The Rebel
An Imagined Life of James Dean
by Jack Dann

List Price: $24.95
Pages: 416
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0380978393
Publisher: William Morrow

A movie star on a meteoric rise, young James Dean was already being hailed as one of America's finest actors when he died in a high-speed car accident in 1955. In one terrible instant a luminous future glowing with extraordinary promise was snuffed out forever.

But what if it wasn't?

With The Rebel, acclaimed award-winning author Jack Dann pulls James Dean from the twisted wreckage and offers him a second chance to make an indelible mark on his art, his culture, and his time in an era of profound change and devastating social upheaval.

Surviving the horrific crash that leaves him permanently scarred, both physically and emotionally, the rebellious young star approaches his rebirth with trepidation, charged with an inescapable new responsibility to do "something wonderful and important." Cast back into a world of Hollywood glitz and glamour, a haunted, brooding, and complex artist climbs higher than even his most fervent admirers imagined he could, ascending to a pinnacle of success and power no actor of his or any generation has ever achieved. Yet for Jimmy Dean, the glory road will be winding and broken, littered with the detritus of exploded dreams and destroyed love, as it passes through the holiest cultural sites of postwar twentieth-century America -- the genius-and-drug-pumped world of the Beats, the protected inner sanctum of Graceland, the darkest shadows of Camelot. The lives and futures of Kerouac, Sinatra, Elvis and the Colonel, and the Kennedys will all be touched by him -- yet perhaps none so deeply as the fragile sex goddess who will always be his greatest burden and true soul mate, a dazzling and tragically lost phenomenon named Marilyn -- as he moves relentlessly toward an astonishing destiny that will reconfigure the world.

Ingeniously blending historical fact with brilliant invention, The Rebel is a hip, fast, mesmerizing ride through the fifties and sixties -- an unforgettable road trip across a nation torn by bitter racial strife and violently divided by war, with an American legend at the wheel.

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1. There is a continuing public fascination with James Dean as an icon. Does this book extend our understanding of the artist and the man? Can we learn who James Dean might have really been like from novels such as this? Does this book describe an 'authentic' James Dean?

2. Some writers regard Dean as a masochist, and he has been referred to as 'the human ashtray.' Dann does not take this view. Do you think Dean's bisexuality is handled realistically in this novel?

3. Jack Dann has said that The Rebel is about the construction of myths, the creation of history, and the nature of memory. Do you agree or disagree, and if so why?

4. There are a number of sex scenes in this novel. Do you feel they are justified?

5.The author has described The Rebel as a fictional biography of the pop culture of the 50's and 60's. Does The Rebel give the reader a different perspective on the actual past? Were those decades really that different from our own time?

6. What does The Rebel tell us about rewriting history and reinventing oneself?

7. Bobby Kennedy marked the following sentence from Emerson's Essays: "Always do what you are afraid to do." Do you think James Dean would have marked the same passage? Did James Dean and Bobby Kennedy have a lot in common?

8. James Dean, Elvis Presley, and Marilyn Monroe are described as 'lightbulbs' in The Rebel. What does this mean? Is this a real phenomenon?

9. There has been much controversy about whether Marilyn Monroe committed suicide or was murdered. Does The Rebel shed light on this issue?

10. The author has said that he 'nudged' history in order to shed a different light on our recent past and to gain a deeper understanding of James Dean's personality and potentiality. Do you feel this was justified?

11. If actors Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger could become the President of the United States and Governor of California, respectively, what does this tell us about the cult of fame and actors as icons?

12. What, if anything, does the election of Schwarzenegger tell us about the future of politics and the influence of fame on the electorate? How does The Rebel shed light on this political phenomenon?

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