Norman Rockwell: A Life    by Laura Claridge Order:  USA  Can Random House, 2001 (2001) Hardcover Read an Excerpt      Reviewed by David Pitt I suppose the best biography of Norman Rockwell would be a big coffee-table book, full of his splendid Saturday Evening Post covers and Boys' Life illustrations and assorted paintings for Ladies' Home Journal, or American Magazine, or Boy Scout calendars, or - well, we could go on and on. This is not a lavishly illustrated book (although it does contain a nice sampling of Rockwell's work), but it is a solid, detailed, well written, and very interesting biography. Rockwell's name may be famous, but his life certainly isn't: how many of us know, for example, that he did some advertising art for the Disney movie Old Yeller; that he taught at the Famous Artists' School; that he was a devoted fan of Charles Dickens; that the FBI had a rather interesting file on him (although any rumor that he was a Communist, or a sympathizer, seems to have been entirely ungrounded in fact). The point here is: Rockwell's paintings may have reflected traditional family-values working-class America, but his life did not. Rockwell drank, he liked woman (apparently his 1994 autobiography was quite raunchy, in places), he was a poor student and a bit of a storyteller ("liar" seems too harsh a word); he was, you could make a strong case, an artistic rebel posing as a traditionalist. Don't let his sweet, charming, down-home simple paintings fool you: he was a complicated man, a true genius, and Claridge does an excellent job of bringing him off the canvas and into the world. Note: Opinions expressed in reviews and articles on this site are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of BookLoons. Find more NonFiction books on our Shelves or in our book Reviews