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Life's Work
A Memoir of Storytelling and Self-Destruction
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Life's Work
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
Ideal for readers interested in memoirs about creativity, addiction, and resilience, as well as fans of television history and literary nonfiction.
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The creator of Deadwood and NYPD Blue reflects on his tumultuous life, driven by a nearly insatiable creative energy and a matching penchant for self-destruction.
The creator of Deadwood and NYPD Blue reflects on his tumultuous life, driven by a nearly insatiable creative energy and a matching penchant for self-destruction.
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
still learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Description
I feel like I'm on a boat sailing to some island where I don't know anybody. I'm on a boat someone is operating and we aren't in touch.
So begins David Milch's urgent accounting of his increasingly strange present and often painful past. From the start, Milch's life seems destined to echo that of his father, a successful if drug-addicted surgeon. Almost every achievement is accompanied by an act of self-immolation, but the deepest sadnesses also contain moments of grace.
Betting on race horses and stealing booze at eight years old, mentored by Robert Penn Warren and excoriated by Richard Yates at twenty-one, Milch never did anything by half. He got into Yale Law only to be expelled for shooting out streetlights with a shotgun. He paused his studies at the Iowa Writers' Workshop to manufacture acid in Cuernavaca. He created and wrote some of the most lauded television series of all time, made a family and pursued sobriety, and then lost his fortune betting horses just as his father had taught him.
Like Milch's best screenwriting, Life's Work explores how chance encounters, self-deception, and luck shape the people we become, and wrestles with what it means to have felt and caused pain, even and especially with those we love, and how you keep living. It is both a masterclass on Milch's unique creative process, and a distinctive, revelatory memoir from one of the great American writers, in what may be his final dispatch to us all.
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
A deeply intimate and intense memoir, praised for its emotional honesty and literary grace. Susan Orlean describes it as a heartfelt farewell that will deeply move readers. Rick Moody highlights its raw, transparent portrayal of addiction and creativity, while Joshua Cohen applauds its wit and poignancy in recounting a life entwined with hard drugs and hard-won artistic success.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781035005635
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 15 September 2022
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Picador
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 26.0mm
Width: 153.0mm
Height: 232.0mm
Weight: 376g
Pages: 304
About the Author
David Milch graduated summa cum laude from Yale University, where he won the Tinker Prize. He earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. He worked as a writing teacher and lecturer in English literature at Yale. During his teaching career, he assisted Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks in the writing of several college textbooks on literature. His poetry and fiction have been published in The Atlantic and Southern Review. In 1982, Milch wrote his first television script for Hill Street Blues. Since then, among other credits, Milch created and wrote the shows NYPD Blue, John from Cincinnati, Luck, and Deadwood.
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