Thomas Mallon (born November 2, 1951) is an American novelist, essayist, and critic. His novels are renowned for their attention to historical detail and context and for the author's crisp wit and interest in the "bystanders" to larger historical events.[1] He is the author of ten books of fiction, including Henry and Clara, Two Moons, Dewey Defeats Truman, Aurora 7, Bandbox, Fellow Travelers (recently adapted into a
miniseries by the same name), Watergate, Finale, Landfall, and most recently Up With the Sun. He has also published nonfiction on
plagiarism (Stolen Words), diaries (A Book of One's Own), letters (Yours Ever) and
the Kennedy assassination (Mrs. Paine's Garage), as well as two volumes of essays (Rockets and Rodeos and In Fact).
Thomas Vincent Mallon was born in
Glen Cove, New York, and grew up in
Stewart Manor, New York, both on
Long Island. His father, Arthur Mallon, was a salesman and his mother, Caroline, kept the home. Mallon graduated from
Sewanhaka High School in 1969. He has often said that he had "the kind of happy childhood that is so damaging to a writer".[3]
Mallon studied English at
Brown University, where he wrote his undergraduate honors thesis on American author
Mary McCarthy. He credits McCarthy, with whom he later became friends, as the most enduring influence on his career as a writer.[4]
Mallon's writing style is characterized by wit, charm and a meticulous attention to detail and character development. His nonfiction often explores "fringe" genres—diaries, letters, plagiarism—just as his fiction frequently tells the stories of characters "on the fringes of big events".[5]
A Book of One's Own, an informal guide to the great diaries of literature, was published in 1984 and gave Mallon his first dose of critical acclaim.
Richard Eder, writing in the Los Angeles Times (28 November 1984) called the book "an engaging meditation on the varied and irrepressible spirit of life that insists on preserving itself on paper." In A Book of One's Own, Mallon covers a wide range of diarists from
Samuel Pepys to
Anais Nin. He explained his enthusiasm for the genre by saying: "Writing books is too good an idea to be left to authors." The success of A Book of One's Own won Mallon a
Rockefeller Fellowship in 1986.[6]
Mallon then began publishing
fiction, a genre in which he had informally dabbled throughout childhood and young adulthood. Mallon published his first novel, Arts and Sciences, in 1988 about Arthur Dunne, a 22-year-old
Harvard graduate student in English. Soon after its publication, in 1989, Mallon released a second nonfiction book called Stolen Words: Forays Into the Origins and Ravages of Plagiarism.
Henry and Clara, published in 1994, established Mallon as a writer of
historical fiction from that point forward. The novel traces the lives of
Major Henry Rathbone and
Clara Harris, the young couple who accompanied
Abraham Lincoln to
Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865. A story of star-crossed lovers intermingles with personal and political tragedies and spans the couple's first meeting in childhood to their eventual derangement.[7] Mallon's writing career took a dramatic turn when
John Updike praised Henry and Clara in The New Yorker, calling Mallon "one of the most interesting American novelists at work."[8]
Historical fiction, Mallon has declared in interviews, is the genre in which he is most interested as a writer. "I think the main thing that has led me to write historical fiction is that it is a relief from the self," he explains.[9] American political history has been perhaps his main subject and interest; in 1994, he was the
ghostwriter of former
Vice President Dan Quayle's memoir, Standing Firm.[10]
After the publication of Henry and Clara, Mallon went on to write seven more works of historical fiction, including his most recent novels, Watergate (2012), Finale (2015), and Landfall (2019). Watergate, a finalist for the 2013
PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction,[11] is a retelling of the
Watergate scandal from the perspective of seven characters, some familiar to the public memory, such as Nixon's secretary
Rose Mary Woods, and some brought to light from the sidelines of the scandal, such as
Fred LaRue.[12]Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years, one of the New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2015, takes readers to the political gridiron of Washington in 1986; the wealthiest enclaves of southern California; and the volcanic landscape of Iceland, where
President Ronald Reagan engages in two almost apocalyptic days of negotiation with
Mikhail Gorbachev.[13] Readers of Finale find themselves in the shoes of many characters both central and peripheral to the Reagan presidency – from Nancy Reagan to Richard Nixon to actress
Bette Davis.[14]
Landfall, Mallon's 2019 novel, takes place during the
George W. Bush years against a backdrop of political catastrophe: the Iraq insurgency and
Hurricane Katrina, in particular. At the center of the narrative, though, is a love affair between two West Texans, Ross Weatherall and Allison O'Connor, whose destinies have been intertwined with Bush's for decades.
Openly gay, Mallon currently lives with his longtime partner, William Bodenschatz, in Washington, DC, and is a professor emeritus of English at
The George Washington University.[15] He once described himself as a "supposed literary intellectual/homosexual/Republican."[16] During the 2016 election he was actively involved in Scholars and Writers Against Trump,[17] a group of disaffected conservatives.[18] He left the Republican Party in November 2016.[citation needed]