sexo, el amor o lo que se le plazca decir al autor. Es una novela dura y con un sentido del humor muy intense. Sin embargo una vez que toma sabor no es mala.
Al final lo que mas rescato de esto es la frase y titulo del libro... "los tipos duros no bailan".
¿existirán segundas oportunidades en la vida amorosa? me refiero a después de haber probado tantos cipotes...
No creo que haya reseña.
Lo primero que tengo que decir es que es una pésima edición. Probablemente una de las peores que haya leído, le hacen falta montones de espacios para poder comprender todo; tal vez no haya sido la edición, sino la forma tan "abultada" de escribir del autor.
Esta novela intenta describir lo ajetreado de una noche de borrachera. Se tiene al escritor Tim Madden, él es azotado por el recuerdo de su mujer que lo ha dejado hace 24 días. En el día 25 el se pone una tremenda borrachera, y al día después borbotones de sangre aparecen en su auto deportivo. Al no poder recordar lo sucedido la noche anterior, el intenta seguir sus pasos hasta que llega a la cabeza decapitada de una rubia en uno de sus escondites de droga.
Durante toda la primera mitad el libro se tambaleaba entre 2 y 3 estrellas, no le tomaba sabor. Me costó demasiado avanzar, la escritura es demasiado aleatoria y abultada, es mucho relleno y mete a personas sin sentido para la historia, parecen maniquies sin sentimientos. El personaje principal se devana montones.
En la segunda mitad todo comienza a aclararse y a tomar sabor, todo mejora y se vuelve más conciso, gracias a un par de "vueltas de tuerca" la historia mejora y se gana cuatro estrellas.
Es un libro muy intense, el cual no se recata en el sexo, el amor o lo que se le plazca decir al autor. Es una novela dura y con un sentido del humor muy intense. Sin embargo una vez que toma sabor no es mala.
Al final lo que mas rescato de esto es la frase y titulo del libro... "los tipos duros no bailan".
¿existirán segundas oportunidades en la vida amorosa? me refiero a después de haber probado tantos cipotes...
No creo que haya reseña.
June 4, 2007
Is this where Mailer asks the question, why do gay men congregate in cities with giant phallic monuments? I can't remember.
August 4, 2022
Αγαπημένο θέμα του Mailer (στα καλύτερα του), οι Νέουορκεζοι κ οι ψυχώσεις τους.
Χρήμα, δόξα, σεξ, παραβατικότητα, ματαιοδοξία
Noir σάτυρα, γκροτεσκοι πρωταγωνιστές , απολαυστική πρόζα, είναι το πεδίο του κ εμείς την πέφτουμε στα παλαιοπωλεία για να βρούμε κ τα υπόλοιπά του
Χρήμα, δόξα, σεξ, παραβατικότητα, ματαιοδοξία
Noir σάτυρα, γκροτεσκοι πρωταγωνιστές , απολαυστική πρόζα, είναι το πεδίο του κ εμείς την πέφτουμε στα παλαιοπωλεία για να βρούμε κ τα υπόλοιπά του
December 16, 2008
In a box somewhere I still have all of my Norman Mailer books, with which I have a relationship that can only be called ambivalent. At the time, I thought he was brilliant even while finding much of his work howlingly awful. Often at the same time. (See Harlot's Ghost, a novel that oscillates wildly between great and terrible and that I remember loving beyond all reason.)
Take this novel, which is a typically overwrought take on a noirish thriller and mixes Mailer's usual obsessions (drugs, drink, what he deemed kinky sex, gunplay, long outdated ideas of masculinity, etcetera) into a bit of overwritten melodrama that should be unreadable, that should not work, that should be laughable and little else. And yet it works marvelously.
Or seemed to at the time. I'll trust my young self and his take on the book: monstrously entertaining, and written with a kind of heedless glee in the silliness of it all. But knowing that taking the project seriously is key to pulling it off.
Really need to unearth that copy and reread it and see if it holds up. And when I do, will report back here.
(Also was made into an execrable Ryan O'Neal movie, which should be avoided at all costs.)
Take this novel, which is a typically overwrought take on a noirish thriller and mixes Mailer's usual obsessions (drugs, drink, what he deemed kinky sex, gunplay, long outdated ideas of masculinity, etcetera) into a bit of overwritten melodrama that should be unreadable, that should not work, that should be laughable and little else. And yet it works marvelously.
Or seemed to at the time. I'll trust my young self and his take on the book: monstrously entertaining, and written with a kind of heedless glee in the silliness of it all. But knowing that taking the project seriously is key to pulling it off.
Really need to unearth that copy and reread it and see if it holds up. And when I do, will report back here.
(Also was made into an execrable Ryan O'Neal movie, which should be avoided at all costs.)
July 12, 2020
A frustrated writer awakens after a drinking binge to discover evidence that he may have committed murder. Like the hero of "An American Dream," he is mentally unstable and prone to superstition. Many have compared this novel to the books of Chandler and Hammett, but I did not find the prose to be as lean and mean as many reviewers would lead us to believe. Although the language is extraordinary, it is also filled with lengthy digressions, particularly toward the beginning, so much so that I began to despair of anything ever actually happening. Once the tale gets rolling, however, its a good one with terrific dialogue. Mailer brilliantly evokes a grim atmosphere in a struggling New England seacoast village.
March 10, 2016
My first dalliance with Mailer. Gritty, noir narrative carried along in the trembling hands of a classic anti-hero, this story was a little hard to follow for me. I walked away feeling all the wiser for having read the works of this dark and pugnacious writer, but being a story man, was left a little disappointed. His characters are very rich, but there are times where 98% of a given chapter was character development with the last two paragraphs being dedicated to plot advancement. As a result, it felt self gratuitous on behalf of the author. I enjoyed his writing very, very much and certain elements will be forever with me. (God laying bets on a football game) had me laughing aloud. I'll most likely get around to more of Mailer's work. He does stir the soul a bit.
October 13, 2013
I'm fairly indulgent when it comes to reading and have a tough time putting a book down once I start, but given the premise of Tough Guys Don't Dance, it was a real bitch to get through. The writing was good, granted, but somehow it just didn't fit the story, it was all so stileted. The protagonist wasn't memorable, neither were any of the other characters. I finished it (don't remember how it ends), and all I remember is I was greatly disappointed. It was my one and only experience with Mailer. Not swearing him off, but I'm not in a rush to pick up another.
February 11, 2018
Una bidonata! Speravo fosse al livello de Il canto del boia ma .... no, proprio no.
Una storia assurda a base di teste mozzate, corpi crivellati, padri che passano il loro tempo a seppellire cadaveri. E tra masochismo e narrazione estetizzante omosex (trattata cioè come un cliché), c'è la ricerca di un superpadre che risolva tutti i problemi. E anche la paura di una donna con gli attributi che goda quanto il protagonista. Un romanzaccio da 4 soldi, che non si riscatta, anzi, nel sesso da macelleria travestito da narrazione autoriale.
Una storia assurda a base di teste mozzate, corpi crivellati, padri che passano il loro tempo a seppellire cadaveri. E tra masochismo e narrazione estetizzante omosex (trattata cioè come un cliché), c'è la ricerca di un superpadre che risolva tutti i problemi. E anche la paura di una donna con gli attributi che goda quanto il protagonista. Un romanzaccio da 4 soldi, che non si riscatta, anzi, nel sesso da macelleria travestito da narrazione autoriale.
October 25, 2009
People say this book lacks plot, and they are correct. People say the characters are unsympathetic & trashy. Also correct. Can’t help but like it, though. Mailer’s prose is engaging.
December 9, 2010
The plot and characters are ridiculous, but the writing style is great. It's fucking Mailer, man! Weed and decapitated broads!
May 4, 2019
Excellent, complex mystery full of surprises.
February 19, 2015
So, I said to a friend the other day: "Watch out, I'm reading Mailer again...that guy is funny, insightful, AND inappropriate; it's a shame he is dead." Truly, that is how I feel. I know lots of people see him as just a good old fashioned prick, but I think there is more here. His writing is pompous and homophobic and certainly ridiculously sexual; but I just don't see it is a promoting the white man as better than anyone else. Instead, it's kind of like Louis CK's joke about how he will hands down admit that he has it easier than anyone else because he is a white man and he recognizes that isn't fair, but he is not willing to be re-born as a black woman to make it right. On one hand, the women are all sex objects, but on the other the men are extremely whipped and willing to do almost anything for her favor. Mailer certainly recognizes and explores the male/female power dynamic.
That said, this was not as good as Harlot's Ghost. It was good, but it felt more like a farce than anything. Mailer calls it both a comedy and a tragedy (in his pre-epilogue epitaph) and others have called it a mock noir, but I really found it to be farcical. It is (at times) laugh out loud funny and makes me want to go buy a blonde decapitated head (from a Halloween store, not for real) and carry it around in a plastic bag in tribute. Really, who can conceive of this stuff?
The plot is ridiculous and contrived and full of convenience (which I typically hate). EXCEPT that Mailer does this meta-author thing whereby his characters acknowledge the convenience and spew reasons for it based on spiritualism. With a straight face, Mailer presents the only male/tatooing/drugged out medium (Harpo) that I have ever encountered. I mean really, how can we accuse him of misogyny when he is willing to make a this guy a medium?
Of course, some of my love might be caused by Mailer's great focus on addiction (interestingly enough, this wanes in the second half of the novel; again, with the meta-comments Madden is focused on his addiction while he is drinking and lonely but once the shit hits the fan, he can no longer afford to wax romantic on his shortcomings). My favorite few quotes: "Over and over again I gave them up, a hundred times over the years, but always I went back. For in my dreams, sooner or later, I struck a match, brought flame to the tip, then took in all my hunger for existence with the first puff. I felt impaled on desire itself--those fiends trapped in my chest and screaming for one drag. Change the given." coupled with "No more might remain than the addiction itself, but addiction is still a signature on the bottom of your psyche."
And (as I mentioned in the comments on someone else's review) he provides not one, but two, complete descriptions of the cunt (one is a quote from Updike). I rather think Caitlin Moran (good feminist that she is) would approve.
It's just good. He is insightful, and funny, and (most entertainingly) inappropriate. Read it.
That said, this was not as good as Harlot's Ghost. It was good, but it felt more like a farce than anything. Mailer calls it both a comedy and a tragedy (in his pre-epilogue epitaph) and others have called it a mock noir, but I really found it to be farcical. It is (at times) laugh out loud funny and makes me want to go buy a blonde decapitated head (from a Halloween store, not for real) and carry it around in a plastic bag in tribute. Really, who can conceive of this stuff?
The plot is ridiculous and contrived and full of convenience (which I typically hate). EXCEPT that Mailer does this meta-author thing whereby his characters acknowledge the convenience and spew reasons for it based on spiritualism. With a straight face, Mailer presents the only male/tatooing/drugged out medium (Harpo) that I have ever encountered. I mean really, how can we accuse him of misogyny when he is willing to make a this guy a medium?
Of course, some of my love might be caused by Mailer's great focus on addiction (interestingly enough, this wanes in the second half of the novel; again, with the meta-comments Madden is focused on his addiction while he is drinking and lonely but once the shit hits the fan, he can no longer afford to wax romantic on his shortcomings). My favorite few quotes: "Over and over again I gave them up, a hundred times over the years, but always I went back. For in my dreams, sooner or later, I struck a match, brought flame to the tip, then took in all my hunger for existence with the first puff. I felt impaled on desire itself--those fiends trapped in my chest and screaming for one drag. Change the given." coupled with "No more might remain than the addiction itself, but addiction is still a signature on the bottom of your psyche."
And (as I mentioned in the comments on someone else's review) he provides not one, but two, complete descriptions of the cunt (one is a quote from Updike). I rather think Caitlin Moran (good feminist that she is) would approve.
It's just good. He is insightful, and funny, and (most entertainingly) inappropriate. Read it.
January 4, 2019
Antes de leer este libro, uno debe mentalizarse muy bien en para estar listo para lo que viene. En Los tipos duros no bailan, Mailer nos mete en una atmósfera opresiva y amarga, vertiginosa, que entenderán aquellos que se hayan encontrado bajo el efecto del alcohol, el cigarro, la coca o la marihuana. La historia, oscura hasta la médula, nos pone en los zapatos de Tim Madden, escritor frustrado y adicto a los excesos qué pasa sus ratos libres filosofando sobre la vida, las personas y su pasado. Ah, y por ratos libres me refiero a los momentos en que no está intentando lidiar con su veneno interno y descubriendo una enmarañada conspiración de personajes pintorescos que buscan señalarlo como asesino.
El libro es todo un viaje por las solitarias calles de Provincetown, y durante el tercio final simplemente no se puede dejar de leer. Resalta especialmente el padre de Tim, Doug, quien soltará frases dignas de tus fotos de Instagram.
Si eres un tipo (o tipa) duro, de esos que no bailan, este libro es para ti.
El libro es todo un viaje por las solitarias calles de Provincetown, y durante el tercio final simplemente no se puede dejar de leer. Resalta especialmente el padre de Tim, Doug, quien soltará frases dignas de tus fotos de Instagram.
Si eres un tipo (o tipa) duro, de esos que no bailan, este libro es para ti.
June 24, 2017
I want to fight this book so badly. Maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind. Usually, Norman washes over me like warm sea water, making me smile and shake my head in wonder at how he manages to contain such an enormous ego in such a fun size body, but not this time. I liked the opening of this book too, it's a great premise - drunk down and out writer wakes up after a bender with a lot of blood in his car and a nagging suspicion that he may have murdered one or two women. After the opening chapters I got really annoyed with all the tedious macho homophobic crap. Maybe it was all clever insights into masculinity that I am too dumb and lazy to unpack, but to me it just read like a book written by a little man with a complex. That's right Norman, I called you a little man. If you wanna step outside I'll take you. You're no Dostoyevsky that's for sure. Oh fuck he's got a knife!
October 11, 2007
Ok, yes. This book has a veneer of misogyny, but truly the real issue here is not a hatred of women but a willful misunderstanding of women. This book’s only concern is masculinity; the women here are presented only as noir femme fatales or gun molls. To take great offence at Mailer's disparaging such mythical creatures is akin to being frustrated at the mischaracterization elves or unicorns. This is the nature of the genre. What made this book worth reading (for me), was the application of Mailer's vivid prose to fairly worn genre tropes. Basically this is a meditation on American masculinity, wedged firmly into possibly the most male oriented genre in fiction. Do tough guys dance? Yes they do.
April 16, 2009
How did I miss reading Mailer when I was younger? I still haven't read his most acclaimed books, but where were my parents? Well, I guess all the sex, pot, coke, LSD, and violence probably kept them from heralding him to me as a lad. I occasionally get the same feeling I get when reading Thompson, an enjoyable shock accompanied by envy over their prose. I find it hard to make a role model out of someone who had six wives and stabbed one of them, but hey, nobody's perfect.
May 24, 2022
“You used me� for land development?!�
It’s fine, I guess? I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. It’s dually trashy and full of itself, which is an odd combination. If Stephen King ever tried to write Literary Fiction it would probably end up like this, I guess is what I mean. It’s singularly strange, but I don’t know if that makes it “good� per se.
It’s fine, I guess? I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. It’s dually trashy and full of itself, which is an odd combination. If Stephen King ever tried to write Literary Fiction it would probably end up like this, I guess is what I mean. It’s singularly strange, but I don’t know if that makes it “good� per se.
May 23, 2022
De lo mejor que he leído últimamente. La narrativa de Mailer, la trama y la evolución de la misma acompañada de la de los personajes hacen de esta novela un sobresaliente puro y duro. Novela negra cien por cien, con el trasfondo y los bajos fondos necesarios. Echaba de menos una lectura así.
May 23, 2024
boo wdym tough guys don’t dance
tough guys don’t lose track of their business either xx step it up timmy
gay angst, emotionally removed dads, but babes we are so lucky we have women to serve, to balance out male anger, to bring at least some emotional variety to the book
loved the beginning, hated the middle, liked the end, ADORED when I was on the last page
tough guys don’t lose track of their business either xx step it up timmy
gay angst, emotionally removed dads, but babes we are so lucky we have women to serve, to balance out male anger, to bring at least some emotional variety to the book
loved the beginning, hated the middle, liked the end, ADORED when I was on the last page
April 13, 2021
This book was just not my cup of tea. Not a big fan of crime fiction, I found it very crude.
December 27, 2024
DNF. Life’s too short to complete this travesty.
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