Resentment: A Comedy - Softcover

Indiana, Gary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385493363 ISBN 13: 9780385493369

Publisher: Anchor, 1998

Synopsis

Based on the real-life trial of the Menendez brothers and written with visceral, apocalyptic force, Gary Indiana's critically acclaimed novel, Resentment, is a dark comedy of manners that takes as its subject nothing less than the complete and total dissolution of society and the justice system.

Seth, a New York journalist, is on assignment in Los Angeles to cover the infamous trial of two adolescent boys accused of blowing away their wealthy parents in their Beverly Hills mansion. The novel follows Seth as he maneuvers among the bizarre chorus of characters that make up modern-day Los Angeles, including a judge with obsessive/compulsive disorder, a witness with Tourette's Syndrome, a taxi driver/screenwriter with AIDS, a budding serial killer/gigolo, and a name-dropping society novelist. "Resentment is not only hilariously toxic satire that skewers various gargoyles of Southern California with deadly precision and dark wit," writes Patrick McGrath, "It is also a rattling good story, generated and furiously driven forward by a moral vision that is new to American fiction."

About this title

Review

Since the mid-1970s, Gary Indiana has been making a name for himself as a renegade thinker and writer. In the Village Voice and Rolling Stone he created a new brand of highly personal, overtly political cultural commentary that has reshaped journalism. His novels and short stories are equally controversial. Resentment, his new novel, is a true hybrid of his art. Based on Indiana's coverage of the Menendez brothers' trial, the novel is an all-out, savagely funny attack on the media, the U.S. justice system, television, family, and Los Angeles. Indiana is relentless in his desire to expose the insanity that rages beneath the surface of U.S. life and determined to make us laugh out loud even as we shake our heads in sorry recognition.

From the Publisher

Day of the Locusts meets Bonfire of the Vanities in this searing burlesque about everyone from the east coast literati to Hollywood's superagents, actors, has-beens and wannabes. Gary Indiana takes no prisoners as he sets his "hero," B-magazine writer Seth, out in Los Angeles to do a celebrity profile of a famous hetero actor who has just taken a major role as a homosexual with AIDS. While on the West Coast, Seth becomes mildly, then completely obsessed with the trial of two privileged young men who are accused of killing their parents in cold blood as they lay sleeping in their Beverly Hills home.

Indiana weaves the story of Seth and his not inconsequential resentment for the world at large with the riveting "Martinez" case as it unfolds before the American public. Ironically, hilariously, and ingeniously, Indiana juxtaposes both stories in this blackest of comedies, as he reveals the role of resentment in all human relationships, and the darker side of L.A. roiling beneath the glamour. The media loves nothing more than itself, and no writer/agent/actor/journalist will be able to resist this tell-all novel about all the beautiful people.

About this edition

• Publisher: Anchor
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0385493363
• ISBN 13: 9780385493369
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320