- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: New American Library (29 Jan 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0452278686
- ISBN-13: 978-0452278684
- Product Dimensions: 20.4 x 13.6 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 44,261 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
A novel set in Hollywood brings together an offbeat crew that includes porn stars in love, scheming dermatologists, celebrity chore-whores, masseurs, traitorous shrinks, and sightless children, among others, in a glittering world of decadence.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Quite posibly the best Hollywood novel since Nathaniel West's "Day of the Locust" or Robert Stone's much under-rated "Children of Light." Wagner has as piercing an eye for character as Nora Ephron, a more rapier wit, and more bulls-eyed capture-effect for nailing the squirming, mercurial nature of the de-centered city. A compilation of vignettes and plotlines loosely interconnected by wry and cunning crossed trajectories of power, desire, carnal predation and patholgical ambition. All of it wired up in electrifying prose and some of the most bitchy and acidic and blackest-of-black humor since Celine. Wickedly funny at every turn. Really a minor (maybe not so minor) masterpiece of the Hollywood genre. Clinically well-observed, vibrant, stylistically ballsy. The critics seem to find it too dark, not plotty enough, bitter, cynical. But insider Wagner ("The Class Struggle in Beverly Hills", "Wild Palms", among others), despite his mainstreamed largely east-coast-imposed postures of populist postmodernist, is a good old fashioned master of realism. The Flaubert of Hollywood. Form following function. A soured lesbian love affair is recounted through a one-sided e-mail correspondence, the authentic human tragedy of a congenitallly blind infant is diminished by the casting director mother's efforts to package it as pop entertainment, relationships exist solely through reception-fractured cell-phone conversations. It's the superficial aspect of human relations in the city of through-lines and sentimental sop that make the novel at once realistic and compelling. And unlike say a Kathy Acker (evoked constantly by every self-co-opted poseur as a pretentious badge of substance) where story is sacrificed to style Wagner keeps the reader engaged at every turn. It's the kind of novel you can open anywhere, anytime and come onto another splendid nugget. We'll be hearing more from this talent and I, personally, am looking forward to it.
Format:Paperback
Somewhat epic-like in scope, I couldn't put this book down and was sad to see it end -- I was even having dreams about some of the mostly evil characters. Oftentimes a very bleak picture of contemporary Hollywood, but a fascinating book nonetheless. I love Bruce Wagner's vocabulary and way with words. Brilliant!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
9 reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Possibly the best Hollywood novel since "Day of the Locust"
10 Jan 1999
Format:Hardcover
Quite posibly the best Hollywood novel since Nathaniel West's "Day of the Locust" or Robert Stone's much under-rated "Children of Light." Wagner has as piercing an eye for character as Nora Ephron, a more rapier wit, and more bulls-eyed capture-effect for nailing the squirming, mercurial nature of the de-centered city. A compilation of vignettes and plotlines loosely interconnected by wry and cunning crossed trajectories of power, desire, carnal predation and patholgical ambition. All of it wired up in electrifying prose and some of the most bitchy and acidic and blackest-of-black humor since Celine. Wickedly funny at every turn. Really a minor (maybe not so minor) masterpiece of the Hollywood genre. Clinically well-observed, vibrant, stylistically ballsy. The critics seem to find it too dark, not plotty enough, bitter, cynical. But insider Wagner ("The Class Struggle in Beverly Hills", "Wild Palms", among others), despite his mainstreamed largely east-coast-imposed postures of populist postmodernist, is a good old fashioned master of realism. The Flaubert of Hollywood. Form following function. A soured lesbian love affair is recounted through a one-sided e-mail correspondence, the authentic human tragedy of a congenitallly blind infant is diminished by the casting director mother's efforts to package it as pop entertainment, relationships exist solely through reception-fractured cell-phone conversations. It's the superficial aspect of human relations in the city of through-lines and sentimental sop that make the novel at once realistic and compelling. And unlike say a Kathy Acker (evoked constantly by every self-co-opted poseur as a pretentious badge of substance) where story is sacrificed to style Wagner keeps the reader engaged at every turn. It's the kind of novel you can open anywhere, anytime and come onto another splendid nugget. We'll be hearing more from this talent and I, personally, am looking forward to it.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Intermittently powerful ... utterly repellent
31 Jan 2002
Format:Paperback
From the raves garnered for this book and his latest release, "I'll Let You Go", I was intent from the first page on really liking this book. I came away disturbed and baffled more than anything else ... and slightly nauseous.
Wagner certainly is a prodigious talent. His dialogue flies off the page, and his characters, though a rather unlikeable lot, manage to convey a certain pathos that is truly revealing. I might even venture to say I was surprisingly moved by the ending. Unfortunately, though, Wagner comes off as a more impressive stylist than storyteller. As a result, the narrative tends to drift and gets lost amid virtuoustic and occasionally tangential verbiage. One particular complaint is that I often lost track of the characters themselves and how they were inter-related.
This is not - and I repeat NOT - a novel for everyone. It requires a strong stomach and an open mind. Some of Wagner's descriptions border on the pornographic, and occasionally seem to push the envelope just for the sake of shock value.
Still, there is quite a bit to admire here, and if one can get past the fact that these characters are - for the most part - utterly unredeemable, and the plot a bit unfocused, you are in for quite a read.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Great hollywood novel w/black humor, inventive narration
24 Jan 2002
Format:Paperback
It's a novel set in present day Hollywood, but instead of focusing on Hollywood stars, Wagner looks at the hangers-on types, the agents, lawyers, doctors, massage therapists, etc. It's definitely black humor, as a lot of unfortunate things happen to the characters, but it's definitely worth reading.
The multiple pov is quite interesting. In the first section, Wagner focuses on 4 or 5 characters, and quickly switches the POV between each one in a rapid succession. One character is an exterminator, the other an agent, the next one an aging starlet, and the next a dermatologist. My favorite is the exterminator, the Dead Pet Detective, who longs to write scripts for a Star Trek like TV show called "Blue Matrix". His mother is a psychologist, Calliope, who only treats celebrities, one of whom is a Blue Matrix star.
The second section is even more interesting: it's told from multiple narrators, each of whom are women. A different set of characters who you saw through a different perspective earlier. One is a screenwriter writing e-mail to her lesbian lover, another is a producer dictating into a microphone (much like Julia Philips in You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again), still another is a massage therapist writing in her diary titled "The Thief of Energy". These characters have an effect on each other's lives which is not immediately apparent until the end when things all come together.
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