It's difficult to empathize with Charles Jackson, a pretentious hack who hit it big with his confessional account of alcoholism, but Blake Bailey manages to make his life fascinating. It wasn't the alcohol and pill addictions, nor the tortured sexuality (Jackson was a semi-closeted homosexual in a heterosexual marriage), but Jackson's relationships with family and friends, his constant failures, and the surprisingly supportive post-war literary world that kept me interested throughout. ( )