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THE BIG HYPE

Name: THE BIG HYPE
Author: Avery Corman
ISBN: 0-671-69297-6

by Avery Corman ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1992

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Entertaining but far from caustic satire on celebrityhood that finds Corman (Prized Possessions, 1991, etc.) having fun with publishing and show biz. It's hard to knock a novel that never takes itself seriously but remains absolutely readable from first to last—though Corman fails to rise above the even level of charm he handles so deftly throughout. Paul Brock, a middle-aging scriptwriter tired of television (though he's won four Emmys), finishes his first novel. His agent auctions the ms., but it achieves only a midlist advance, not enough to keep Paul's family in shoes and dentistry while he writes a second novel. His best friend, Mel Steiner, a towering moneymaker in the music biz, takes on the book himself, becomes a publisher, and gives Paul the big hype, starting with a $100,000 advance. Astounded, Paul finds that Mel wants to make him over into a concert star and have Paul a household name before bringing out the novel. Paul writes the lyrics for 20 songs that stand up for the middle class against the yuppies; a fancy orchestrator helps with the tunes; Mel opens a media blitz; and Paul debuts at Radio City Music Hall to a standing ovation (paid for by Mel). The novel rides the stairway to hype-heaven in a step-by-step way that has an aura of authenticity to its satire, though the reader's light heart is taken for granted. It's Corman's happy inspiration to load the story with real celebrities—Mario Puzo, John Updike, Bette Midler, Paul Simon, John le CarrÇ, Dr. Ruth, and many, many others—who speak glowingly of Paul's talent at every turn. Corman is less inspired at giving these folks sharp edges or handling them with satisfying wit. The main flaw here is that very little stands in the way of Mel's dream-roller hype, and whatever friction does arise offers little heat. A publishing phenomenon? Who knows. But hype will help.

Pub Date: July 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-671-69297-6

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1992

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
MY OLD NEIGHBORHOOD REMEMBERED
by Avery Corman

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BOYFRIEND FROM HELL
by Avery Corman

- BOOK REVIEW
A PERFECT DIVORCE
by Avery Corman

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LAND OF SWEET FOREVER
by Harper Lee ; edited by Casey Cep

- BOOK REVIEW
GO SET A WATCHMAN
by Harper Lee

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LONESOME DOVE

A NOVEL (SIMON & SCHUSTER CLASSICS)

by Larry McMurtry ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1985

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This large, stately, and intensely powerful new novel by the author of Terms of Endearment and The Last Picture Show is constructed around a cattle drive—an epic journey from dry, hard-drinking south Texas, where a band of retired Texas Rangers has been living idly, to the last outpost and the last days of the old, unsettled West in rough Montana. The time is the 1880s. The characters are larger than life and shimmer: Captain Woodrow Call, who leads the drive, is the American type of an unrelentingly righteous man whose values are puritanical and pioneering and whose orders, which his men inevitably follow, lead, toward the end, to their deaths; talkative Gus McCrae, Call's best friend, learned, lenient, almost magically skilled in a crisis, who is one of those who dies; Newt, the unacknowledged 17-year-old son of Captain Call's one period of self-indulgence and the inheritor of what will become a new and kinder West; and whores, drivers, misplaced sheriffs and scattered settlers, all of whom are drawn sharply, engagingly, movingly. As the rag-tag band drives the cattle 3,000 miles northward, only Call fails to learn that his quest to conquer more new territories in the West is futile—it's a quest that perishes as men are killed by natural menaces that soon will be tamed and by half-starved renegades who soon will die at the hands of those less heroic than themselves. McMurtry shows that it is a quest misplaced in history, in a landscape that is bare of buffalo but still mythic; and it is only one of McMurtry's major accomplishments that he does it without forfeiting a grain of the characters' sympathetic power or of the book's considerable suspense. This is a masterly novel. It will appeal to all lovers of fiction of the first order.