Product Description

Harold Robbins, the godfather of the airport novel, changed the face of publishing with classics such as "The Carpetbaggers", "The Dream Merchants" and "The Lonely Lady". His readers loved his steamy tales of money, soft porn, drugs, corruption, greed and, just sometimes, redemption. The world's first playboy writer, Robbins reportedly frittered away $50 million on fast cars, loose women and high living. But obsessed with fame and fortune, Robbins was a deeply complex and often controversial man, and even his closest friends and lovers could only guess at the past of the man behind the perma-tanned mask and gigantic mirrored sunglasses. This is the fascinating story of his extraordinary life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #179247 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
'A fascinating portrait of a remarkable man' The Times 'A hugely enjoyable biography of a scurrilous life' Observer 'Makes a fascinating cautionary tale, and Wilson tells it with wit and concision' Blake Morrison, Guardian 'Wilson's biography is utterly mesmerising, the story of a life which combines elements of comedy and sheer horror to keep the reader turning the pages with eager anticipation' Daily Express

About the Author
Andrew Wilson remembers secretly reading Harold Robbins as a teenager, and has spoken to many friends, lovers and enemies of this most provocative of writers. Wilson's other books are the award-winning Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith, and the novel The Lying Tongue.

Customer Reviews

what a life!
harold robbins had an amazing life - almost as amazing as the stories he made up about his life. and what this book manages to do so brilliantly is to unpick his self-mythologisation from the truth. there is sex, drugs, women, glamorous houses, exotic locations, deceit and a tragic demise. robbins's life came right out of the pages of one of his own books. anyone who loved the carpetbaggers (I read it when I was 13) should definitely get this biography.

Great title mediocre book
Unfortunately the best best thing about this book in the title. He obviously did not invent sex but he might have been the first modern writer to make so much money out of it. I remember going out to buy a brand new copy of the paperback The Carpetbaggers which was a big move as it was very thick and must have cost me five shillings when most paperbacks were three shillings and six pence.

I read it and passed it on to friends. I don't remember ever having the desire to reread it or certain parts of it. I remember being amazed that it was such a thick book and how anyone could write so many words.

If you told anyone you read a Harold Robbins book they would look at you knowingly and suggest that the book would fall open at the dirty bits. Again I remember people who would never discuss or read books would claim they had read Harold Robbins. He was a phenomenon.

It seems he made up most aspects of his life and people believed him . I suppose we want to believe in other people's outrageous behavior.

It also fits into our view that there are people out there who do really live like that and if we had the money we could do that as well. Ultimately he made money had loads of wives and lovers did what he wanted to do and very few people attended his funeral.

He was a great self publicist and was able to make a lot of money from his writing. The author claims he was not a very good writer but he made millions and a lot of people bought his books. He must have given them what they wanted.

He describes the writing of The Carpetbaggers in 1960 with the help of his wife Lillian who helped improve the narrative, fleshing out characters and editing this words. He wrote over thirteen hundred manuscript pages. It seems he could at the height of his success write thirty to forty pages in one sitting.

He was a prodigious worker. When he sat at his machine it was like a smoking typewriter.

The author accused Robbins of being a sloppy writer but this book starts each chapter with what appears to be an extract from a novel but is in fact the author's invention of an incident from Robbin's life and it then tails off. I got lost amongst the wives and lovers and characters and books but I was not interested enough to go back and check who was whom. Also their were some quite obvious typographical errors in the book so it was not very well edited or proof read.

I now know more than I need to know about Harold Robbins and as a result have no desire to go back and read any of his books I learnt very little about his writing methods apart from he sat down and wrote a lot of words.

Great title mediocre book

A dirty little devil, but surprisingly sympathetic
I like biographies that have an element of quest in them, and at the start this was one. The truth was far more prosaic than the orphanage, shipwreck yarns Robbins spun, but his desire to cover his tracks was interesting in itself. The story as a whole is a morality tale of a man destroyed by success. Robins emerges as a sexually obsessed character who certainly wouldn't have fitted in to the new hypocrisy of PC, but he was loyal to his friends and showed a good deal of courage in his last wheelchair-bound, pain-wracked years.
I liked the device of beginning each chapter in the style of a Robbins novel.