Hollywood - Softcover

Vidal, Gore

3.64

1,389 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345370139 ISBN 13: 9780345370136

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1991

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"Wicked and provocative...Vidal's purview of Hollywood in one of its golden ages is fascinating." —Chicago Tribune

In his brilliant and dazzling new novel, Gore Vidal sweeps us into one of the most fascinating periods of American political and social change. The time is 1917. In Washington, President Wilson is about to lead the United States into the Great War. In California, a new industry is born that will transform America: moving pictures. Here is history as only Gore Vidal can re-create it: brimming with intrigue and scandal, peopled by the greats of the silver screen and American politics, from Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks to Franklin D. Roosevelt and the author's own grandfather, the blind Senator Gore. With Hollywood, Vidal once again proves himself a superb storyteller and a perceptive chronicler of human nature's endless deceptions.

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Review:

Who could possibly resist a novel that begins as William Randolph Hearst falls on his behind? The fifth novel in Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire sequence (sixth, however, in order of publication) begins on the eve of American involvement in the First World War and ends shortly after the mysterious death of Warren G. Harding and ascension of the taciturn Calvin Coolidge to the presidency. Balanced against Gore's descriptions of all these political machinations is the story of newspaper publisher Caroline Sanford's foray into film acting, which places her in proximity to the scandals involving Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and William Desmond Taylor. The cast of characters includes a young Franklin Delano Roosevelt--and his mistress, Lucy Mercer--and Vidal's maternal grandfather, Senator T.P. Gore. As always, the proceedings are enlivened by Vidal's caustic wit. --Ron Hogan

From the Back Cover:

" Wicked and provocative. . . . Vidal's purview of Hollywood in one of its golden ages is fascinating."
--Tom Tryon

" Vidal succeeds in making his history alive and plausible."
--The New York Times

" Vidal's originality derives from his as-
surance that he can create and command the American history of his novels, as much as he can their imaginary components. No other American writer I know of has Vidal's sense of national proprietorship. He summons the entire American scene into his confident voice. Vidal's presump-
tions work marvelously well for his
intentions."
--Richard Poirier,
The New York Review of Books

Also available from the Modern Library:
Burr � Lincoln � 1876 �
Empire � Washington, D.C.

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