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Leading Men: A Novel, by Christopher Castellani
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Review
“Vividly reimagines the relationship between Williams and Frank Merlo, and offers intricate thoughts about the nature of fidelity, the artistic impulse, and estrangement . . . [Castellani’s] scenes glitter . . . This book is a kind of poem in praise of pleasure. Its author knows a great deal about life; better, he knows how to express what he knows. But this is an alert, serious, sweeping novel. To hold it in your hands is like holding, to crib a line from Castellani, a front-row opera ticket.” —The New York Times"A seductive, steamy novel of Tennessee Williams and his lover . . . Castellani's quiet portrayal of Merlo has a deep, aching appeal . . . [His] prose has a beguiling lilt and color, whether he's evoking his characters' evasive or erratic emotions, or conjuring the far-flung locales where these globe-hoppers touch down." —The Boston Globe"Real and imagined lives collide as Tennessee Williams and his longtime lover Frank Merlo befriend a young Swedish woman named Anja on the glittering Italian Riviera in July 1953. Though entirely fictional, the enigmatic Anja, who goes on to reluctant fame and fortune as an actress, propels this story of desire, ambition, and heartbreak." —People"Audacious . . . [Castellani’s] novel not only exults in the historical synchronicities and proximities he has discovered but catches the reader up in its rapture." —The New York Times Book Review"Touching . . . Castellani knows his people . . . and he knows this world." —The Washington Post"Dazzling . . . [Castellani writes] with an evocative precision that historical fiction often merely aspires to." —Entertainment Weekly"Spectacular… Castellani’s novel hits the trifecta of being moving, beautifully written, and a bona fide page-turner. This is a wonderful examination of artists and the people who love them and change their work in large and imperceptible ways." —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review"Castellani . . . [injects] the book with a gravitas and a precariousness that recalls the authorial finesse of his own character, Tennessee Williams, harnessing a talent not only for forming tragic heroes, but allowing them to exhibit the kind of complexity that remains utterly real to readers, that mix of ambition and ambivalence that so often suggests the self who remains unknown to us, the parts of us which we ourselves cannot account for." —Brooklyn Rail“Leading Men is a finely-rendered narrative . . . broad in scope and lush in detail, without every tipping into sentimentality. [A] compassionate snapshot of a bygone era and a beautiful, if tragic, story of love and remembrance.” —Lambda Literary "With imagination and feeling, Castellani reconjures history to reveal the intricate dynamics—loving and passionate, selfless and devastating—among artists and those who nurture them." —Annie Bostrom, Booklist "An intriguing take on Tennessee Williams and his lover of 15 years, Frank Merlo . . . Humane, witty, and bold, this novel imagines the life of a loving but tortured couple." —Kirkus Reviews "A moving story of love, loss, memory and regret . . . Leading Men is a transporting adventure." —Shelf Awareness"I read Christopher Castellani's Leading Men in one quiet, sunny, rapt afternoon, and spent hours afterwards just stunned from having been immersed in such a tender, psychologically devastating, and gorgeously precise novel. An extraordinary book." —Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies and Florida "Leading Men is glorious, a meditation on the ravages of fame, an investigation into the private lives of public artists, and one of the most moving love stories I've read in ages. It's hard to imagine better company on the page than Tennessee Williams and those who loved and loathed him. By bringing to life these literary visionaries, Christopher Castellani proves himself their eminently worthy heir." —Anthony Marra, author of The Tsar of Love and Techno "With echoes of Tender is the Night and The Sun Also Rises, Leading Men tells the extraordinary love story of Tennessee Williams and Frank Merlo. Castellani elegantly weaves together Merlo's final days with memories of a dramatic (and delicious) Italian summer in 1953 that changes his world forever. Throw in an aging Swedish actress, Truman Capote, Italian cinema and the staging (and script!) of a lost Williams play and you have all the ingredients for a literary page-turner. Leading Men is about fame and love and forgiveness, about the ravages of time, and how we try to lay claim to the future, while the present slips through our fingers." –Hannah Tinti, author of The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley"With extraordinary artistry and grace, Christopher Castellani interweaves history and invention to show us both the depths great artists are driven to and the love that draws them back. I know of few books that give such a moving account of the indispensable value of genius and its intolerable human cost. This is a novel of rare insight and beauty, and Castellani is a writer of brilliant gifts." —Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You"Leading Men is a daredevil of a novel, like the prettiest boy in the gay bar doing a backflip off a stool and not spilling his drink. Castellani has set his eye on that ineffable profane that is the other face of the divine, in a novel that unites my obsessions with Tennessee Williams, Luchino Visconti, Truman Capote, film, cruising, and Italy, and wraps it up in a love story, but a story of old love--love of a kind we almost never see written." —Alexander Chee, author of The Queen of the Night"Leading Men is a novel as moving as it is entertaining, a book that restored my faith in the old cliche that only through fiction -- by exploring the possibilities of what might have happened -- can we reach the truth. Christopher Castellani has written an astounding novel of great imaginative empathy that, by the end, had this cynic weeping." —Peter Orner, author of Love and Shame and Love"Leading Men stirs up the kind of beautiful trouble we admire in the work of Tennessee Williams. A clever, allusive, multi-layered novel filled with wit, insight, and heart. I loved it." —Justin Torres, author of We The Animals "This is a tale of love and loneliness, the personal costs of genius and its attendant fame, and of the ultimate, inconsolable pain of loss. In its depiction of Americans in Europe, its closest literary cousin might be F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night." —Library Journal
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About the Author
Christopher Castellani is the author of three previous novels (the trilogy A Kiss from Maddalena, The Saint of Lost Things, and All This Talk of Love) and The Art of Perspective, a book of essays on the craft of fiction. He is the son of Italian immigrants, a Guggenheim fellow, and the artistic director of GrubStreet, one of the country's leading creative writing centers. He lives in Boston.
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Product details
Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Viking (February 12, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0525559051
ISBN-13: 978-0525559054
Product Dimensions:
6.2 x 1.2 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
3.9 out of 5 stars
19 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#6,832 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
American author Christopher Castellani has written an almost epic novel about male authors and the men who loved them. The book, "Leading Men", features real people - Tennessee Williams, Frank Merlo, Truman Capote, Jack Burns, among others - while adding to them a cast of fictional characters. (It's handy to read this book on an Ipad or other devise which makes it easy to refer to Wiki when you have a question about a character in the book.) The book is perhaps a little too long, but the relationships between the characters need a fair amount of space to develop.Castellani has invented characters as he is writing a fictionalised version of real events. Not an easy concept to either write or read, it's the only way he can tell his story. The book takes place in the 1940's to the 1960's Tennessee Williams and his lover/aide Frank Merlo live the good life in Italy. Williams is writing during the day, while Merlo keeps Williams' life and household in running order. The two men are not necessarily faithful to each other and they do fight a fair amount, but the reader can easily discern the love between them. Their friends (and rivals) Truman Capote and Jack Burns - both with their own lovers - come in and out of the story. And added to the story as fictional characters are a Swedish mother-and-daughter, Bitte and Anya Blomgren - who meet up with Williams and Merlo in Portofino and are sort of added to their lives. Anya is based on Liv Ullmann, the Norwegian actress and director. Frank Merlo and Anya become life-long friends.But Frank Merlo, who I think is the main character in the book, does not have a long life-time. He dies of lung cancer in a New York hospital in 1963, after his relationship with "Tenn" has withered. Tennessee Williams knows and acknowledges his creative juices flourished during his 20 or so years with Frank Merlo. Still friends with Anya - who has go on to become a highly regarded actress - he writes a short play about Frank he gives to Anya. What Anya does with this not-particularly-well-written play is explored near the end of the book.Christopher Castellano's book is character-driven. A bit of a plot but what's there mainly exists to service the characters. The Frank Merlo character is a particularly well-drawn, nuanced look at a man who is comfortable with his sexuality but is uncertain about his place in his world. He may book airline tickets to Spain for Williams, but he has not-so-secret desires to become an actor/singer/dancer and find success in his own right.Castellani's book is a wonderful read, though not for every reader. Make sure you read all the reviews you can before you buy the book or take it out of the library. As always with well-written fiction, I'm left with the urge to find out as much as I can about the "real people" and their stories.
Leading Men by Christopher CastellaniThis a very dull attempt to make something of the relationship between Frank Merlo and his lover Tennesse Williams that lasted from 1947 to Merlo's death in 1963. The book opens in July of 1953 when Truman Capote throws a party in Portofino, Italy. There, the mother/daughter duo Bitte/Anja Blongren become part of the story.On the writer's note at the end of the book, the author states: "Ironically, it was only after the entirely fictional Anja entered the narrative that the plot began to take shape..." However, it does not. The plot is a mess. There are at least four timelines: 1953, 1963--Frank's death, 1983, and the present. Chapters run back and forth without any rhyme or reason. The narration is a somewhat third person point of view which leaves the reader without a voice to concentrate on. The plot is very boring-- it's as if nothing happens at all. The characters themselves are one dimensional--I never cared for any of them.Once again, I was swayed by the New York Times to buy a book. Once again, I was very disappointed with their recommendation. I strongly recommend you stay away from this book--for that matter stay away from anything the New York Times recommends!
Christopher Castellani writes with fierceness and beauty. “Leading Men†is a fascinating story, filled with romance and moving prose. There’s nothing better as a reader than to be transported in time and space, to empathize with the characters, to never want to put a book down. Castellani accomplishes all of that and more with his rich, weighty, heartbreaking renderings of Frank Merlo and the constellation of characters swirling around Tennessee Williams. Grazie.
As with his previous books, Chris Castellani drops you into the picture: you are there and you are part of the novel's world. His writing, as always, is awesome! I do agree with those who have labelled this a page-turner but I recommend that you settle in and turn the pages slowly.
Christopher Castellani imagines a world in which Tennessee Williams and his lover, Frank Merlo, travel to Portofino to attend a Truman Capote party and encounter a young Anja Blomgren. This chance meeting then changes the trajectory of their fictional lives, with Anja and Frank forming a deep and tender bond, and Tenn later writing for Anja a play about Frank that goes undiscovered until after both his and Frank's deaths. Moving between 1950s Italy, 1960s Manhattan and an undisclosed city decades later, Castellani's imagination and lush prose carry this novel seamlessly through time and through this alternative history of love, jealousy, ambition, loss and heartbreak.
I so wish I could love this book as much as I wanted to. I've read just about everything Williams ever wrote, and was immensely moved by John Lahr's magnificent biography of him, so I had high hopes for this. The sections devoted to Tenn and Frank's relationship and to Italy in the 1950s and Truman Capote et al are sometimes lovely and often evocative. But then the novel gets cluttered up with far too many scenes involving a fictional Swedish film star, about whom I couldn't care less. I actually found myself skipping past her scenes and just reading the other bits, which are often truncated and move back and forth in time, which disallows a full-throated emotional connection. Ah well.
It wasn't. The characters felt hollow as they acted out the lives of the rich and famous. I barely reached the quarter-mark when I'd had it. Just plain dull.
Leading Men is proposed as fiction centered on Tennessee Williams and his long-time lover. It instead veers off to other characters in prose that seldom rises above the pedestrian. Anyone who sticks this novel out needs a larger social circle and/or a literary mentor.
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