James Dean: The Mutant King by David Dalton is an exceptional biography. It presents the complete story of the late film star's life based on lengthy research and interviews with people he worked with, his family, friends and many lovers as well as a detailed description of his work in television. the theatre and motion pictures - particularly the filming of East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant. The book also has an historical thesis, identifying Dean's meaning and continued significance today - nearly thirty years after his death - within the context of American social evolution.
James Dean is a refinement of America's secret ideal of itself: the adolescent dreamer, solitary figure and symbolic agent for change. Like Gatsby, he 'sprang from his
platonic conception of himself and in this form carried his incorruptible dream through the movies and into our lives... James Dean is an archetypal American hero whose life is a series of modern parables. All of his films, either by coincidence or an act of God, parallel his own life and by some even greater mystery tell the story of America from ecstatic Eden to crumbling corporate Giant....