Título: Life's Work: A Memoir
Autor: David Milch
Sinopse: 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. Life’s Work is a profound memoir from a brilliant mind taking stock as Alzheimer’s loosens his hold on his own past.
“This is David Milch’s farewell, and it will rock you.”—Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, USA Today, Kirkus Reviews
“I’m on a boat sailing to some island where I don’t know anybody. 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 racehorses 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 School 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, 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 master class 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.
Contexto da obra
Como livro em inglês, esta obra costuma ganhar também uma camada própria de interesse editorial e linguístico. “Life’s Work: A Memoir”, de David Milch, publicado pela editora Random House Trade Paperbacks, em 2023 e com 304 páginas, integra a categoria Livros em Inglês. Por isso, o interesse da obra tende a se ampliar quando o leitor considera também a relação com a língua em que ela circula.
Editora: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Páginas: 304
Ano: 2023
Edição: Reprint
Linguagem: en
ISBN: 0525510761
ISBN13: 9780525510765
Sobre a editora
Os livros da editora Random House Trade Paperbacks costumam oferecer narrativas densas e envolventes, que transitam entre o suspense psicológico, a história reimaginada e o ensaio reflexivo. O catálogo traz desde thrillers que exploram perseguições implacáveis e mistérios criminais até biografias e relatos históricos que iluminam personagens e eventos marcantes com detalhes minuciosos. A linguagem varia do tom tenso e urgente ao didático e analítico, com obras que também investigam processos mentais e sociais, como o aprendizado e a moralidade. Há ainda espaço para ficções que mesclam aventura e especulação filosófica, além de narrativas que exploram relações humanas complexas em contextos contemporâneos ou históricos.
