This novel is a hell of a lot of fun.
This delicious satire of old Hollywood, originally published in 1938 and largely unknown even by cinephiles, gets a welcome reissue.
The hijinks start early in this screwball sendup, since, as one Hollywood veteran tells a newbie writer, “We not only preoccupy ourselves with sex at the box office but feel we must live life as we see it on the screen for twenty-four hours a day.” Sidney Brand, the powerful Hollywood producer standing in for legendary real-life producer David O. Selznick (Gone With the Wind; Rebecca), gets the job done but, god, he’s a monster to work for. He’s narcissistic, needy, chauvinist, and a big ole liar, though he does work really hard, to give him a little credit. Allen dishes on the cupidities and venality of daily life in the big studio system of 1930s Hollywood through her protagonist Madge Lawrence’s letters home as well as interoffice memos, telegrams, journal entries, and gossip columns. Madge is new to Hollywood, hunting for a studio job; Brand hires her as his secretary. He’s desperate for a big commercial success but wants it to come off as a prestige number, so he counts on Viennese import Sarya Tarn (a double for Marlene Dietrich) to bring the quality, but she only brings a healthy dose of divadom. Brand’s frenemy at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, a rival studio, won’t loan him Clark Gable to play opposite Tarn, so the producer has to rely on Broadway success Bruce Anders, who makes Madge’s heart flutter; meanwhile, the studio’s publicity whiz, Jim Palmer, wittily, mordantly pursues her. This novel is the product of two writers, Silvia Schulman Lardner, who was Selznick’s secretary (and was married to writer Ring Lardner Jr.), and screenwriter Jane Shore. The characters and plot are so thinly veiled that the authors decided a single pseudonym was the wisest path to publication, as film scholar J.E. Smyth explains in her thoughtful introduction.
This novel is a hell of a lot of fun.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-9776-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
