Two of these insider’s novels, at least, give fresh impetus to the Carpenter revival.
A re-issue of three Hollywood novels by a West Coast author and screenwriter who died in 1995, following the recent publication of his last novel, Fridays at Enrico’s (2014).
Meet the comedy team of Jim and David. A Couple of Comedians (1979) is a raunchy, high-spirited ramble from David’s Northern California ranch to Hollywood, where they make one movie a year followed by a stint at a Vegas nightclub. Yes, they’re famous; they’re also free spirits, chasing chicks and scoring dope. David is the narrator, and his view of Hollywood is nuanced, for among “Hollywood’s collection of contemptibles” is one of the original moguls who, combining self-interest and magnanimity, gave them their winning big-screen formula. David skips the moviemaking—it’s boring—but we feel a frisson before their nightclub act. Jim may be having a breakdown: Will he show? Less quirky is The True Life Story of Jody McKeegan (1975). Jody has had a hard life. In her hometown of Portland, Oregon, she watched her big sister die after a back-alley abortion. Failing to find acting work in New York, she became “a thief, a pimp, a blackmailer, a junkie.” In Hollywood, however, close to washed up at 35, she catches a break. She meets the producer Harry Lexington; they fall in love. Jody’s perfect for a role in his current movie. Overcoming his scruples about casting girlfriends, Harry gets her the part. But will self-destructive Jody keep it together? The suspense goes down to the wire. Turnaround (1981) has less edge and energy than the other novels. None of the three principals (two studio executives and an aspiring screenwriter) has the vital spark of Jody or those hell-raising comedians. The real story, the painful coming-of-age of a screenwriter, something close to Carpenter’s heart, arrives too late to grab us.
Two of these insider’s novels, at least, give fresh impetus to the Carpenter revival.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 9781619023420
Page Count: 420
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
PROFILES
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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