Life's Work

A Memoir of Storytelling and Self-Destruction

David Milch

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English

Picador
04 January 2024

Television; Memoirs; Screenwriting techniques; Drug & substance abuse: social aspects

'Illuminating . . . there is never a dull moment' The Times 'Marvellous . . . full of riches' New Statesman

David Milch is the critically acclaimed writer of the iconic TV series Deadwood and NYPD Blue. As he descends into a dementia from which there's no return, Life's Work is his urgent account of his increasingly strange present and his often painful past.

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 School only to be expelled for shooting out streetlights. He paused his studies at the Iowa Writers' Workshop to manufacture acid. He created some of the most lauded television series of all time, started a family and pursued sobriety, only to lose his fortune betting on the horses - just as his successful but drug-addicted 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 to those we love, and how you then keep living. A compelling masterclass on Milch's unique creative process, this is a distinctive, revelatory memoir from one of the great American writers, and quite possibly his final dispatch to us all.

'Funny, discursive, literate, druggy, self-absorbed . . . You finish feeling you've really met someone' The New York Times 'A searing, brutally honest memoir' The Independent

By: David Milch
Imprint: Picador
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 197mm, Width: 130mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 214g
ISBN: 9781035005642
ISBN 10: 1035005646
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 04 January 2024
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

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.

Reviews for Life's Work: A Memoir of Storytelling and Self-Destruction

Marvellous . . . a book full of riches. * Erica Wagner, The New Statesman * Life’s Work is one of the best books about television I’ve read. It’s funny, discursive, literate, druggy, self-absorbed, fidgety, replete with intense perceptions… You finish feeling you’ve really met someone. Milch was his own best creation. * New York Times * A searing, brutally honest memoir. * The Independent * A brilliant, emotional memoir . . . Takes the darkness of his own life and of those around him and turns it into something else, something that is threaded with hope. * Mail on Sunday * A wise, sly, hilarious, and poignant account of a life's work in hard drugs and hard television. * Joshua Cohen, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Netanyahus * The most gorgeously humane voice I've encountered in a work of nonfiction in a long while. I can think of few recent books that have pulsed with life this transparently, this powerfully. * Rick Moody, author of The Ice Storm * Like the best memoirs, Life's Work is intimate, exquisitely observed, and intense. But unlike most - and what sets it apart - is the heartbreak it embodies, the finality it signals. This is David Milch's farewell, and it will rock you. * Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief *